What is sustainable tourism Mr. Tour Guide?

By the Colca Specialist

This is a question that most of the tour guides are not able to answer. Not even our authorities who are thinking just about how to win the next elections.
Disgracefully Peru is one of the countries whose budget for education is very low and now we are seeing the effects of this chaotic type of politics well-known as centralism.

Sustainable tourism is not a trend but a need in these days especially in Arequipa where tourism is the second most important activity. Wikipedia offers a very concise article that can be very useful for everybody especially for the travel agencies, tour guides and authorities from Arequipa who maybe think that sustainable is just another “word” in the lexicon of tourism.

I chose it because The Colca Specialist loves education and as a teacher I love education. I think that the future of our country depends on our people especially on the new generations.
Our country´s economy is much dependant on natural resources so that is why mining is literally the activity which is moving the economy of Peru. But what will happen to Peru and to us when we run out of natural resources?

We have to invest in education and in our people. Ignorance is the enemy of the peoples.
If you check in Trip Advisor and in many other travelers forums you can find a lot of complaints coming from tourists from different countries around the world, all of them complaining from the bad service received in Colca Canyon, complaining from the tour guides commissions which are increasing each time more, but inside the complaints we can realize that part of the problem are TOURISTS too. Specially the very cheap ones who want to travel in all Peru with 500 bucks taking poor quality services, eating in places whose collection of bacteria would break a record Guiness and afterwards they write a complaint in Trip Advisor forum.

If there are many complaints in Trip Advisor against several travel agencies from Arequipa why I have to travel with those bad travel agencies? Very simple because I want something very cheap. Come on guys be reasonable. It is like eating in a restaurant.

In Travel and Living TV program I saw that in LAS VEGAS when you take a tour the guide charges 20 dollars per hour. A hamburguer in a exclusive place can cost 700 hundred US! In Chile the entrance fee to the hot springs in an exclusive place cost more than 30 dollars and here the "gringos" are complaining because the tour to the Colca Canyon costs 20 dollars! Come on guys be reasonable.

Economy here is different. The standards of quality are different but let me tell you something. Peruvian standards of quality are improving each time more and the prices for the next years are not going to be the same as in the past.

If I buy that 20 US tour I should not expect to have the best. 20 dollars for a tour with guide, hotel, transportation, etc it sounds a little bit strange.I would NOT like to sleep in the hotel or hostal offered in those tours. As we know those hotels are not classified and those beds should be terrible. I don´t want to think about the toilet. Those cheap hotels don´t even have a name. The same happens with those cheap 95 soles 2 day trekking tours inside Colca Canyon.

If I see that in Trip Advisor there are several complaints against a travel agency, it would be very stupid if I buy a tour in that travel agency and I would feel very ashamed of myself if my complaint appears with my name in Trip Advisor forum.

If there are hundred complaints about that bad travel agency I don´t have to be idiot hundred one in the same list! Tourists should be responsible, smart and SUSTAINABLE too.

According to the Hindi wise men, the most intelligent are those who learned from the others experience by reading, hearing or seeing. The foolest are the ones who don´t hear the advice and they suffer the consequences of their headstrong attitude.

Those are the ones who continue writing complaints about the same bad service travel agencies.Why? Because they are the cheapest. The problem are not the bad travel agencies who are already identified. The problem is tourists attitude. Are we looking for trouble in our HOLIDAYS?

We don´t recommend tourists to buy tours in the hotels. All of them end traveling with those bad travel agencies.

So what is sustainable tourism?

Sustainable tourism is tourism attempting to make a low impact on the environment and local culture, while helping to generate future employment for local people. The aim of sustainable tourism is to ensure that development brings a positive experience for local people, tourism companies and the tourists themselves. Sustainable tourism is not the same as ecotourism.

Overview

Global economists forecast continuing international tourism growth, ranging between 3 and 6 percent annually, depending on the location. As one of the world's largest and fastest growing industries, this continuous growth will place great stress on remaining biologically diverse habitats and indigenous cultures, which are often used to support mass tourism. Tourists who promote sustainable tourism are sensitive to these dangers and seek to protect tourist destinations, and to protect tourism as an industry. Sustainable tourists can reduce the impact of tourism in many ways, including:

· informing themselves of the culture, politics, and economy of the communities visited
· anticipating and respecting local cultures, expectations and assumptions
· contributing to intercultural understanding and tolerance
· supporting the integrity of local cultures by favoring businesses which conserve cultural heritage and traditional values
· supporting local economies by purchasing local goods and participating with small, local businesses
· conserving resources by seeking out businesses that are environmentally conscious, and by using the least possible amount of non-renewable resources

Increasingly, destinations and tourism operations are endorsing and following "responsible tourism" as a pathway towards sustainable tourism. Responsible tourism and sustainable tourism have an identical goal, that of sustainable development.

The pillars of responsible tourism are therefore the same as those of sustainable tourism – environmental integrity, social justice and economic development. The major difference between the two is that, in responsible tourism, individuals, organisations and businesses are asked to take responsibility for their actions and the impacts of their actions.

