Archive by Author

Tourism: a Time of Leadership or a Time For Leadership?

May 16, 2013 by xplorer 2 Comments

For as long as I have been working in tourism, I have heard its “leaders” (presumed by society to be the heads of global agencies or multinationals) complain of a lack of media attention and the failure of governments to take it seriously or to give its tourism ministers political clout.

Based on the spate of headlines since mid April, it looks as if that situation is changing – but whether that is for the better or for the worse depends very much on your point of view.

The first event to grab the headlines was WTTC’s 13th Annual Global Summit under an ironic theme “A Time For Leadership”. Ironic because that title implies leadership has been absent the past.  Ironic because WTTC’s claim to be “The Authority of World Travel and Tourism” suggests that it’s the group that must take responsibility for any previous leadership vacuums.

The BBC’s 6 minute, Fastrack program sensed as much and viewing it is worth the investment of your time. I can’t embed the video but click on this link and the image to view.

fastrack

The tone of Rajan Datar’s report cast doubt on the ambitious claims made by the leaders at the event that:

a.) “travel and tourism can be a catalyst for change – alleviating global poverty, inequality and even environmental damage” and

b.) that tourism’s continued “growth”  and sustainability are not mutually exclusive.

……..

overbooked

About five days later Tourism made headlines again with Simon and Schuster’s  release of Elisabeth Becker’s opus, Overbooked in which this eminent journalist and editor “discovers” that tourism isn’t quite the frivolous, fun preoccupation that only gets mention in the travel pages of most media but, instead,  a giant business sector, an industrial phenomenon and now the world’s largest employer.

While nowhere near as hard hitting as Leon Hickmans’s earlier analysis outlined in the The Last Call published in 2007, Ms. Becker’s account doesn’t shirk from identifying the environmental and socially destructive impacts of this industrial contributor to globalization. She makes the following conclusion which, as you can imagine, gave me some comfort and encouragement:

For the emerging middle class around the world, travel is a right of passage. Travel is the reward for hard work and proof that one has arrived. Yet with every right comes responsibility, and protecting the world’s beauties would seem obvious by demanding that the industry respect local culture, heritage and the environment.

Sadly, Ms. Becker’s  account of tourism’s dark side isn’t news to any of us – the members of the Facebook Group Irresponsible Tourism  and RTNetworking are doing a great job of highlighting our internal challenges that cannot be ignored. What I did find interesting was her perplexity around the fact that tourism as an industry is subject to so little scrutiny. She could see that governments like the revenue, the investment and support for infrastructure and its provision of jobs etc. but there seems either some collective shame associated with this source of benefit or some form of innate snobbery – as if the glitteratti see no need to know what goes on below decks or behind the swing doors to the kitchen.

Having read the book, I don’t feel Ms Becker ever gets to the bottom of that paradox. Is tourism the prodigal son that leaves home to make some remittance money for a family that would prefer not to delve into how that wealth was derived as they simply don’t want to stop the flow?

There’s no doubt now that tourism is associated with huge wealth creation – you don’t sneeze at $6.3 trillion – but,  as volume demand continues on a finite planet, and evidence mounts that this wealth doesn’t evenly benefit the 10% of the world’s labour force engaged in it, you’ll see more headlines like “Is Tourism the Most Destructive Enterprise?” or “Tourists Today: Trample Distrust and Destroy.”

is tourism destructive headline

tourism trample disrupt destroy

………………….

So – Is it a Time of Leadership or a Time For Leadership?

Answering this question addresses Becker’s initial query – why doesn’t tourism get the same attention as other sectors?

I believe tourism will get the attention it deserves when it wakes up, grows up and steps up. Right now its dominant form – the “mass industrial model” is operating like an adolescent resisting any need to take responsibility for the whole. There is a paucity of Leadership and vision from the top – a situation not peculiar to tourism. All you seem to hear is a request for more favours, more concessions while at the same time expounding how well tourism is bouncing back and – now – potentially capable of saving the global economy no less!

It is, on the other hand, a time FOR leadership – a time for hosts and host communities to ensure they attract the kind of tourism they want and that generates net benefit.  It will be a different kind of leadership – emerging from ordinary citizens, community by community as is being shown by all those individuals pushing the responsible, sustainable, fair agenda forward.

I most certainly am not anti tourism – conducted properly it can create a far greater value than has been realized to date. In fact, as has been shown throughout this web site; the issue is one of value and “wellth” generation. But I am disappointed with the self serving complacency, denial, arrogance and self-satisfaction of those who, despite all the resources at their disposal, continue to repeat hollow sounding platitudes and ignore the truth.

Every other aspect of human endeavour – healthcare, education, retailing, food and energy production, capitalism, economics and politics is going through a radical re-think. It’s time tourism recognized the time for partying is over and it must come to the family table with constructive ideas as to how to face the issues affecting the community as a whole. I think that might have been what Taleb Rifai, Secretary General of the UNWTO was alluding to when he said in the BBC clip “ the more they (countries) become conscious of their responsibility, the more they can perfect their investment in what is right and good”.

The real task then is to shift consciousness as in awareness, purpose and priorities. Without such a shift in mindset that determines what we value, then “tourism as usual” will grow in size and impact with diminishing to negative returns. That value shift will only take place community by community. It requires re-learning and that learning can best be done in community.

Our aim with Conscious Travel is to accelerate that process of helping tourism hosts become the conscious change agents needed to envision and create a better, higher value form of tourism that enriches host communities, delights guests and provides a decent, sustainable yield to hosts. That’s what we need to grow but it will take a very different approach to that extolled in Abu Dhabi.  Work is proceeding now on seeking allies and partners to develop and test the collaborative learning platform.

