Responsible Tourism or “Politically Correct” Tourism for Fiji – a response by David Beirman

Mark Carter exercised his democratic right to disagree with a recent article I wrote in Travel Mole by making a comment on TravelMole, but rather than my response appearing as a comment, I asked TravelMole if they would publish this response as an article as the points he makes are very valid and they and my response deserve more space than the comment box!

His main point was to question the responsibility of Travel Mole’s and my own promotion of Fiji as a country which has just had a military coup.

Mark raised a perfectly reasonable and legitimate question and I hope that my response will provide Mark and Travelmole’s readers with a perfectly reasonable answer, with which he is more than welcome to disagree.

Mark has raised an issue which has been debated passionately by many tourism academics and professionals and my own and Travelmole’s advocacy of tourism to Fiji is clearly not an endorsement of Commodore Bainimara’s coup.

As a matter of principle, and I know TravelMole agrees with this, I am not in favour of any unelected military deciding who governs any country, especially when its government, good, bad or indifferent has been elected democratically.

I don’t pretend to be an expert on Fijian politics but I gather most Fijians hope democracy will be restored quickly. 

Our advocacy of tourism to Fiji is based quite simply on the need to support the Fijian people and fact is tourism is the mainstay of the economy of Fiji and tourism benefits the lives of ordinary Fijians. 

We also believe that based on available facts that Fiji remains a safe and attractive destination for Australian and New Zealanders to visit and while that remains the case I for one and I know once again that TravelMole agrees with me, am happy to support tourism to Fiji and to support the livelihoods of our Fijian industry colleagues.

All of us in the business of international tourism know that when we have a hard look round the world there are actually very few countries which measure up to the sort of democracy we are privileged to enjoy in Australia. 

If we were to take Mark’s logic to its logical conclusion there would be few countries indeed in the world which would be politically correct enough for travel professionals to send clients.

Are you suggesting Mark that we stop booking travellers to one party countries such as China (host country for the 2008 Olympics), Vietnam, Singapore, military ruled Thailand, most of South America, most of the Middle East and Africa?

There are also some countries whose political systems are anathema to me as individual to the extent that I would be reluctant to visit them. 

However, I do not believe it’s my place as a travel professional to tell a client you shouldn’t go to a particular country because I don’t like their politics.

Truth in travel is not about prescribing the political system of countries we visit but to engage them, understand them a bit better and then maybe express an opinion.

Fundamentally, the choice of destination is the traveller’s not the travel agent’s. Our responsibility as travel professionals and I believe it is our prime responsibility to ensure that travellers can travel safely to and from a destination or between destinations.

In 2000 I founded an association called the Eastern Mediterranean Tourism Association (www.emta.org.au) which is still extremely active and promotes tourism to 12 Eastern Med countries, many of which have poisonous political relations with each other and some of which have governments which are not democratic.

The fact is that many Australians travel to all those countries and love them as tourism destinations even if they may not necessarily agree with their system of government.

When EMTA was established, the first article of our constitution was to focus on tourism and ignore politics.

Tourism should be about experiencing first and judging after you’ve experienced and I would certainly apply this maxim to Fiji. 

We and the Fijian people have every right to debate the rights and wrongs of Fiji’s coup but I think its is another thing altogether to punish the Fijian people and their beautiful country because of  political events we may question, disapprove of or disagree with. 

Response by David Beirman, TravelMole’s Tourism Crisis and Recovery Specialist and Correspondent