…we might also be able to find a causal link for the failure of the responsible tourism industry

On October 15th, 2008, I had the pleasure of attending the keynote address at the first National Geographic/Ashoka Geotourism Challenge awards in Washington DC given by Sven Lindblad, president and founder of Lindblad Expeditions.

He kicked off his talk by making reference to an op-ed published in the Los Angeles Times of July 2nd 2006 entitled “If Only Gay Sex Caused Global Warming: Why we’re more scared of gay marriage and terrorism than a much deadlier threat”. The article was written by Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard University and the author of Stumbling on Happiness. The room full of attendees – mostly industry practitioners in sustainable development, academics, NGOs etc. – all found this a very amusing way to start the talk, but Sven was using it to make some very important points about the whole sustainable tourism movement to the sustainability practitioners.

The Los Angeles Times piece makes four key points

1. We humans look for enemies we can physically fight… for just about all big issues. We need a bad guy (we’re not so good at abstract enemies).
2. We need a good dose of moral outrage to get the blood boiling. We get this when we see people doing the wrong thing, like breaking taboos, but issues like global warming or the gradual destruction of tourism assets just don’t do it.
3. We are wired for imminent and present danger in our genes, but not for the maybe stuff of the future. We don’t even want to think too hard about whether our pensions are adequately funded.
4. If change comes very slowly, imperceptibly, we adapt. Maybe we shouldn’t be so ready to adapt (compare the traffic situation in Los Angeles today with that of 50 years ago for example), but we do.

It seems then that if we want to get the public (and politicians) interested and mobilised around the ‘future’ threat to tourism caused by degrading the tourism assets, we better try and nail it on some group we can identify readily so we can get swift action to shut them down. Otherwise the public ain’t gonna pay much attention.

The second point Sven made is the disastrous job of marketing ‘sustainability’ (or ‘responsible’ travel). Even allowing that Sven was unconvinced that the ‘future threat’ message was the right one to get the travelling public ‘mobilised’ in a serious way, he felt the chance of success with this message has been diluted immeasurably by the key actors not working together. Instead, the global travel industry, academics, industry bodies, NGOs etc. have all run off with their own small programs trying to brand their little corner. The result: the public is still mostly ignorant of the subject or totally confused. Mobilised, they are not.

My personal view is that the sustainable tourism practitioners should take some time out. Maybe go on holidays. Whilst they are doing this, (real) travel marketers should work with professional branding and marketing consultants (from outside the industry I think) to develop a whole new message for travellers; something like the slow food movement has been doing. You know, something along the lines of travelling to connect, smelling the roses, falling in love (again). Before you know it, we may just start getting travellers wanting to do this. It even sounds like it might be fun.

It’s generally well understood in the industry that what travellers want they will get, so by the time the sustainability crew are back from holidays, we will have travel service providers moving quickly down the (more sustainable) path we’d been aspiring to.

[This opinion piece is the second of a theme that began when Len Cordiner asked Has the Whole Ecotourism Industry Shot Itself in the Foot?]

Tags: Len Cordiner, opinion, responsible tourism, responsible travel, sustainable tourism

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 6th, 2009 at 11:16 am and is filed under opinion, responsible travel, responsible travel news.