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WTM London means responsible tourism
RESPONSIBLE TOURISM
Harold Goodwin, WTM Responsible Tourism Advisor, charts the growth of the responsible tourism movement and the role WTM has played as a platform for driving its agenda to the global travel industry WTM means responsible tourism
RESPONSIBLE TOURISM
WTM hosts the world’s largest responsible tourism event at WTM London each year. Its ambition is to inspire, educate and challenge the industry to take responsibility and to use tourism to make better places for people to live. Great places to live are also great places to visit.
Way back in 1994 at the launch of the World Travel and Tourism Council’s (WTTC’s) Tourism for Tomorrow Awards, Lord Colin Marshall, then chair of British Airways, pointed out that the industry needed to be concerned for the destinations it sold.
“These ‘products’ must be kept fresh and unsullied, not just for the next day, but for every tomorrow,” he said.
His concern was prescient. Had more attention been paid to sustainability then, the problems of over-tourism, now often on the agenda at WTM, may not have emerged as widely as they have.
The case for responsible tourism is a business case; it is about how to do better business.
We have occasionally addressed philanthropy, but that is not what responsible tourism is about. Harold Goodwin, WTM Responsible Tourism Advisor
ENVIRONMENT DAY Eight years before WTM was launched, in 1972, the first United Nations Conference on the Human Environment was staged and focused on the challenge of preserving and enhancing our environment.
In 1992, the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, recognised that development mattered too. There were further conferences in Johannesburg in 2002 and in Rio in 2012.
The Brundtland Report, Our Common Future, was published by the United Nations in 1987 and defined sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.
This is an extremely difficult definition to operationalise. It is aspirational, but quickly rendered meaningless if resources, or our ability to make more with less through modern science and technology, are regarded as infinite.
RESPONSIBLE TOURISM
The concept was weakened through misuse and became all but meaningless, with businesses often using it to indicate little more than they would still be in business next year. The tourism sector was slow to respond to the challenge of sustainability and the UNWTO’s Agenda 21 for the Travel and Tourism Industry, which outlined a programme of action for the sector, was not published until 1997.
In the 1980s and 1990s, tourism was widely seen as a good thing – a pollution-free industry that could benefit local people and the environment. There was much discussion concerning the eco-tourism niche, with little attention paid to the mainstream operators, transport and accommodation providers.
The United Nations declared 2002 the 'International Year of Ecotourism' and the World Tourism Organisation commissioned a series of market reports relating to it. Those studies found little evidence of demand and the product proved elusive. Former WTM Chair, Fiona Jeffery, launched the Environment Day at the Lon-
don show in 1994, spearheading discussion and debate about tourism’s positive and negative impacts on environments around the world.
Fiona introduced the event long before the mainstream industry was engaged and her initiative contributed significantly to raising awareness of the fact that sustainability could not be pigeon-holed in the eco-tourism sub-sector. She also founded the international water-aid charity, Just a Drop, in 1998 on behalf of the travel industry and over the past 21 years its projects have benefitted 1.5 million people in 32 countries.
A BROADER AGENDA At the turn of the century, with the launch of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the sustainable development agenda broadened and became more focused on local economic development and poverty reduction, gender equality and environmental sustainability.
In the UK, the government’s Sustainable Tourism Initiative resulted in the launch
of the Travel Foundation, a charity that works in partnership with businesses and governments so that tourism brings greater benefits to people and the environment. It engaged mainstream travel heavyweights such as First Choice, TUI and Thomas Cook.
In 2004, the Prince of Wales’s International Business Leaders Forum launched the International Tourism Partnership, which brought together the world’s leading hotel brands to drive positive action across a broad agenda, from environmental sustainability to human rights.
In 2015, the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals were set out and tourism has the potential to contribute significantly, directly or indirectly to all of these objectives. There are targets for the contribution of tourism outlined in Goals 8, 12 and 14 based on decent work and economic growth, responsible consumption and production and life below water.
WHY RESPONSIBLE TOURISM? The idea was not new. In the 1980s, Swiss
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The aviation sector is making slow progress with carbon emission reductions
About Harold Goodwin
As WTM’s Responsible Tourism Advisor, Harold Goodwin orchestrates the flagship Responsible Tourism programme at WTM London, which attracts 2,000 participants annually, as well as editions at WTM Africa, WTM Latin America and Arabian Travel Market. Harold has also chaired the panel of judges of the WTM World Responsible Tourism Awards since they were launched in 2004 and chairs the judging panels for other awards in the World Responsible Tourism Awards family in Africa and India. Harold is Managing Director of the Responsible Tourism Partnership, working with the travel industry, local communities, governments and conservationists and undertakes consultancy and evaluations for companies, NGOs, governments, and international organisations. He is also Director of Responsible Tourism at the Institute of Place Management at Manchester Metropolitan University, where he is an Emeritus Professor, as well as the Founder Director of the International Centre for Responsible Tourism, which promotes the principles of the 2002 Cape Town Declaration that he drafted.