Footnote:
There are now over 75 posts on this website – seemingly hidden from view! Here are some titles that relate to today’s discussion:

Why Tourism’s Impact is Hardly Noticed

Why Mindsets Really Matter

Conscious Travel in Three Words

Why Tourism Will and Must Change its Operating Model

Conscious Travel, Leadership, Mindsets, Operating Models, Protection, Purpose, Value & Views
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happy new year Resized

Here’s to a Disruptive, Transformative 2013!

December 31, 2012 by xplorer 4 Comments

Well dear friends I hope you had a restful, merry holiday break with those you love.

The good news is that we survived the end of the world that some had predicted!

The great wheel of time turned

We’re moving on – we’re sensing a big shift

We’re moving on – but there’s no worn path ahead.

We’re moving on  - but there’s no-one to show us the way

We are the wayfinders  we’ve been waiting for

Wise men say that unless we change our perspective, we won’t know what course to set.

So my wish for 2013 is for us to see the world the way our space pioneers saw it. They were headed for the moon but when they gazed back at planet earth, they fell in love with her.

If travel is transformative, then surely space travel will deliver the peak of transformative experiences.

But we cannot afford the time or cost of having us all make such a journey. We must travel using our “mind’s eye” and, as
I write this, the crew of the International Space Station is sharing what they see – the Commander’s tweet account is https://twitter.com/Cmdr_Hadfield.

Another group of talented film makers at The Planetary Collective.com has made it possible not just to see the earth as astronauts do, but to appreciate the transformative effect of such “earth gazing.”   These film makers are making a feature film called Continuum that explores what happens when we see the Earth as “a single dynamic system that’s alive and humanity as forming its nervous system’. The brief 15 minute film below is just one section that I hope will inspire you – as it did me –  for 2013.

Thank you for all your support and encouragement in 2012 and for the subscriptions, page views and, especially for the comments. My goal for 2013 is to have the learning program developed and book published and a sustainable entity formed to create a network of Conscious Hosts.

I wish you health and happiness for the year ahead but also hope that you’ll join me in being creatively disruptive and transformative in 2013!!  Enjoy the Overview!

Place, Protection, Value & Views
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Wishing You All a Conscious and Happy Christmas!

December 21, 2012 by xplorer 5 Comments

Who says people can’t and don’t change?  The proportion of people smoking has more or less halved since the 1950s; most of us have learned to respect the limits associated with alcohol and driving; and in no more than five years our attitudes towards consumption have altered significantly. Mindless is out, conscious and careful is in.

The way we celebrate this special time of the year is changing too – either forced on us by economic necessity or because we’ve begun to stop and think what will make for a truly happiness-inducing event on “the Day” and in the weeks following. I’ve heard more and more people say that they’re not sending Christmas cards but donating to a charity and, instead of buying “stuff” as presents, they are wrapping up offers to spend time with a cherished recipient doing something together or sharing a skill.

wishing you a conscious christmasIt’s no coincidence that we share Christmas with a more ancient practice of celebrating the Winter Solstice – that time of the year when light and life seem to have retreated for good and when, just at that moment of despair there are fragile signs that the cycle of life will continue to turn; Spring will follow winter. I think that’s what the Mayans understood but they had a much grander view of time, possessing an ability to look at cycles measured in thousands of years. Their calendar wasn’t about endings; but all about new beginnings.

So I simply want to say thank you to all of you who have supported me over the past couple of years – especially those who hosted me on my travels; but also my readers of this blog who have justified my effort, and especially those of you who have commented or subscribed.

I hope you are warm and safe this week and about to spend time with those you love. I hope too that , in the months ahead,  we can explore ways of making tourism better for all of its participants.

I am not able to send cards this year but am taking the liberty of recycling an image created by an organisation in New Zealand I very much admire –  Consciousconsumers.org.nz. I am sure they will not mind my sharing their Christmas tree image , especially if you take a peak at their web site and see what good work they are doing!

Merry Christmas!

wishing you a conscious christmas

Pace, Value & Views
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cyclone evan

A licence to grow or get better – which do you choose?

December 18, 2012 by xplorer 3 Comments

I am grateful to the folks at Coast – One Planet Tourist Network for pointing me to the Dec 11th article in Travel Mole that was published two days before UNWTO launched its campaign celebrating the recording of 1 Billion international trips – see previous post.

My curiosity was piqued and my optimism encouraged by this statement from the Secretary General: “We have an opportunity right now to move away from business as usual policies and to put the right strategies in place to significantly reduce  our emissions.“

But after continuing to read the UNWTO press releases officially launching the publication Tourism in the Green Economy, my concerns returned.

The publication builds on the tourism chapter of the 2011 UNWTO/UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Green Economy Report, which finds that an investment of just 0.2% of global GDP per year between now and 2050 would allow the tourism sector to grow steadily over the coming decades, contributing to much-needed economic growth, employment and development while ensuring significant environmental benefits such as reductions in water consumption (18%), energy use (44%) and CO2 emissions (52%), as compared to a business as usual scenario. (Source: UNWTO press release, Dec11th, 2012)

So I took the time to read – well try to read – the tourism chapter which comprises 40+ pages of a 613 report titled Towards a Green Economy published in 2011 but found it impossible to follow the logic or identify a rationale for allowing the tourism sector to grow steadily.

The authors of the chapter do acknowledge that tourism produces waste and uses resources and the text includes all kinds of empirical evidence from various regions that show how variable the intensity of this resource use can be. While the report appears to be well referenced, it contains a number of major statements whose source is unclear including:

In a BAU scenario up to 2050, tourism growth will imply increases in:

  • energy consumption up 111%
  • greenhouse gas emissions up 105%
  • water consumption up 150% and
  • solid waste disposal up 252%

Unfortunately, there’s no way to compare these figures for increased resource use and waste production with forecast increases in arrivals as there is no explanation of what the BAU (business as usual) scaenrio is and whose figures are being applied nor is there a time frame stated for which these percentage increases apply. We know the end date is 2050 but we don’t know the start date.

