I put "Overtourism into Google on Sunday, 14th July, at 20:00. These are the top ten responses. Only two of them are pointing out, in the words of Simon Calder in the Independent, "Exclusive: Almost every destination wants more tourists, not fewer."
And the Emmetts are back in the news - see number 5 below
Tourism businesses can contribute to local sustainable development when they upskill and employ local people and work with local SMMEs to buy locally produced goods and services. They can also facilitate sales by local people directly to tourists. View the short video on creating what Harvard economist Michael Porter callsshared value here.
The Crannog Centre
On the shores of the Tay in Scotland, the Crannog Centre is a stunning example of the contribution that an Iron Age visitor attraction can make to cultural heritage and local sustainable development - is there a more successful, responsible attraction in Scotland? The Crannog Centre addresses so many of the aspirations listed in the 2022 Responsible Tourism Charter.
Overtourism, now an issue in so many places with demonstrations and even hunger strikes, is arguably the most obvious experience we have of the consequences of living in a finite world. Overtourism is the experience of hosts and guests when we allow our places, our homes, to be used by tourists and the tourism industry.
We need to remember that "tourism is like a fire. We can cook our food on it, but if it is poorly managed, it will burn our homes down.
Managing Overtourism is essential and challenging.
TPCC - Tourism Panel on Climate Change launches Beyond the Horizon Deep Dive Series – Prof. Harold Goodwin, author of ‘Tourism in a Finite, Climate Challenged World’ interviewed by Prof. Geoffrey Lipman. A lively discussion against the background of the TPCC 2023 Stocktake on why the tourism sector must better incorporate the realities of Planetary Boundaries into its actions and the applicability of Doughnut Economics as a guide.
Business Opportunity for Southern Africa
Mejdi Tours has pioneered dual narrative tours to, amongst other places, Israel and Palestine and Northern Ireland. Their two-guide model equips groups with two local guides, each representing unique cultural, religious, political, and ethnic narratives.
Africa is the world's most diverse content, it offers a great range of opportunities for "meet the people" experiential tours and we know that the market trends favour tours that provide opportunities to engage with local people and their cultures. Booking.com's 2022 research reported that nearly two-thirds (63%) of travellers wanted to have experiences that are representative of the local culture.
Mejdi Tours is “founded on the belief that tourism should be a vehicle for a more positive and interconnected world.” MEJDI translates to both “honour” and “respect”, the business was established to “change the face of tourism through a socially responsible business model that honours both clients and communities.” Travellers engage with a diversity of views about the places they visit, and multiple narratives.
Mejdi runs tours in Morocco and Egypt. Aziz, one of the founder directors, will be in Johannesburg and then Cape Town in April and is speaking at WTM Africa on April 11th. Mejdi is looking for suppliers so that they can create dual narrative tours in Southern Africa.
If you would like to meet with Aziz to explore the business opportunity please contact Aziz (aziz@mejditours.com) AND Kim (kim@mejditours.com).
This TED Talk is a great introduction to Aziz.
“You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.”
It was Abraham Lincoln who warned, “You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.” In David Copperfield, Dickens wrote, “Never do tomorrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of time.” That was the nineteenth century. Just as we speak of “common sense” failing to recognise that it is not common, we mouth platitudes without acting on them.
The UK government published The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review in 2006, it concluded “the evidence gathered by the Review leads to a simple conclusion: the benefits of strong and early action far outweigh the economic costs of not acting.”
The adage “Never put off till tomorrow, what you can do the day after tomorrow” is attributed to both Mark Twain and Oscar Wilde and reported as “comical.” Procrastination has characterised the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Today’s playbook is based on the 2010 book “Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming” by American historians of science Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway. They document how “keeping the controversy alive” by spreading doubt and confusion after a scientific consensus had been reached was the basic strategy of those opposing action.
Jennifer Jacquet, Professor of Environmental Science and Policy at the Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science at the University of Miami, published “The Play Book” in 2022. Described by geneticist and science populariser, Adam Rutherford, as “Very funny, as satire should be, until you realise it’s deadly serious.” It is a convincing read, a ‘how-to manual’ for procrastinators. Satire can unwittingly encourage the very behaviour it seeks to reveal, especially when it benefits those who follow the playbook.
“Written in the form of a corporate handbook for tobacco, oil and pharmaceutical company executives, it is a litany of obfuscation techniques, denial, delays and outright lies, including: how to recruit an academic ‘expert’ who is willing to compromise their integrity (or is just short of cash), how to massage the statistics, how to use legal and even physical intimidation against reporters and activists, and how, just as in a casino, to keep your customers comfortable, unquestioning, unthinking and playing along for as long as possible.”
A charge sheet against the powerful, it is also a guide to effective action by those seeking to put off until tomorrow what should be done now, today. As it says on the cover, this is a ‘how manual’ “How to deny science, sell lies, and make a killing in the corporate world.”
The French theologian and social activist Peter Maurin reminds us that: “The future will be different if we make the present different.” We shall reap what we sow – or at least our children and grandchildren will.