Simon Press: Responsible tourism should be the backbone of the industry
From left: Gold and Silver winners, World Responsible Tourism Awards 2018
The industry flocked to the first WRTD in 2007
academic Jost Krippendorf, who is considered the founding father of sustainable tourism, realised that in the future, tourists would seek travel experiences and, in terms of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, self-actualisation and fulfilment.
In his ground-breaking book, The Holiday Maker, published in 1987, he explained that every “individual tourist builds up or destroys human values while travelling. Orders and prohibitions will not do the job – because it is not a bad conscience that we need to make progress, but positive experience, not the feeling of compulsion, but that of responsibility”.
In the mid-1990s the UK NGO Voluntary Service Overseas surveyed its volunteers abroad, asking them what they believed was the biggest issue facing the communities they worked with.
It was tourism, so VSO launched an ethical tourism campaign and funded research with the Association of Independent Tour Operators (AITO).
There were two main findings. Firstly, that
many members of AITO were doing good in the destinations they visited, but not talking about it, and secondly, that the word ‘ethical’ was not going to work. Being “ethical”, it concluded, was too broad a claim.
The AITO members were identifying how they could contribute to making better places for people to live in and implementing initiatives to make those changes.
They were recognising needs and taking responsibility to meet and address them.
The activist travel company, Responsible Travel, was launched around the same time, providing a platform, a market and a modern ‘Fish Street’ where consumers could go to buy a responsible travel experience. In post-apartheid South Africa, a new tourism strategy was published in 1996, which adopted the concept of responsible tourism for the destination.
Work on the implementation guidelines in South Africa, and for the UK’s Department for International Development on tourism and poverty reduction, soon followed.
These strands came together and pro
RESPONSIBLE TOURISM
About the 2002 Cape Town declaration
Minimises negative economic, environmental and social impacts;
Generates greater economic benefits for local people, enhances the wellbeing of host communities and improves working conditions and access to the industry;
Involves local people in decisions that affect their lives and life chances;
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Makes positive contributions to the conservation of natural and cultural heritage embracing diversity;
Provides more enjoyable experiences for tourists through meaningful connections with local people, and a greater understanding of local cultural, social and environmental issues;
Provides access for physically challenged people;
Is culturally sensitive, encourages respect between tourists and hosts, and builds local pride and confidence.
vided an opportunity, alongside the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002, to hold the 1st International Conference on Responsible Tourism in Destinations involving 280 delegates from 20 countries, including several UN organisations.
It was here that the landmark Cape Town Declaration on Responsible Tourism was agreed, setting out goals for minimising the negative economic, environment and social impact of tourism globally.
Responsible tourism minimises negative impacts; generates greater economic benefits for local people; empowers and enhances the wellbeing of host communities; improves working conditions and access to the industry; makes a contribution to the conservation of natural and cultural heritage; provides more enjoyable experiences for tourists through more meaningful connections with local people; provides access for all; and is culturally sensitive, engendering respect between tourists and hosts, and builds local pride and confidence.
The Cape Town Declaration definition was adopted by WTM when it launched the World Responsible Tourism Day (WRTD) in 2007, supported by the UNWTO.
The ambition then, as is it now, was to help drive the responsible tourism agenda forward and deliver change.
WTM also hosted the first UNWTO Ministers’ Summit on Tourism and Climate Change in 2007.
The first WRTD panel discussion ad
dressed' Poverty Reduction – Mainstream Concern or Token Gestures', which involved Eugenio Yunis of the UNWTO committee on Tourism Ethics and since then, the conference programme has garnered the support of major travel and tourism entities from around the world.
In 2008, former Marriott Hotels President Ed Fuller was in the ‘Hot Seat’, followed by Adam Stewart, CEO of Sandals Resorts International, the following year.
Both were interviewed by BBC broadcaster Stephen Sackur who is also a patron of Just a Drop.
THE WORLD RESPONSIBLE TOURISM AWARDS British Airways’ Tourism for Tomorrow Awards started out as environmental awards, but at the turn of this century, they began to identify projects that benefited the local community, protected the natural and cultural heritage, controlled energy and water use, educated local people and visitors and contributed towards a better life in the future.