But what the report does do is fantasise what would happen if a $248 billion annual investment  in energy & water effiiciency, carbon mitigation and solid waste management were made (again start date unclear and the implication is that this investment would apply every year until 2050). On page 442, the report states that a green tourism economy would undercut the corresponding BAU scenario by:

  • 18% for water consumption
  • 44% for water supply
  • 52% for carbon emissions
  • No figure was provided for solid waste!

I wasn’t sure how to interpret and apply the term undercut – was it to be applied to the rate of overall increase or could it possibly have been applied to intensity of use/production? I took the obvious route (one also applied by the UNWTO in their press release) and assumed it mean a reduction in the rate of increase  so that, thanks to this annual investment of a quarter-trillion dollars (yes, really!),  a green tourism economy would result in:

  • water consumption only increasing by 138% (150%-18%)
  • energy consumption only increasing by 67% (111%-44%)
  • Co2 emissions rising by only 53% (105%-52%)
  • again, no figure is provided for solid waste but there will clearly be lots to deal with.
What Typhoon Bopha left behind - will increasing frequency & intensity of winter hurricanes affect seasonal demand?

What Typhoon Bopha left behind – will increasing frequency & intensity of winter hurricanes affect seasonal demand?

You’ll have noted that I used the word “fantasise” regarding the green investment because this number appears to have been picked out of thin air and is based on an investment of 0.2% of total tourism GDP. There is no discussion, however, of:

  • where this money would be raised
  • where and how it would be spent (although it is somewhat arbitrarily allocated between energy, water, emissions, solid waste, employee training and biodiversity)
  • how we would be sure it resulted in efficiencies necessary to guarantee the “undercut”
  • who would oversee and report on the actual results of such an investment.
  • whether any funds would be made available to tourism facilities damaged by the effects of climate change or to help adapt to future damage. Note; as I write this Fiji and Samoa are just assessing the damage of Cyclone Evan which local meteorologists describe as unusual in behaviour and severity; the Philippines is reeling from the severity of a first ever  ”super typhoon” whose Cat-5 ferocity claimed some 1000 lives; not to mention Hurricane Sandy on America’s northeast coast.

Nor is any mention made of recent reports from the World Bank, NOAA, the International Energy Authority and Price Waterhouse Coopers, and the Global carbon Project all replete with evidence that global warming is accelerating in pace and scope. (Watch this space for a link to those updates here within a couple of days)

I can’t help but conclude that macro reports such as the one UNWTO is using simply build a false sense of security that the right and sufficient action is being taken. As a consequence, this approach serves to disempower the people whose lives and livelihoods are most likely to be affected by these environmental forces.

A fundamental principle and assumption underpinning conscious travel is that it’s time for the global tourism economy to shift from its obsession with growth – as in more arrivals, more facilities, more consumption –  to prosperity in the fullest sense of the word – as in better, higher value, deeper levels of satisfaction, stability, vitality and resilience.

If we – the global tourism economy –  sought a licence to improve and to contribute as opposed to seeking a licence simply to grow in size we might find we’d be taken more seriously.

Protection
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1billiontourists

Can 1 billion tourists create one billion opportunities or 1 billion headaches?

December 12, 2012 by xplorer 7 Comments

As I am an optimist by necessity and an altruist by choice, I’ve no desire to criticize the sentiment behind UNWTO’s campaign  http://1billiontourists.unwto.org/. Hopefully it will also get the millions of hosts – many of whom are struggling right now – thinking more deeply about their future.

Source: UNWTO

Source: UNWTO

The campaign serves two objectives: first to remind the world just how big international tourism has become – transporting a billion people across international borders every year, and second to suggest that this literal mass movement could be a huge force for good. Implicit in the UNWTO’s visionary statement is the notion that if one billion tourists do so much good then more is better.

 “Imagine if every one of these tourists made a conscious decision to protect the people and environments they visited. Imagine how much water and energy we could save if one billion tourists simply used their towels for more than a day. Imagine how many people would benefit if one billion tourists bought locally.”Source: UNWTO web site

The altruist in me shares the view that one billion people on the move connecting with hosts from other cultures, sensing the world through a different perspective and experiencing their interdependence has the potential to be a “good thing.” But – and it’s a very big BUT – realizing that lofty vision will take an awful lot more than a trendy campaign and marketing spin. Unless there is a robust and well thought out vision as to how to convert one billion wanderers from being what some perceive as a plague of greedy locusts into positive agents for change, this campaign will attract either ridicule or slip quickly into obscurity.

Given that we live in an age of transparency in which citizens are better educated and informed than ever before, it behooves global bodies as well as corporations to be very careful about what they say and how they say it.  In the corporate world, reputation for integrity, authenticity and responsibility now accounts for much of a company’s market value. And this celebration might just be premature as I am believe that when the tinsel and pine cones are finally swept up in January we’ll be reminded just how fragile we are environmentally, financially and socially.

In today’s Age of Transparency, a most important first step towards building trust with any constituency is to be truthful (as in honest); the second is to be inclusive /interactive (i.e, involve other parties in your ecosystem) the third is to be practical (by complimenting the aspiration with practical steps for its realization) and the fourth is to be logical (ensure that the aspiration makes sense and is internally consistent).

Proponents of international tourism such as UNWTO and WTTC have had years of practice promoting tourism’s ability to generate investment, create jobs, enable money to be exchanged between rich and poor nations, and support the preservation of some precious spaces, places and artefacts. But it has been left to NGOs such as Tourism Concern in the UK; journalists such as the Guardian’s Leo Hickman, author of The Last Call and a growing number of bloggers and writers in the responsible, sustainable, fair trade movement to draw our attention to the costs and transgressions associated with this global juggernaut.

There can be no denying the evidence that mass tourism also produces vast amounts of waste (garbage and carbon); uses disproportionate amounts of scarce resources of water and land; displaces local and established populations; creates congestion and often does not leave much wealth behind for local populations to enjoy.

