ECOCLUB, Issue 92
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addressing the mainstream operators, we have to address the mainstream industry and we have to be able to quantify the impacts
of different kinds of tourism in practise. For example I do not think that all-inclusives are inherently worse than non-all-
inclusives. Circumstances alter cases. What matters are the net impacts- positive less negatives - of particular forms of tourism
in practise in particular places. One of the key challenges is to be able to quantify and report the results of different initiatives.
We need to move on from the theoretical to the empirical and we need to challenge the mainstream industry to perform better.
As someone who has been closely involved with responsible tourism from its birth as a term, what do you consider
milestones in its short history?
Responsible Tourism originated in the work of Joist Krippendorf in Switzerland, Auliana Poon and others developed and
applied it in the South African White Paper on tourism development post-apartheid in 1996. I worked with Dan Rees at VSO, he
is now with the Ethical Trade Initiative, and others in the nineties campaigning for change in the UK industry and in 2000 the
Association of Independent Tour Operators committed to RT. We did the technical assistance for the South African
government’s guidelines for practice in 2001 and these became the sector planning guidelines for South Africa in 2002. In the
same year we held the Cape Town International Conference on Responsible Tourism in Destinations as a side event to the
World Summit on Sustainable Development and agreed the Cape Town Declaration. This remains the best most inclusive
definition of RT, one which respects the diversity of the world’s cultural and natural heritage and the diverse responsible efforts
which are made to maintain it. In 2003 we launched the annual Responsible Tourism Awards sponsored by First Choice and
now by Virgin Holidays. The next stage is the 5 year review in Kerala in March 2008 and the launching of a web forum to
encourage whistle blowing and debate about irresponsibility.
Whose responsibility, whose ethics? Is it an accident that responsible tourism was born in the UK? Are perhaps
current UK/ 'western' / 'free-market' / 'social-democratic' ethics, rather than - say - 'Venezuelan' ethics or 'World Social
Forum' ethics -driving the responsible tourism agenda? Or by holding the Second International Conference on
Responsible Tourism in Destinations in 2008 in the south Indian state of Kerala, a state famously ruled by Marxist
governments for most of the past 50 years, you wish to prove the opposite? In the end, is responsible tourism an
apolitical industry sector, or some sort of a loose social movement? Which of the two would be more effective?
Responsible tourism was not born in the UK, its antecedent’s are in Switzerland and South Africa. It worked in the UK because
we campaigned and pushed over a prolonged period. In the UK it is primarily market driven, so is action on climate change. The
UK like other tourist originating countries is unable to regulate what happens in other people’s destinations – and nor should it
be. There is also a case for government action at local level to regulate tourism impacts and much of my more recent work has
been addressing that agenda. Unfortunately governments are reluctant.
Some sceptics argue, perhaps a victim of its own success, the agents of responsible tourism reform, i.e. the average
tourist, does not have either the time or the will to feel accountable to the poor, the disenfranchised, the oppressed,
during their 'sacred' 'hard-earned' holidays, or to comprehend local sensitivities. They mainly choose a responsible
holiday on the grounds of price, novelty and exoticism, of being trendy and perhaps being compatible with shallow,
mainstream political correctness back home, or for some work-related or egoistic motive, such as adding a catchy
paragraph in a CV. Is this constructive scepticism that points that a lot more needs to be done to win the minds and souls
of responsible travellers, or is it destructive, utopic cynicism, as there can only be a few considerate tourists, and
businesses can not live on those?
This is an impossible question to answer briefly and it is an area where we need much more research, but it is expensive
research. We know that a growing proportion of the population aspires to have a holiday with responsible elements up from
47% in 1999 to 52% in 2001, same survey same question, same polling company. There is an aspirational trend, increasing
numbers of people have the aspiration – if price and other elements are broadly comparable they’ll choose the more responsible
option. Why is a more complex question – wanting a guilt free more satisfying, more real experience. Most people want to feel
better about themselves and to feel that they’ve done good, or at least done no harm. It is that human spirit that responsible
tourism appeals to – and I think it will continue to appeal. This is not fashion it is a clear consumer trend. Travel and tourism
companies will ignore it at their peril.
Finally, how satisfied are you with the progress of responsible tourism around the world thus far? How responsible is
responsible tourism today? And can a responsible tourism business really be ethical and profitable at the same time?
I am not satisfied. There is a long way to go, but we have made considerable progress, and the ICRT and others are creating
more and more activist professionals all the time. When we did training for AITO on RT in 2001 one of the directors of a
company who turned up said that he’d come along because the best applicant at a recent interview had asked about their RT
policy – he now wanted one. There are many responsible and profitable businesses – RT is one of the ways of avoiding
competing only on price, it can be a route to profitability. Responsible Tourism has many of the characteristics of a broad and
diverse social movement.
ECOCLUB: Thank you very much