When the airline ran into difficulties in 2004, it could no longer fund the venture, so Justin Francis, the CEO and co-founder of Responsible Travel, seized the opportunity to launch the Responsible Tourism Awards at World Responsible Tourism Day. He subsequently handed the baton to WTM in 2017 and the show is now responsible for organising the awards programme, applying the same processes
Over-tourism is an ongoing issue
and standards each year, but judged by a new panel or experts, business professionals and academics, led by me in my role as WTM’s Responsible Tourism Advisor. Award programmes also run at Reed shows in Africa, India and Latin America and feature a wide range of winners, from major tour operators, airlines and large hotel groups to homestays and conservation initiatives. We are looking for trailblazers – those who are moving beyond ‘business as usual’ – to make this a better world in which to live. Every year we publish the explanation behind the judges’ decisions in order to educate, inspire and challenge others to do more. The awards are competitive and respected.
THE PROGRAMME CONTINUES TO GROW In 2010, Simon Press arrived as WTM’s Senior Exhibition Director and the responsible tourism programme flourished. It was expanded to include additional shows
across its portfolio including WTM Africa, WTM Latin America and Arabian Travel Market. By 2011, WTM was declaring the ‘Age of Responsible Tourism’ and there were 16 sessions on the conference schedule. One of them raised the issue of child protection and WRTD broadened its programme to include this topic.
Child protection has been on the agenda at every WTM in London since and it is one of the areas where we have driven change. By 2013, close to 2,000 delegates were attending the WRTD sessions and we looked to extend the programme year round.
This has now been achieved with weekly blogs posted and a programme rolled-out at all WTM shows.
In 2014, the responsible tourism sessions spanned all four days of the show.
That same year, the WTM Industry Report found that 60% of travel trade professionals believed that the number of responsible
tourism initiatives would increase over the next three years and 90% said it was now important to their business.
In 2015, we linked the programme to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and in 2016, we reflected on our progress during the first 10 years of responsible tourism at World Travel Market.
Speaking at the event, Simon Press remarked that “responsible tourism should be the backbone of the industry”.
More recently we have addressed overtourism, a consequence of the failure to address sustainability over many years.
We have also moved the panels onto the show floor, which has attracted new participants to the event.
In 2019, we are focusing on solutions, bringing on board a wide range of speakers with practical experience of implementing responsible practices that are making a difference.
RESPONSIBLE TOURISM
About WTM World Responsible Tourism Day
There is only one World Responsible Tourism Day (WRTD) and it is marked on the final day of World Travel Market London. With support from the UNWTO, WTM World Responsible Tourism Day wants the travel industry to work together to:
Help drive change by educating more responsible behaviour amongst the travel and tourism industry and travelling public;
Explore the issues of how countries and destinations are made more sustainable including case studies of best practices;
Educate the marketplace and debate key environmental related issues to push the agenda and be a catalyst for change;
Harness the influence of World Travel Market as an international business forum to encourage the industry to drive the responsible tourism agenda forward.
THE PROGRESS – AND THE FUTURE As Responsible Travel's Justin Francis said in 2016: “We have moved from no one knowing what responsible tourism was, to people saying they can’t do anything about it, to people asking me to tell them what to do, to now people saying, ‘let me show you what we do’.”
Jane Ashton, Director of Sustainability at TUI, has also commented: “We have been hesitant because we were worried about greenwash, and now perhaps we are risking so-called ‘green hush’ and not talking about it enough.”
WRTD will continue to reveal and promote good practice through the programme and its renowned awards programme. But what of our future?
The 1972 UN conference focused on the Human Environment – our environment, the one we depend on for our very survival. Tragically, the idea that our survival as a species depends on the maintenance of a healthy environment and species diversity
still struggles to become mainstream.
The language moves on, and we now hear about ecology and ecosystem services, James Lovelock’s Gaia principle and biodiversity. Awareness is slowly growing of the fact that we live on a finite planet, earth, and that there are limits to growth. The WTTC reports that the travel and tourism sector is now 10.4% of all global economic activity and that it grew at 3.9% per annum in 2018.
For the eighth consecutive year, the sector grew faster than world GDP, but with growth comes challenges.
Take aviation, for example, which is driving the expansion of the travel and tourism sector, but making slow progress to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.
At the heart of responsible tourism is the aspiration to use tourism to make better places for people to live in and to visit, and for businesses to be clear about what they are taking responsibility for, why, and about the impact they are having.
