Praise For VISION/TOTEM Sustainable Tourism Report

The VISION/TOTEM Sustainable Tourism Report was released in May and already praise is coming in:

Said Cherie McClosker, advocate of Phillipines Fair Trade:

“Totem’s Sustainable Tourism Report provides a refreshing and no-nonsense guide to understanding sustainable tourism and how it sits against the backdrop of global issues we face today. With easy-to-read marketing strategies and lists of key players in the industry, it will assist any tourism stakeholder who wishes to transition to sustainability. “

Linda Rivero of Peace Through Travel:

First, I would like to tell you how much I enjoyed your Sustainable Tourism Report 2008. Not only was it an excellent distillation of the current state of a rather vast domain, but it also conveyed — thanks to your editorial style — the confusion, urgency, and in some cases irony of our situation at this point. I so enjoyed your tone and point of view.

Kate Daniel of Journeys Ahead:

Thanks for producing such a fine report. I would like to put up a link from my website to an abstract or summary of your report, so that visitors to my website can order it I have finally had an opportunity to read your fine report. There are so many things we could discuss … so I’ll just bring up a “short list”:
1. Loved your description of the Tourism Development Master Plan … will they ever get there?
2. In my opinion, many NGOs and donor organizations have left marketing out of their funding components. There are many excellent and very small sustainable tourism operations out there that don’t have access to traditional or alternative marketing methods. The World Bank, the UN, the EU and USAID fund spend vast amounts of money to hire consultants, determine the feasibility of projects, develop the projects and then leave the projects. Without SELLING the projects to the traveling public and the travel providers, the projects will never be PROFITABLE or sustainable. This is a “pet peeve” of mine.
3. There seems to be a movement lately to defend certain types of luxury projects as “sustainable and responsible” – and except for the eco-friendly part, they probably are responsible tour operators. While I have nothing against these products, I sense an attempt to drive the media and the industry in a direction so that these luxury products will be well-positioned against an inevitable backlash. What do you think?
4. In reference to 4 – what do you think about big companies with large foundations behind them competing with small entities that have little or no access to marketing dollars? Where should organizations that “stand for sustainable tourism” draw the line? How do we “level the playing field”?

I wish you lived next door so that we could have a really good chat!

Henryk Handszuk UNWTO Consultant

Valere,

Thanks for the report. You did a great job. Your report is very comprehensive and quite complete. Will there be a hard copy as well or only the electronic one will stay?
just a few very quick comments:

UNWTO – it is referred to several times, as “The World Tourism Organization” (correct) and “The United Nations World Tourism Organisation” (not necessarily correct) – so some unaware readers may be confused. The latter comes freely developing the officially adopted acronym in English and Russian which is UNWTO – to avoid confusion with the World Trade Organization – , but it is NOT the official name, which according to the Statutes (and the UNWTO website) continues to be “World Tourism Organization”. In Spanish and French the name and acronym stick to the official name, but suddenly we start seeing translations from English into Spanish repeating the new acronym – developed English term… It sounds horrible. The strength of English!

This brings me to suggesting that sources in Spanish also provide information on sustainability awareness and action in the tourism sector, as well as government action – in Spain and all over Latin America – but this seems to be hardly reflected in the report. Perhaps it is where there is the weakness of English.

In the report I would like to see references to responsible consumption, perhaps under “LOHAS”. I believe it’s a Scandinavian concept. We see a lot of irresponsible consumer behaviour in this respect – which means also a lot of fun to people when especially on holiday– but perhaps it is where the problem starts and is sustained. Just to mention tonnes of unnecessarily produced, transported, eaten or not eaten food!

Best regards,

Henryk