“The European Ecotourism Conference brings together great experts and speakers on different aspects of ecotourism, including certification, web-marketing, climate change, innovative product development and green travel,” commented Aivar Ruukel, representing the Estonian Ecotourism Association, one of the event organisers, along with The International Ecotourism Society and the Pärnu Convention Bureau, with support from the Estonian Tourist Board, Estonian University of Life Sciences and Estonian Ecotourism Cluster.

“While there will be great presentations to listen to,” continued Ruukel, “the conference will also give EVERY participant a voice to give voice to his/her hottest topic and discuss it with like-minded colleagues through Open Space and World Cafe workshops.”

Following two days of pre-conference ecotourism experiences, discussions over two days will cover multiple themes from the global perspective on ecotourism in Europe and green travel marketing to biodiversity conservation, community-based initiatives, certification programs and new communications innovations that help spread the word. Considerable time has been made available for open-forum discussions during which all participants are free to interact.

WHL Group Represented

The WHL Group will be represented, among others, by Luke H. Ford, CEO of Gunyah, who is also on the event’s advisory committee. Ford will speak on Tuesday 28 September at 2:30pm about the momentum growing behind the notion of local travel, as exemplified by WHL Group companies and the Local Travel Movement.

“We as a group have realised that a traveller’s experience (for the most part) isn’t just about the bed he or she is booking; it’s all about the things around the hotel – the meals, the transport, the conversations with the locals, the chance to experience everyday life as it should be in the destination, the local travel experience,” shared Ford. “We are bringing the responsible and local tourism concept to the mass market.”

A Wide Circle of Participation

Other presentations by WHL Group friends and partners include “How to Market to Green Traveller?” by Richard Hammond, the “Parks Tourism Model as a tool to protect Europe’s Wilderness” by a representative from the PAN Parks Foundation and “How to integrate Web 2.0 tools in promoting Ecotourism” by Ron Mader of Planeta.com, who has issued a call for photos of ecotourism and responsible travel in Europe.

“We would like to see photos of national parks, city parks, recycling, environmental education, good signage, local wildlife and quality guiding in Europe,” said Ron Mader. “Ecotourism Europe is a great ‘show and tell’ that connects visitors and locals.”

For anyone unable to attend, but interested in both the topic and what will be shared at the conference, there are several online platforms for discussions, images and reactions. These include LinkedIn, Flickr, YouTube and Facebook.

In addition, in anticipation of the conference, a free Ecotourism in Europe webinar has been planned for Thursday 23 September from 1-2pm GMT with Ruukel as lead speaker and other guests including Zoltan Kun (Executive Director of PAN Parks) and Ben Colclough (Co-founder of Tourdust.com).

“For me the success of conference can be only measured by the satisfaction of participants,” concluded Ruukel. “I hope that the methods that we chose and the way we have organised this event will help to achieve it.”

Seated around the virtual table were:

MODERATORS
* Sally Broom, CEO of Your Safe Planet & Fringe Network
* Stephen Chapman, Founder of Make Travel Fair

SPEAKERS
* Tom Hall, Travel Editor at Lonely Planet Publications
* Dan Linstead, Editor of Wanderlust magazine
* Alan Murphy, Commissioning Editor and Publisher, Footprint Travel Guides
* Adrian Phillips, Publishing Director at Bradt Travel Guides.

Biographical material about the moderators and speakers can be found below.

During the 60-minute session, Tom Hall and Adrian Phillips made brief presentations about what is (and is not) being done to give readers what they need to travel as responsibly as possible. A question-and-answer period followed, and included the participation of Toby Sawday from Sawday Publishing.

For details, consult:

* a written account of all that was said by Tom Hall of Lonely Planet
* a written account all that was said by Adrian Phillips of Bradt Travel Guides
* written questions and answers compiled from the webinar chat room
* the full recording of the webinar with voice conflicts that were not present during the live session
* the full chat transcript

More Information

This responsible tourism webinar series, hosted by whl.travel, was launched on 4 June with a discussion of some of the thoughts and ideas propounded during Responsible Tourism Week 2009 – an online discussion held the week of 18-22 May that focussed on responsible tourism around the world. The primary objective of the webinar series is to demonstrate the universal appeal of responsible tourism to a broad range of constituencies in all sectors.