Until the UNWTO and its member governments start publicly acknowledging tourism’s dark underbelly, and take steps to account for the costs in order to measure “net benefit,” then campaigns such as these may generate skepticism at best and, worse, disdain.

Having said that, One Billion Tourists; One Billion Opportunities is a great vision so don’t let’s dismiss it out of hand. It’s crazily ambitious and noble but an aspiration worthy of serious, creative attention. If tourism realizes the UNWTO’s own growth forecasts, then there’ll be an additional 400 million more international tourists every year by 2020 (a mere 7 years away) and, given that we cannot expand a finite earth by 40% at any point in time, then the negative aspects of tourism – as it is currently practiced in many places – will soon become impossible to ignore and much harder to manage.

So here’s my take on the action necessary to attain this aspiration:

The opportunities that UNWTO describe will only be realized if there is a mammoth waking up to the realities of growing tourism on a finite planet. We need tourism leaders, policy makers, hosts and travellers who are conscious in the sense of being awake – capable of mindful, informed decisions; aware of the impact of their actions and alert both to the options open to them and the business environment in which they operate. This requires the same degree of ruthless self-honesty asked of addicts prior to commencing a recovery program. It also requires more humility and curiosity and engagement than many central bodies have been famous for in the past.

In short, the billion opportunities will only materialize if those same tourists know how to make conscious, informed choices and can be persuaded and enabled to select places and hosts who can prove that they care and are responsible.

That will require a lot more than wishful thinking  - nothing less than a huge social transformation – so I earnestly hope that UNWTO won’t treat this as just another smooth campaign but as a huge invitation to all its member governments, private sector partners and NGOs to come together to plan just how 1.6 billion tourists in 2020 will have become 1.6 billion opportunities for good. The alternative is a headache too big to contemplate and the challenge is simply too good to waste!

Note: as far as I can see, the UNWTO revised its forecasts down from 1.6 billion in 2020 to 1.4 billion and their forecast for the number of international arrivals in 2030 still stands at 1.8 billion. 

Postscript
Ethan Gelber has written a quality post on this subject here: 

http://travelllll.com/2012/12/12/unwto-one-billion-tourists-campaign/      and 

http://travelllll.com/2012/04/11/bloggers-retained-by-un-gstc/

 

Leadership, People, Protection, Purpose
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Sustainability: A Matter of Perception

December 11, 2012 by xplorer 9 Comments

joshua bellI have “lifted” this fascinating story from GreenTeam Australia’s excellent blog, because it is speaks so clearly to the power of perception – a theme that runs through so much of my thinking and speaking.

The story takes place in Washington, DC Metro Station on a cold January morning in 2007. The man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time approx. 2 thousand people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. After 3 minutes a middle aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried to meet his schedule.

4 minutes later: the violinist received his first dollar: a woman threw the money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk.

6 minutes: A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again.

10 minutes: A 3-year old boy stopped but his mother tugged him along hurriedly. The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. Every parent, without exception, forced their children to move on quickly.

45 minutes: The musician played continuously.  Only 6 people stopped and listened for a short while. About 20 gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace.  The man collected a total of $32.

1 hour: He finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days before Joshua Bell had sold out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100.

This is a true story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people’s priorities. Suppose, for a minute, that this was a story about a place and not a famous musician:

  • what determines beauty and value?
  • why travel if have we lost the childlike wonder that would enable us to appreciate the everyday?
  • how come the same experience can generate just $32 to the provider in one context and thousands in another?
  • how can we possibly live in harmony with nature, if we see it merely as vibrations to be measured and not something sacred to be revered?

If I had to design a sustainable tourism curriculum from scratch – on a blank piece of paper – I would not start with climate change and carbon emissions; or even how ecological footprints vary and are calculated; or the ROI on alternative energy etc etc. No, I think I would start with the poetry of Wordsworth, Thoreau or Walt Whitman, or to be more contemporary, Drew Dillinger; or the cosmology of Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme. I would  leave my students alone in an old growth forest long enough that the blinkers fell from their eyes and they could begin to see what lay hidden from those determined to do doing over being; I would encourage them to become tortoises rather than hares and ask them to devise rituals that honoured the passing of the seasons…..

Until we are prepared to slow down, stop and drink in the magical tones of Joshua Bell’s violin when the music emerges unexpectedly  from the pavement of an underpass on a drizzly November day, we will continue to gallop towards sustainability and it will recede further to the horizon. Until we have switched our perception of earth as lumberyard or ever giving ATM machine to earth as our sacred home that nurtures us; until we have mastered Wonder 101 and can articulate how a place pulses to its own unique beat; until we can feel “her” and feel one with her, why travel at all?

Indigenous Values, Mindsets, Pace, Place, Purpose
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shutterstock_95188258

Place-based cultural tourism: a new planning paradigm

December 3, 2012 by xplorer 1 Comment

We’re very pleased to post this Guest Post by Steven Thorne who is one of our fellow “place proponents” as listed in the previous article, Place Is Back…“ . The original post was published in Canada’s  Economic Development News & Insight. Thank you Steven. 

For the past decade, my work has focused on destination planning for cultural tourism. Using principles and practices of cultural planning pioneered by my friend and colleague Greg Baeker of  Millier Dickinson Blais, combined with an inclusive, holistic framework for identifying a community’s cultural tourism assets, I’ve attempted to move communities beyond inserting their cultural icons – their flagship museums and galleries, arts events and festivals, historic sites and heritage attractions – into their leisure travel campaigns and calling the result, “cultural tourism”.

We know the market for cultural tourism is enormous. It’s documented in the new Canadian publication, Cultural & Heritage Tourism: A Handbook for Community Champions, to which I was pleased to contribute and serve as an editorial advisor. Elsewhere, the 2009 Cultural & Heritage Traveler Study, documents that 14 percent of all U.S. domestic leisure travelers are “Passionate Cultural Travelers” who actively seek out cultural tourism experiences. Total trip spending by these “Passionates” is estimated at $43 billion per year. Small wonder that, a decade ago, the Travel Industry Association of America’s Bill Norman observed, “The sheer volume of travelers interested in arts and heritage as well as their spending habits, their travel patterns and demographics leaves no doubt that history and culture are now a significant part of the U.S. travel experience.”