This shift in emphasis has taken place because some stakeholders feel that insufficient progress towards realising sustainable tourism has been made since the Earth Summit in Rio. This is partly because everyone has been expecting others to behave in a sustainable manner.

The emphasis on responsibility in responsible tourism means that everyone involved in tourism – government, product owners and operators, transport operators, community services, NGO’s and CBO’s, tourists, local communities, industry associations – are responsible for achieving the goals of responsible tourism.

Responsible Tourism

Responsible Tourism can be regarded as a behaviour. It is more than a form of tourism as it represents an approach to engaging with tourism, be that as a tourist, a business, locals at a destination or any other tourism stakeholder.

It emphasises that all stakeholders are responsible for the kind of tourism they develop or engage in. Whilst different groups will see responsibility in different ways, the shared understanding is that responsible tourism should entail an improvement in tourism. Tourism should become ‘better’ as a result of the responsible tourism approach.

Within the notion of betterment resides the acknowledgement that conflicting interests need to be balanced. However, the objective is to create better places for people to live in and to visit. Importantly, there is no blueprint for responsible tourism: what is deemed responsible may differ depending on places and cultures. Responsible Tourism is an aspiration that can be realised in different ways in different originating markets and in the diverse destinations of the world .

Focusing in particular on businesses, according to the Cape Town Declaration on Responsible Tourism, it will have the following characteristics:

· minimises negative economic, environmental, and social impacts
· generates greater economic benefits for local people and enhances the well-being of host communities, improves working conditions and access to the industry
· involves local people in decisions that affect their lives and life chances
· makes positive contributions to the conservation of natural and cultural heritage, to the maintenance of the world’s diversity
· provides more enjoyable experiences for tourists through more meaningful connections with local people, and a greater understanding of local cultural, social and environmental issues
· provides access for people with disabilities and
· is culturally sensitive, engenders respect between tourists and hosts, and builds local pride and confidence.

Sustainable tourism is where tourists can enjoy their holiday and at the same time respect the culture of people and also respect the environment. It also means that local people (such as the Masaai) get a fair say about tourism and also receive some money from the profit which the game reserve make. The environment is being damaged quite a lot by tourists and part of Sustainable tourism is to make sure that the damaging does not carry on.

There are many private companies who are working into embracing the principles and aspects of Responsible Tourism, some for the purpose of Corporate Social Responsibility activities, and others such WorldHotel-Link, which was originally a project of the International Finance Corporation, have built their entire business model around responsible tourism, local capacity building and increasing market access for small and medium tourism enterprises.

Responsible Hospitality

As with the view of Responsible Tourism, Responsible Hospitality is essentially about creating better places for people to live in, and better places for people to visit. This does not mean all forms of hospitality are also forms of tourism although hospitality is the largest sector of the tourism industry. As such we should not be surprised at overlaps between Responsible Hospitality and Responsible Tourism.

In the instance where place of permanent residence is also the place where the hospitality service is consumed, if for example a meal is consumed in a local restaurant, this does not obviate the requirement to improve the place of residence. As such, the essence of Responsible Hospitality is not contingent upon touristic forms of hospitality.

While Friedman (1962) famously argued that, admittedly within legal parameters, the sole responsibility of business was to generate profit for shareholders the idea that businesses’ responsibility extends beyond this has existed for decades and is most frequently encountered in the concept of corporate social responsibility.

There are numerous ways businesses can and do engage in activities that are not intended to benefit shareholders and management, at least not in the short term. However, often acts of corporate social responsibility are undertaken because of the perceived benefit to business. Usually in hospitality this relates to the cost reductions associated with improved energy efficiency (Pizam, 2009) but may also relate to, for example, the rise in ethical consumerism and the view that being seen to be a responsible business is beneficial to revenue growth.

As per the Cape Town Declaration on Responsible Tourism, Responsible Hospitality is culturally sensitive. Instead of then calling for the unachievable, Responsible Hospitality simply makes the case for more responsible forms of hospitality, hospitality that benefits locals first, and visitors second. Certainly, all forms of hospitality can be improved and managed so that negative impacts are minimised whilst striving for a maximisation of positive impacts.

Coastal tourism

Many coastal areas are experiencing particular pressure from growth in lifestyles and growing numbers of tourists. Coastal environments are limited in extent consisting of only a narrow strip along the edge of the ocean. Coastal areas are often the first environments to experience the detrimental impacts of tourism. A detailed study of the impact on coastal areas, with reference to western India can be an example.

The inevitable change is on the horizon as holiday destinations put more effort into sustainable tourism.[3] Planning and management controls can reduce the impact on coastal environments[4] and ensure that investment into tourism products supports sustainable coastal tourism.

Some Conceptual models in Coastal tourism

Some of the recent studies have led to some interesting conceptual models applicable for coastal tourism. The 'inverted funnel model' and the 'embedded model' can be good metaphors for understanding the interplay of different stake-holders like government, local community, tourists and business community in developing tourist destinations.

Community-based management

There has been the promotion of sustainable tourism practices surrounding the management of tourist locations by locals or more concisely, the community.