To listen to the proceedings of the completed 4 June webinar, check out the full recording, chat transcript and written summary, as well as additional commentary.

For more information, contact:
* Shaun Gilchrist, Chief Operations Officer, whl.travel, +61 431 020 173; shaun@whl.travel
* Ethan Gelber, Media Liaison, whl.travel, ethan@whl.travel

—–

MODERATORS

SALLY BROOM – CEO, Your Safe Planet & Fringe Network
Sally Broom is founder of the unique travel website YourSafePlanet.com, the global network of trusted local experts. YSP connects travellers with experts at the grassroots who advise on trip planning using their up-to-date local knowledge. The goal of YSP is support slower and more rewarding travel.

‘Fringe’ network was a name given by media to a group of grassroots tourism organisations and individuals who feel that there is an opportunity to collaborate with more people on the important issues around local tourism, sustainable travel etc. What started as nothing more than a few drinks between friends around WTM has developed into a global network of hundreds of members. Their simple aims are to bring attention and energy to grassroots projects and, through collaboration, facilitate more local/sustainable travel.

STEPHEN CHAPMAN – Founder, Make Travel Fair
Stephen Chapman has travelled extensively and spent time living in both Australia and USA. After graduating from Edinburgh University in 2005 he spent a short period working offshore as a geologist in the oil & gas industry before changing direction completely to follow his passion for travel and established Make Travel Fair. The website won a TravelMole Web Award in its first year for ‘Best Online Education Site’, and more recently he was selected as ‘One-to-Watch’ in Travel & Leisure as part of The Courvoisier Future 500. This year he began working as part of the whl.travel team.

SPEAKERS

TOM HALL – Travel Editor, Lonely Planet Publications
Tom Hall is a travel journalist based at Lonely Planet’s London office. He is the writer of the weekly Ask Tom feature in the Observer newspaper and appears regularly on radio and television. While Tom’s favourite destinations are all in Africa, he’s always banging on about how great holidaying in Britain is.

DAN LINSTEAD – Editor, Wanderlust magazine
Cambridge graduate Dan Linstead joined John Brown Publishing in 2000 as the editor of Orange’s pioneering lifestyle magazine, O. In five years of customer publishing, he wrote, edited and commissioned a range of travel, celebrity and general lifestyle features for companies including Waitrose, the AA, Honda and Ikea – and won a British Society of Magazine Editors award for O magazine. In 2005, he relaunched and edited bmi’s inflight magazine, Voyager, for Redwood Publishing. In 2006, he was appointed editor of Wanderlust, the UK’s leading magazine for adventurous travellers.

ALAN MURPHY – Commissioning Editor and Publisher, Footprint Travel Guides
Following a stint as a copy editor and writer for the Bolivian Times, Alan Murphy began his Footprint career as an updater for the legendary South American Handbook, before being commissioned to research and write their new guidebooks to Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela. He then returned to his native Scotland to write new guides to Scotland, Highlands & Islands, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Now, though, poacher has turned gamekeeper and Alan is commissioning editor and publisher for Footprint Handbooks.

ADRIAN PHILLIPS – Publishing Director, Bradt Travel Guides
Adrian Phillips has written several guidebooks – including Hungary: The Bradt Travel Guide, which won Best Guidebook of the Year in 2006 – and contributes regular travel articles to national newspapers and magazines. He is one of the judges of the Bradt/Independent on Sunday Travel-Writing Competition and a tutor on the panel at Bradt’s annual travel-writing seminar.

On Thursday 4 June, four leading global advocates of responsible tourism spoke and listened at a free public webinar (Web-based seminar) about the present and future of their fast-expanding industry. It was the first in a series of regular online gatherings that will tackle the crosscutting issues and universal appeal of responsible tourism as it applies to a broad range of constituencies in all sectors. Beginning at the next session, local advocates and practitioners of travel and tourism who share a belief in a responsible way forward will be invited to share their thoughts and respond to listener questions.

