Travel agents forget boring: become a green concierge

Sustainable tourism is a real opportunity for travel agents to deliver great tourism instead of a boring tourism commodity

The fact is that tourism is now a managed mature industry. This year, we will see the international tourist-count reach 1billion and deliver a trillion dollars in tourism revenue. Add domestic tourism and you have at least 6 billion tourists and at least 6 trillion dollars of revenue.

Big business often means boring business. It also means more or less profitable business shored up by big business partnerships.

What does that mean in practice? Cruises following more or less the same routes, all inclusives offering homogenised deals, chain hotels offering standardized services, low-cost airlines offering practically no services, and all these commodity products delivered by massive global product distribution networks to a PDA in your pocket. Where is the FUN gone? Where is the excitement?

Well, whilst all these big organizations are playing their tourism commodity game with each other – the clever travel agent and small tour operator can do something different, something profitable, something really, really worthwhile.

Worthwhile? Yes. When you are creating products that your clients really love for destinations that really benefit – your heart swells. That’s worthwhile.

How? Become a green tourism concierge and engage in a really disruptive innovative practice.
Recently I was asked what distinguished sustainable tourism from mass tourism. My answer "Exciting – not boring"

The question is, do you want to make your clients SO excited they’ll come back for much more, again and again?

Here are my personal examples of exciting (not boring!) sustainable places I’ve stayed in the last few years:

De Noordhoek Hotel – newly built four star boutique hotel in Noordhoek Farm Village, worm farm, massive kitchen gardens amazing restaurants fabulously fresh food, astonishingly friendly service. Right by the sea.

Podlemorye Lake Baikal – billions of billionaire roubles have gone into some accommodation here on the deepest, oldest and perhaps cleanest lake in the world. Be a bit innovative and have a sauna in the specially kitted-out lakeside camper van, but stay with Olga.

Bunga Raya Island Eco Resort and Spa Sabah Borneo. The big, big total luxury heavenly sumptuous deal. Amazing food, astonishing situation. If I died and went to heaven it would be here. Giant clam conservation project. Their kitchen garden is their fish farm.

Damaraland Camp, Namibia is total Spartan stylish luxury in the most beautiful and sensitive area of one of the most beautiful and sensitive countries in the world. Small, friendly with big tents and an really peaceful disposition. You really know you are in Africa! Run by a medium sized tour operator with a BIG heart

Sunny Hill Farm (Solberga Gard) on the island of Oland in Sweden is an organic dream come true for a young professor of climate change and his family. Food from the field, swimming in the local ocean, lovely bracing walks and cycling on the very well-kept, very Swedish, very unknown island.

Towering in Morocco’s High Atlas mountains, the Kasbah du Toubkal seems like a film set (obviously Martin Scorsese thought so – he set a film there). Totally commitment to sustainability delivers delicious food and remarkably friendly service from local people and quite astonishing, natural views.

Blue Hayes, St Ives, Cornwall must deliver the best British Breakfast there is. Locally sourced, high quality produce, superbly served, well-dressed tables, luxuriously comfortable surroundings, superb views to enjoy while you eat and dream (of a swim, perhaps?)

Number One Aldwych, London embodies all the sustainable facets that make an hotel really hip! Thoughtful style, attention to detail, ravishing comfort, local sourcing of good food, energy management, great staff policies, and a ‘No Snob’ policy. All go together to deliver happy hospitality.

Casa Masoli, Ravenna Italy. True old money luxury with frescoes, great art, considered style, antiques, pictures and accessible books everywhere, massive rooms and apartments, family-run. Great festival city. Takes you back to an age of luxury and languor

The Strand Hotel Kilkee, Loop Head Peninsula, Ireland. Here you get a truly heartfelt welcome from everyone you meet in the street. Isn’t that great, free therapy? Add to this the quality of the food (you can’t beat a few metres from sea or garden to kitchen) the sublime sights, great walks on statuesque cliffs, a pod of dolphins at close quarters and a tourism group determined to deliver sustainability – you  have true authenticity.

All with sustainability at their heart and true ammunition for disrupting mass tourism effectively!

Valere Tjolle
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