The challenge for communities wanting to capitalize on cultural tourism is simple: the current planning paradigm is obsolete. Effective tourism marketing is marketing by segment. To this end, destination marketing organizations cannot rely on generic leisure travel campaigns to reach cultural travelers. Cultural travelers must be targeted using purpose-built marketing platforms and targeted cultural campaigns.

But before we take a cultural tourism product to market, we first need to engage in a much more sophisticated process of identifying a community’s cultural tourism asset base, uncovering its cultural identity, and crafting a visitor experience that will capitalize on any community’s most strategic asset: its sense of place.

Source: Whistler Centre for Sustainability

Whistler, BC, recognizes this fact. In the wake of the 2010 Winter Olympics, North America’s pre-eminent ski destination realized it could not build the future of its tourism industry around skiing and snowboarding alone. Seeing the potential of cultural tourism to diversify its tourism offering, yet understanding it could not compete culturally with Vancouver on Vancouver’s terms, Whistler contracted my firm to develop Canada’s first place-based cultural tourism strategy, entitled A Tapestry of Place.

I call my approach, “place-based cultural tourism”, because it eschews the notion that cultural attractions are the heart of the visitor experience. Research tells us otherwise: Cultural travelers want to explore what makes a destination distinctive, authentic, and memorable. They want to experience the essence of the destination – its “cultural terroir”. They want to experience “place”. Through experiencing “place”, they are enriched – intellectually and emotionally. Of course, attractions are more than essential; they are critical. That said, attractions are expressions of a destination’s culture; they are not its embodiment.

It’s ironic. Richard Florida has opined that, “Place is becoming the central organizing unit of our economy and society”. And yet, while we see Florida’s understanding reflected in the emerging fields of place-based agriculture, place-based urban planning, place-based economic development and a host of others fields, tourism is oddly “behind the curve” on the application of place-based thinking to destination planning. It’s a head-scratcher – more so given that tourism’s product is place, or that, at the very least, tourism experiences are located in a particular place.

In North America, perhaps the best example of a place-based approach to cultural tourism is found in Stratford, Ontario – home to the internationally renowned Stratford Shakespeare Festival.

Stratford Helps Visitors Meet Locals

Under the inspired leadership of Eugene Zakreski, the Executive Director of the Stratford Tourism Alliance, Stratford’s marketing campaign – along with its many initiatives in product development – is anchored in place-based thinking. Rather than focusing on the Shakespeare Festival as Stratford’s primary draw, Zakreski has positioned the Festival as the “jewel in the crown” of a destination brimming with other human heritage, arts, culinary, agritourism, and natural history experiences. At the same time, Zakreski uses Stratford’s history and heritage, its narratives and stories, its landscape, its townscape and people to “frame” the cultural experiences that are encountered on the ground. Where yesteryear’s Stratford was the Festival – full stop – the allure of today’s Stratford is all about, “what makes Stratford Stratford”.

The result? Because Stratford’s sense of place is front-and-centre, business has never been better. To quote Zakreski, “The results of our efforts have been significant, with triple-digit growth in visitors to our various websites over the past few years, double-digit growth to Stratford in the fall, winter and spring seasons, and noticeably younger adult couples enjoying the Stratford Experience.”

ABOUT STEVEN THORNE

Steven Thorne is a specialist in “place-based cultural tourism” – a phrase that Steven coined. He helps cities, towns, and regions to realize their potential for cultural tourism by using his company’s holistic, place-based planning approach. The approach weaves together heritage, arts, culinary, agritourism, and natural history experiences to form a “cultural tapestry” that reveals a destination’s unique cultural character and sense of place.

In Steven’s words, “For cultural travelers, the visitor experience is about much more than a destination’s cultural ‘attractions’. It’s about discovering what makes a city, town, or region distinctive, authentic, and memorable. It’s about the experience of ‘place’. Simply put, ‘the place is the product.’” Steven’s clients have included Tourism BC, Parks Canada, Tourism PEI, and cities, towns, and institutions from British Columbia to Newfoundland. Committed to cultural tourism education as well as its practice, Steven teaches the course, “Cultural Tourism: Realizing the Opportunity”, offered through the Cultural Resource Management Program at the University of Victoria. He is also a regular guest lecturer in the Graduate Program in Tourism Policy and Planning at the University of Waterloo. Steven can be reached at: steven.thorne@sympatico.ca

Conscious Travel Addendum
Here’s a link to another relevant and content-rich post by Steven Thorne comparing Canada’s approach to marketing culture to visitors to that applied by their American neighbours. The post is rich with references that could inform global readers. 
http://economicdevelopment.org/2012/12/why-dont-you-canadians-market-your-culture-2/ 

Conscious Travel, Culture, Place
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ConsciousTravel1

Place is back – how did we ever lose it?

November 28, 2012 by xplorer 16 Comments

A consistent theme of this blog, that will persist until The Shift/The Transition/The Great Turning/The Great Disruption is over, relates to the power of paradigms to shape behaviour.

A perceptive reader will notice that I haven’t used the word paradigm much because I was told a few years ago that it was too “high falutin” for my audience and it would cause their ears to close down, and eyes to roll or glaze over.

But I am encouraged. A couple of weeks ago,  there was a seminar at the World Travel Market of all places on just this subject:

“The Paradigm Shift in Travel and Tourism – New Rules for

Competitive Success”

South Gallery 19; 12:30-13:30.