Cosponsored by Your Safe Planet, Make Travel Fair and whl.travel, with the vital participation of Planeta, the webinar series was initiated to capture and add energy to the momentum from Responsible Tourism Week 2009 – an online discussion launched by Planeta and held the week of May 18-22 that focussed on responsible tourism around the world.

Featured Speakers

At this first webinar, Ron Mader, Founder of Planeta, dicussed how social media can engage the global community in responsible tourism, especially communications tools like Twitter.

Len Cordiner, CEO of whl.travel, looked at how we should to change our approach to responsible tourism. He voiced particular concern that responsible tourism is basically the industry talking to itself, that that main stakeholders – people like travellers and even accommodation/tour providers themselves – have been left out of the equation.

Valere Tjolle, Editor of VISON on Sustainable Tourism examined what else should change, in particular the need to have a political background to tourism and the sustainability agenda. “It’s not about telling travellers how good we are,” he said, “it’s about telling travellers what we can do for them and I think that’s where we’ve missed a trick sometimes in responsible tourism.”

Lessons Learned

All in all, as identified by Mader, “One of the common threads in the discussion was the disconnect between top-down and bottom-up strategies. … This type of silo thinking is a primary obstacle for engaging the travellers and locals. My question – are there ways to connect the dots, bring the ‘experts’ and the ‘clients’ together? … Most donors, academics, officials don’t want to participate in public events. Reflecting on this, it seems to be a matter of control. The experts don’t want to give it up! But if we manage to view responsible tourism in a more holistic manner, then giving up control generates strength. It’s a matter of looking at one another at team players, not as competitors.”

Stephen Chapman, Founder of Make Travel Fair, agreed: “The desire to retain control of a movement and knowledge is a real inhibitor to any sort of progress. This is why diverse groups coming together through these webinars, beginning to exchange ideas and thinking is so crucial.”

Next Session

Doing just what it should – using new media to reach out to new stakeholders and new markets – the webinar series next brings together speakers from Wanderlust magazine, Lonely Planet and Bradt Guides to discuss responsible tourism in publishing. Scheduled for 18 June at 1pm GMT, please register to join us at the next session.

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To listen to and share the proceedings of the completed webinar, a full recording, a chat transcript and written summary are all available online.

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After your listen, please share with us:

•    your thoughts (constructive and deconstructuve)

•    the topics/themes you would like us to address in coming sessions

•    the names and/or qualifications of guest presenters you would like us to invite to coming sessions.

.

The hosting sextet began discussing and illustrating some of the thoughts and ideas propounded during Responsible Tourism Week 2009 – an online discussion held the week of May 18-22 that focussed on responsible tourism around the world. Using examples pulled from their extensive store of experiences or promoted through their organisations, the speakers’ primary objective was to demonstrate the universal appeal of responsible tourism to a broad range of constituencies in all sectors.

If you wish to listen to and then share the proceedings of this completed webinar, a full recording, a chat transcript and written summary are all available online.

After your listen, please share with us:

• your thoughts (constructive and deconstructuve) about this first webinar
• the topics/themes you would like us to address in coming sessions
• the names and/or kinds of qualifications of guest presenters you would like us to invite to coming sessions.

We hope to see you at our next webinar: 1pm GMT on 18 June. Mark it in your calendars and share the news with others.

The six featured presenters on 4 June were:

HOSTS
* Sally Broom, CEO of Your Safe Planet & Fringe Network
* Stephen Chapman, Founder of Make Travel Fair

SPEAKERS
* Len Cordiner, CEO of whl.travel
* Ron Mader, Founder of Planeta
* Kenrick Theus, Director of the International Centre for Responsible Tourism-Belize
* Valere Tjolle, Editor of Vision on Sustainable Tourism for TravelMole.

Brief biographies of the speakers can be found below.