We face a “polycrisis.” Jonathan Derbyshire, writing in the Financial Times, in January 2023, chose polycrisis as his “year in a word” . “Noun: collective term for interlocking and simultaneous crises of an environmental, geopolitical and economic nature.” He traced the coining of the word back to the late 1990s and the work of the “French social scientists Edgar Morin and Anne Brigitte Kern, who employed it to describe the “interwoven and overlapping crises” facing humanity, especially in the ecological sphere.”
The Tourism Panel on Climate Change has just published my paper on Tourism in a Finite, Climate Challenged World. We face a poly-crisis; we also know how to fix many (most?) of the problems we face. We need to stop procrastinating and pursuing business as usual and step up to take responsibility to make the changes essential to our children’s and grandchildren’s futures.
‘Tourism and The Doughnut Economy’ by Harold Goodwin
TOURISM IN A FINITE, CLIMATE-CHALLENGED WORLD
Travel & tourism — and humanity — is faced with perhaps its greatest challenge: the existential threat of climate change. The travel & tourism industry contributes to climate change via its GHG emissions, and is adversely affected by the extreme weather events that are the products of climate change. The sector now has to both mitigate and adapt.
Part I of this Horizon Paper paper reminds us that Earth is finite; that there are limits to growth; that climate change is an existential threat; and that denial is dangerous.
Part II addresses the problem of defining terms such as ‘sustainability’ and ‘climate resilience’ in the context of interlocking crises.
Part III examines limits to growth and planetary impacts, focusing on Kate Raworth’s ‘doughnut economics’, or seven ways of rethinking economics for the 21st century.
Part IV considers the implications for travel & tourism of inadequate action in an emerging new climate-constrained world.
Responsibility is being taken, progress is being made
Mark Jones posted in early January, “Things can only get better”, and warned, “Pessimistic readers may want to look away now.” Mark points to the work of Hans Rosling, who, in Factfulness, reminded us that “health, but income inequality, child mortality, population growth, education, violence, crime and conflict and dozens of other topics” are better than they were.
You can test whether you are overly pessimistic on a wide range of sustainability and other issues here.
Every year in the Responsible Tourism Awards, we hear from those who have taken responsibility in businesses and destinations and have proven examples of how tourism can be made more sustainable. These are just a few of those that have crossed my desk In the last couple of weeks.
We know what the sustainability challenges are. We have the Sustainable Hospitality Alliance and WTTC, amongst others, calling for positive impact tourism.
We know what needs to be done. Many more businesses and destinations need to take responsibility and make a difference. We need to follow the leaders.
The Global Travel Hall of Fame now has a Sustainability category …
In November 2023 Harold was listed in the Global Hall of Fame Academy as the Founder of the Responsible Tourism Movement. 2023 was the first year that Sustainability Awards have been presented. Harold was recognized alongside Inge Huijbrechts who collected the Award on behalf of the Radisson Hotel Group.
Unbeknown to me Vicky Smith, of Earth Changers, nominated me for the individual lifetime contribution. I was gobsmacked to hear that I had been entered and stunned to discover that I had been selected to be inducted.
"Judges from industry-leading entities Jacobs Media Group, the World Travel & Tourism Council and The Travel Corporation recognised that to receive this award at Hall of Fame, the winner needed to do more as a contribution to tourism than just doing a good job within your business. The judges were looking for truly exemplary people who had done something to change the course of our industry for the better.
Harold has been deemed to have done just that and deserves to be recognised for his phenomenal achievements amongst the industry’s leading lights. We are confident that his continued efforts will inspire others to strive for excellence and inspire the next generation of travel leaders for the global travel industry to follow in his footsteps."
I am grateful to Fiona Jeffery, who had the presence of mind to record this video on my mobile phone and I thank her for it. View VIDEO
LISTEN TO ANNA: We cannot waste any more time- we must act now to leave our world fit for future generations - for our children.
Glenn Mandziuk, CEO, & Claire Whitely, Head of Environment at the Sustainable Hospitality Alliance (SHA), were amongst the first to sign the 2022 Responsible Tourism Charter, which updated the Cape Town Declaration adopted in 2002. In two decades, we have learnt a great deal about how responsible businesses can benefit themselves and their neighbours in destinations by adopting sustainable practices.
I was at their Mainstreaming Net Positive Hospitality Summit last week, where I heard Anna Dacam, Environment Programme Manager at the Sustainable Hospitality Alliance, speak for the first time.
Listen to Anna and spread the word.
The SHA has donor members and partners representing globally 50,000 hotels, 7 million rooms, more than 270 brands and more than 40 supply chain and strategic partners Back in July I wrote here about the Sustainable Hospitality Alliance’s hospitality benchmarking framework tool. Developed with EY the tool will track and compare sustainability progress across each ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) topic within the Hospitality sector. This is a significant part of their Pathway to Net Positive Hospitality programme, “a practical, four-stage guidance framework as a free resource that supports all parts of the hospitality value chain to progress in a cohesive, strategic manner. It includes detailed action guidance for hotel operators, brands and asset owners, applicable to both single or multi-unit organisations.” As a UK-registered charity, they make resources freely available on their Pathway to Net Positive Hospitality website.
In conversation with Glenn Mandziuk about SHA and Net Positive Hospitality