And it was lead by a tourism professional with all the right credentials – Dr. Auliana Poon, CEO of Tourism Intelligence International, whose text turned a few heads some 20 years ago,  was subsequently largely ignored simply because she was too ahead of her time. Sadly, an unplanned for accident on the way to the seminar prevented my attendance and a long overdue catch up with Dr. Poon to find out her interpretation of the current paradigm shift.

Emboldened that there might be a growing audience for this topic, I’ll continue.

An industrial mindset (a.k.a.paradigm) causes many of us to view the world through a lens that separates subject from object; that pits buyers against sellers as adversaries; and consistently focuses on things and transactions rather than invisible stimuli and emotional states.

This same worldview fuels our obsession with definitions, with labels, with breaking down a topic into its component parts before trying how to make the pieces of the puzzle fit back together again.

Consider our tendency in tourism to:

1. Separate product development (engineering) from marketing (see an earlier post on Branding - If branding were left to engineers);

2. Separate markets by activity (adventure, cultural, heritage, agro, eco, culinary tourism)

3. Focus on artefacts and facilities,  “attractions” and venues rather than the experience, the emotions aroused and memories created; and

4. Divorce the “product” from the setting – the place – which is properly the biggest force shaping the visitor experience

5. Have the message shaped and controlled by centralised bodies often with the help of external agencies.

Well for someone who has felt like a displaced person for much of my career in tourism, I’m delighted to find I am in very good company and that THE SHIFT that I keep describing is real and not a figment of my imagination. The waves of change are even washing up on the long sandy beaches of Australia’s Gold Coast where the chief reporter for the Gold Coast Bulletin  declared in a recent article:

We need a sense of place. A lot of global tourism destinations are starting to look the same. Place tourism is growing.

While I am having real difficulty with the completely redundant term “place tourism” which is as about as useful as “experiential tourism” I do see cause for optimism.

And to celebrate the return of PLACE in our consciousness, I’d like to honour other “soldiers in the thought trenches” who have been trying to lure place back into the centre of all tourism conversations:

  1. Steven Thorne, From Waterloo Canada, who has been consistently writing about the power of place along with his colleague Greg Baeker, author of Rediscovering the Wealth of Places: A Municipal Cultural Planning Handbook for Canadian Communities published in 2010 by Municipal World.
  2. Joe Pine, author of the seminal work The Experience Economy
  3. Robin Barden, a Briton based in Barcelona who writes a very perceptive, intelligent blog called SenseOurway
  4. Simon Anholt,founder of the National Brand Index and author of “Places: Identity, Image and Reputation“
  5. Ethan Gelber, editor of The TravelWord, co-founder of the Local Travel Movement and Chief Communicator for the WHL Group
  6. Marin Schobert of Tourismus Design
  7. Dr Dan Shilling, former Executive Director of the Arizona Humanities Council, and author of the wonderful 2007 book, “Civic Tourism, The Poetry and Politics of Place”. His website is http://www.civictourism.org/ - Clearly Dr Shilling is a skilled proponent of place. I hope we will be able to embed the video that is on his site here. I thoroughly recommend a view.
  8. Dr. Susan Guyette – a cultural anthropologist in Sanata Fe with considerable experience working with indigenous people in the US and author several books has recently conducted a webinar on Sustainable Cultural Tourism with/for Sustainable Tourism International that has lots of practical advice and examples concerning ways of maintaining cultural integrity and ensuring that the culture of a host community is respected.
  9. Ron Mader, creator of the magnificent resource Planeta Wiki moderated an important seminar on Media, Tourism and the Environment in which there was considerable focus on place. Ron’s summary posted by the South Africa’s Rhodes University titled The Coverage of Place. is here http://www.rjr.ru.ac.za/rjrpdf/RJR_no21/coverage_of_place.pdf

I am aware that this initial list will have only scratched the surface of specific tourism-place talent out there so I would welcome suggestions as to other “Place Proponents” – individuals, hosts, planners who are making a stand for PLACE to replace product.

Over the next few weeks, some of these place rescuers have agreed to contribute their insights on this blog. They’ll all be categorized under Place and further links given here as we compile their insights and point our readers to useful sources.

Place
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10 Reasons Why Airbnb is an awesome Conscious Travel Enterprise

November 26, 2012 by xplorer 1 Comment

Some hoteliers hate them, many consumers and cash strapped property owners love them – and so do I. There’s no doubt that Airbnb is proving to be a highly creative and gutsy source of disruptive innovation and,  what’s really exciting,  is that it’s not the technology but the daring application of technology that’s the cause.

Back in 2008, three young men found themselves broke but living in a city temporarily full to overflowing with visitors – mostly delegates at the Democratic National Convention. They turned a problem into an opportunity by realising that their challenge was likely being faced by countless others and by asking the right question: “what if you could book space in anyone’s home the way you could book a hotel?” Four years later, they have over 250,000 homes on their site across 30,000 cities and 190 countries; have done over $4.5 million room nights in business and the company is valued in excess of US$1 billion and climbing.

At first only the technology community took notice even though Airbnb isn’t really a technology company at all. But it did make use of peer to peer technologies that underpinned the success of companies like E-bay, Craigslist, e-lance etc. According to Triple Pundit, its success is due to the fact that it overcame the two main obstacles associated with “peer to peer” marketplaces – fear and inventory.

Now here are 10 reasons why I consider Airbnb not just the poster child of the phenomenon known as “collaborative consumption” but for Conscious Travel as a whole.

1.CRAZINESS – they faced the fear and did it anyway; always finding practical and often contrarian solutions to the problems that many investors turned away from – to their cost.

Source: Steve Jobs, Apple

They didn’t think it crazy or stupid to do the unthinkable or seriously consider what others thought impossible or even stupid. They were NOT engineers looking for a market to showcase their clever algorithms but ordinary guys looking to pay their rent and solve a problem in a way that could benefit others.

They used both sides of their brain (early on potential investors couldn’t understand why designers out numbered engineers) and were often contrarian in their views taking a common sense approach to seemingly intractable problems.