For more information, contact:
* Shaun Gilchrist, Chief Operations Officer, whl.travel, +61 431 020 173; shaun@whl.travel
* Ethan Gelber, Media Liaison, whl.travel, ethan@whl.travel

—–

SALLY BROOM – CEO, Your Safe Planet & Fringe Network
Sally Broom is founder of the unique travel website YourSafePlanet.com, the global network of trusted local experts. YSP connects travellers with experts at the grassroots who advise on trip planning using their up-to-date local knowledge. The goal of YSP is support slower and more rewarding travel.

‘Fringe’ network was a name given by media to a group of grassroots tourism organisations and individuals who feel that there is an opportunity to collaborate with more people on the important issues around local tourism, sustainable travel etc. What started as nothing more than a few drinks between friends around WTM has developed into a global network of hundreds of members. Their simple aims are to bring attention and energy to grassroots projects and, through collaboration, facilitate more local/sustainable travel.

STEPHEN CHAPMAN – Founder, Make Travel Fair
Stephen Chapman has travelled extensively and spent time living in both Australia and USA. After graduating from Edinburgh University in 2005 he spent a short period working offshore as a geologist in the oil & gas industry before changing direction completely to follow his passion for travel and established Make Travel Fair. The website won a TravelMole Web Award in its first year for ‘Best Online Education Site’, and more recently he was selected as ‘One-to-Watch’ in Travel & Leisure as part of The Courvoisier Future 500. This year he began working as part of the whl.travel team.

LEN CORDINER – CEO of whl.travel
In incubating and running numerous companies over 35 years in Asia, Africa, Europe, North America and Oceania, Len Cordiner has developed a passion for win-win outcomes. He was active early in the move to triple-bottom-line reporting and the development of certification programmes for the environment and sustainable travel. More recently, he has made harnessing the power of the Internet and new communications tools central to his mission to change paradigms in travel, making it more accessible to all. In this vein, founding whl.travel is Len’s latest and most ambitious global business initiative.

whl.travel is a global grassroots network of travel websites catering to independent travelers journeying off the beaten track and tired of the limited travel options offered by most online service providers. whl.travel emphasises responsible travel and keeping things local by focusing on smaller hotels, guesthouses and tour operators, particularly, but not exclusively, in developing countries where it can really make a difference. As of late May, whl.travel spans 170 destinations in 76 countries, with further expansion into more than 100 destinations (including 23 new countries) in the next six months.

RON MADER – Founder, Planeta
Ron Mader is a professional journalist and the founder of Planeta.com, the web’s first site dedicated to ecotourism. Ron’s work catalyzes action and conservation about environmental conservation, responsible travel and peacemaking. Ron’s work includes facilitating online and natural-world seminars and workshops, the most popular of which is the Web Seminar that shows professionals how to make effective use of Planeta.com and improve their own web presence.

Planeta.com has won many awards, including recognition from the Mexican government for exemplary coverage of Mexico. Presidents Fox and Zedillo presented Ron with the Lente de Plata Award in 1999 and 2002. Outside magazine called Planeta.com, the virtual vanguard. Ron is also the ecotourism and Latin America contributing editor for the U.S. magazine Transitions Abroad.

KENRICK THEUS – Director, International Centre for Responsible Tourism-Belize
Kenrick Theus, a native of Belize, has worked in the hospitality industry for the past 18 years as an operations manager, chef, food and beverage manager, general manager and trainer. He is presently employed as the Food and Beverage Management Lecturer at the University of Belize for the Bachelor Degree Students. In April 2008, he joined Mr. Yashin Dujon, Technical Officer in the Ministry of Tourism in Belize, and started the International Centre for Responsible Tourism-Belize (ICRT-Belize). They are both presently working at getting International certification bodies for hotels into the country such as Green Globe and Green Deal by the end of 2009. Mr. Theus has been President of the Belize Hotel Association since 2007 and currently serves as a Director on the   Board of Directors of the Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association.

VALERE TJOLLE – Editor, Vision on Sustainable Tourism, TravelMole
TravelMole is the most highly acclaimed and largest global online community for the travel and tourism industry with over 450,000 registered newswire subscribers – travel and tourism professionals worldwide.