They are obsessive about customer satisfaction, ease of use and creating something of beauty – just as well because the majority of travel is booked by women and if you make the tool nice to look at as well as easy to use you’ll get and keep our attention. (I still avoid Craigslist simply because it’s so geekily ugly). They constitute what Steve Jobs called “The Crazy Ones” and it’s these kinds of people who will be the first to become conscious hosts.

2. PEOPLE:  Airbnb acknowledges that hospitality is first and foremost about people meeting people and when people are staying in other people’s home trust and confidence are needed to overcome fear. Sure there’s a transaction and all three parties (host, guest & Airbnb) benefit financially from that but their motivation was enabling both parties to do something they hadn’t thought was possible before. For the guest it meant not only accessing an affordable bed and place to stay using searches of homeowner/renters’ room inventory in real time but the chance to experience a destination in a much more meaningful, personal, human way.

 ”When someone steps foot in your door, or you step foot in someone else’s door, something powerful is happening – we are breaking down cultural barriers and connecting people in a real way.” Christopher Lukesic, Airbnb employee

When you listen to any of the AirBnB principals speak, the word that you’ll hear over and over again is “community.” Here’s the presentation Disruptions in Brand Building that Christopher Lukesic made to Sustainable Brands last year that highlights the people  and place focus, core principals of Conscious Travel. And if you want further proof that transactions will only occur when trust between people has been established then look at their safety video.

3. PURPOSE: AirBnB’s primary purpose as stated on their web site:

The Golden rules listed on their website for travelers and hosts alike all encompass values identified as core to Conscious Travel – respect, reciprocity, reliability, commitment, and transparency.

4. PLENTY: a founding principal of Airbnb and Conscious Travel is that everyone wins – guests get personable hospitality at an affordable price; hosts get extra income; communities get more spending in less congested commercial areas and more of the money stays in the community.

Airbnb provides an income to hosts from an asset they would otherwise not be able to access. Note 90% of hosts rent out space in their own home and 50% depend on the income to pay rent, mortgages or other household expenses like medical bills etc. In challenging financial times, this additional income has been a lifesaver for many and, furthermore as over 60% of properties are located outside the downtown cores where hotels are generally located, the tourism benefits are dispersed more widely.

Airbnb provides a large and very diverse range of properties from sofa beds and single rooms at less than $30 a night through to shared mansions and castles and very quirky spaces (tree houses, airstream caravans). It thereby meets a social need for affordable accommodation that benefits host as well as guest.

Airbnb recently commissioned a study to measure its impact in the San Francisco area. A more complete description of its findings is presented in an article in Forbes magazine here and I recommend a read. Some headlines from the Forbes article are presented below:

5. PLACE: While Airbnb doesn’t promote destinations as such, its appreciation of community means that it does try to ensure guests can really get to experience the place like a local and not miss experiencing local attractions, amenities and food etc.

Research with their own guests showed the principals at Airbnb that these travellers were going to exceptional lengths to research locations and neighborhoods before booking, and by giving those potential customers more information the company would be solving a piece of the puzzle and potentially extending stays.

As recently as 10 days ago, the  company launched “Airbnb Neighborhoods,” a feature designed to  help users decide which neighborhoods within a city they would enjoy most. For example, you can filter by museums, restaurants, and transit options when exploring a city on Airbnb. This feature will initially be rolled out in 300 neighbourhoods in seven cities around the world.

The company is also launching a “Local Lounges” product, which will include local partnerships with coffee shops in city neighborhoods as places for travelers to find free wifi, travel guidebooks, and a friendly face. San Franciscois the test case for this service.

The following 14 minute video presents the launch of these two features.

So with this foray into the travel guide business, expect further disruption – especially if the hosts are solicited to curate and adjudicate local content and more deals are done with local providers of “local” services.

6. PULL: Airbnb makes really effective use of social media to harness the power of the social graph as a way of  mitigating the risks that both guests and hosts associate with renting a part of their homes to strangers.  When the potential guest does a search, the system identifies properties where there is a connection to the person doing the search ( a Facebook friend might “know”  - as in be connected to the owner)

Another attractive feature is the Wishlist which enables browsers to create a short list while browsing to create a themed list for sharing.

Airbnb understand that unless they are active n the mobile space they’ll lose a lot of business. Some 26% of all bookings are now made on mobile devices and they are completed more quickly as illustrated in the following info graphic. The large, high definition professional images also present very well on the newer high resolution smart phones and tablets making the app an attractive to browse through and send time on,

7. PROTECTION: While Airbnb does not overtly claim to be particularly “green” or sustainable in practice – it can be argued that, by making better more efficient use of existing housing assets, it places less demand on resources. The potential exists through the neighbourhood program to inform guests of ways in which they can support local businesses,  assist local sustainable and rejuvenation efforts, make better use of alternative forms of transport and support other tourism providers that have committed to environmental protection and cultural rejuvenation.

8. PACE: Airbnb guests do tend to stay longer than hotel guests and, because of the dispersed location of many Airbnb properties, they are likely exposed to less well known parts of a city that could cause them to slow down and explore. Admittedly, there is more potential for the realisation of this Conscious Travel principal, than practice right now.

9. EXPERIENCE: the entire Airbnb experience for both guests and hosts is designed to be aesthetically attractive (nothing could look less like Craigslist), simple but functional and reassuring. A striking feature of the service is the use of high quality, professional images that have been know to help significantly with booking rates. Airbnb understand that travel is an emotional purchase based on dreams and fantasies and “eye candy” sells.

10. MINDSET: I’ve saved one the best reasons for claiming that AirBnb is a Conscious Travel Enterprise till last and that’s their mindset and approach to business which are so refreshing. The founders claim that travel is the social network in motion; they subscribe to the values underpinning what as been described as the sharing, collaborative economy; they refuse to be drawn into zero-sum games and do not see themselves as stealing from the hotel sector but as meeting a need of people that no one else has addressed.  CEO, Rob Chesky spoke eloquently and passionately at the end of his presentation to Phocuswright (see here) that travel is still undervalued and implied that there were enormous opportunities in overcoming the problem called “youth unemployment.” If this mindset does hold firm then I hope we’ll lots of creative and collaborative partnerships going forward.

In fact when it comes to disruption and the democratisation of travel, I think this company has barely scratched the surface. Imagine links to other P2P providers such as Tripbod and Hostme (local tourist guides); or helping to find an activity companion via a servce such as Uniiverse: fancy a sail this afternoon with a local sailing enthusiast; need to rent some snorkeling equipment that’s sitting in someone’s closet unused;  or a want a lesson in preparing a local delicacy while staying at your Airbnb?

Admittedly, my somewhat rosey and self serving post doesn’t address all challenges (eg the health and safety issue, taxation issues etc.) Nor does it mean to imply that the majority of hosts can be described as “conscious hosts” or that the majority of guests live up to the desireable practices of a conscious traveller, but here’s a company seeing & doing tourism differently (as a network not a fragemented industry) while meeting a market opportunity without the need to pour more concrete or erect more buildings that will never be fully used.

Pace, People, Place, Plenty, Pull, Purpose, Value & Views
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Forget branding – let people, place & personality shine through

November 16, 2012 by xplorer 3 Comments

I’ve always had a huge problem with destination branding.This problem, this “dis-ease’ always flares up when I attend World Travel Market where the end result of millions of dollars spent on branding is experienced as an homogenous, coma inducing mass of impressions that blur into sameness.

Treating places with their complex geography and history the same way you would treat a box of corn flakes, cars,  or a range  of hair products  always seemed part of the cheapening process that turned places into commodities.

In 2005,  I joined the Canadian Tourism Commission towards the end of a very long branding exercise conducted by a former mentor and friend, Jean Chretien who, after touring this vast country, declared that distilling Canada’s complexity into a brand was impossible. He realised that it’s the visitor and resident who express the essence or personality of a place through their own experience and it is this approach that allows that personality to breathe. Canada’s “brand” is less of a statement about Canada as it is an invitation to the visitor. “Keep Exploring” has worked well because it affirms Canada’s intrinsic “explorability” and subtly suggests that the visitor will find no ends of ways to do just that in such a vast and diverse place as Canada. The guest and host jointly define the brand for themselves out of their encounters with each other.

Simon Anholt rose to fame with the notion of place branding but even seven years ago, when I met him briefly in Ottawa, I sensed he feared he may have let a genie out the bottle and his ideas would be misinterpreted. In the introduction to Places Identity & Reputation, written in 2009, Anholt has this to say:

Nations may have brands – in the sense that they have reputations, and those reputations are every bit as important to their progress and prosperity in the modern world as brand images are to corporations and their products – but the idea that it is possible to ‘do branding’ to a country (or to a city or region) in the same way that companies ‘do branding’ to their products, is both vain and foolish. In the 15 years since I first started working in this field I have not seen a shred of evidence, a single properly researched case study, to show that marketing communications programmes, slogans or logos, have ever succeeded, or could ever succeed, in directly altering international perceptions of places……

It is public opinion which brands countries – in other words, reduces them to the weak, simplistic, outdated, unfair stereotypes that so damage their prospects in a globalised world – and most countries need to fight against the tendency of international public opinion to brand them, not encourage it. Governments need to help the world understand the real, complex, rich, diverse nature of their people and landscapes, their history and heritage, their products and their resources: to prevent them from becoming mere brands.

Quite an irony isn’t it, then,  that one of the world’s foremost brand experts/proponents should, when it comes to places, be suggesting that brands – developed in the traditional way – don’t work?  If a country or region wishes to be understood it is advised to encourage their visitors to experience the “real, complex, rich diverse nature of their people and landscapes, their history and resources, to prevent them from becoming brands. ” So if it is about personality and reputation, then the best thing would be to encourage both visitor experiences and visitor-host encounters to take place in different settings and then let participants in those encounters tell their story.

That’s why this post lingered in the draft box few a few days. I was positively distracted by a link to StoryMap and, ecstatic to have found another example of peer to peer marketing,  I penned my last post Tourism By the People, Of the People, For the People  etc which proved to be the most popular I’ve written so far.

It’s also why I love Air New Zealand‘s series of videos that express the human side of New Zealand and its personality so much more effectively than any standard branding exercise. Have a look at the series called “The Kiwi Sceptics” – I’ve found 4 Episodes so far, here’s the first.  Not only is it great to see an airline generating interest in a place as a means of selling seats and aligning its self image and personality with that of the country, but also great to see that “sense of place” as  expressed through the eyes of hosts, visitors and hobbits alike.

As more DMOs wean themselves off a command & control mindset,  the telling of stories that reflect the personality of a place as experienced by the story teller will become the preferred medium and everyone can engage with that.

With over 10 million views & rising, Air New Zealand’s humorous new safety video made with cast, crew and producer of the Lord of the Rings conveys the humour and imagination of Kiwis and offers a more compelling invitation than any branding exercise. It’s time to let the creativity of the people in the host community rip; get up front and personal; and like Paul Hogan in the famous “shrimp on the barbie” ads actually invite us to come down and experience the place for ourselves and then use the latest technology and channels to share our experiences.

Quick postscript before you check out the antics of Air New Zealand’s zany crew – if you want another example of what happens when people are enabled to extend the invitation in their own way, then keep a close eye on what I consider to be the most innovative, disruptive company in the travel space today – Airbnb whose new “Neighbourhoods” program has enormous implications for the role and future of DMOs – but more on that later.

Other Relevant Posts

Tourism Of the People, By the People, For the People

How Vancouver’s Community Rescued its Brand

If branding were left to  engineers

Whose Place is it Anyway?

It’s Not Social Media, It’s Social Business

Place, Pull
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