This form of tourism is based on the premise that the people living next to a resource are the ones best suited to protecting it. This means that the tourism activities and businesses are developed and operated by local community members, and certainly with their consent and support.

Sustainable tourism typically involves the conservation of resources that are capitalized upon for tourism purposes, such as coral reefs and pristine forests. Locals run the businesses and are responsible for promoting the conservation messages to protect their environment.

Community-based sustainable tourism (CBST) associates the success of the sustainability of the ecotourism location to the management practices of the communities who are directly or indirectly dependent on the location for their livelihoods.

A salient feature of CBST is that local knowledge is usually utilised alongside wide general frameworks of ecotourism business models. This allows the participation of locals at the management level and typically allows a more intimate understanding of the environment. The use of local knowledge also means an easier entry level into a tourism industry for locals whose jobs or livelihoods are affected by the use of their environment as tourism locations.

The involvement of locals restores the ownership of the environment to the local community and allows an alternative sustainable form of development for communities and their environments that are typically unable to support other forms of development.[citation needed]. However, recent research has found that economic linkages generated by CBST may only be sporadic, and that the linkages with agriculture are negatively affected by seasonality and by the small scale of the cultivated areas. This means that CBST may only have small-scale positive effects for these communities.

Stakeholders

Stakeholders of sustainable tourism play a role in continuing this form of tourism. This can include organizations as well as individuals.

Non-governmental organizations

Non-governmental organizations are one of the stakeholders in advocating sustainable tourism. Their roles can range from spearheading sustainable tourism practices to simply doing research. University research teams and scientists can be tapped to aid in the process of planning. Such solicitation of research can be observed in the planning of Cat Ba National Park in Vietnam.

Dive resort operators in Bunaken National Park, Indonesia, play a crucial role by developing exclusive zones for diving and fishing respectively, such that both tourists and locals can benefit from the venture.

Large conventions, meetings and other major organized events drive the travel, tourism and hospitality industry. Cities and convention centers compete to attract such commerce, commerce which has heavy impacts on resource use and the environment. Major sporting events, such as the Olympic Games, present special problems regarding environmental burdens and degradation. But burdens imposed by the regular convention industry can be vastly more significant.

Green conventions and events are a new but growing sector and marketing point within the convention and hospitality industry. More environmentally aware organizations, corporations and government agencies are now seeking more sustainable event practices, greener hotels, restaurants and convention venues, and more energy efficient or climate neutral travel and ground transportation.

Additionally, some convention centers have begun to take direct action in reducing the impact of the conventions they host. One example is the Moscone Center in San Francisco, California, which has a very aggressive recycling program, a large solar power system, and other programs aimed at reducing impact and increasing efficiency.

Tourists

With the advent of the internet, some traditional conventions are being replaced with virtual conventions, where the attendees remain in their home physical location and "attend" the convention by use of a web-based interface programmed for the task. This sort of "virtual" meeting eliminates all of the impacts associated with travel, accommodation, food wastage, and other necessary impacts of traditional, physical conventions.

Travel over long distances requires a large amount of time and/or energy. Generally this involves burning fossil fuels, a largely unsustainable practice and one that contributes to climate change, via CO2 emissions.

Air travel is perhaps the worst offender in this regard, contributing to between 2 and 3% of global carbon emissions.[8] Given a business-as-usual approach, this could be expected to rise to 5% by 2015 and 10% by 2050. Car travel is the next worst offender.

Mass transport is the most climate friendly method of travel, and generally the rule is "the bigger the better" - compared to cars, buses are relatively more sustainable, and trains and ships are even more so. Human energy and renewable energy are the most efficient, and hence, sustainable. Travel by bicycle, solar powered car, or sailing boat produces no carbon emissions (although the embodied energy in these vehicles generally comes at the expense of carbon emission).

Humane tourism

Humane tourism is part of the movement of responsible tourism. The idea is to empower local communities through travel related businesses around the world, first and foremost in developing countries.

The idea of humane travel or humane tourism is to connect travelers from Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand seeking new adventures and authentic experiences directly, to local businesses in the specific locations they wish to visit – thus, giving economic advantages to local businesses and giving travelers authentic and truly unique travel experiences.

Humane travel or humane tourism focuses on the people, the local community. The idea is to enable travelers to experience the world through the eyes of its local people while contributing directly to those people, ensuring that tourist dollars benefit the local community directly.
Humane tourism is about giving opportunity to the local people, empower them, enable them to enjoy the fruits of tourism directly.

The Internet is changing tourism. More and more travelers are planning their travels and vacations via the net. The Internet enables people to cut off commissions. The traveler can search for new destinations to visit, talk or read about other people experience, and buy the services directly.

The Internet platform can encourage local people to start new businesses and that already existing small businesses will begin to promote themselves through the net and receive the economic advantages of this directly in their communities. The world is now in a new tourism age, with globalization and the Internet playing a key role.

The new travelers have traveled the world, they have seen the classic sites. Staying at a Western hotel is not attractive enough, and they are excited by the prospect of experiencing the authentic local way of life: to go fishing with a local fisherman, to eat the fish with his family, to sleep in a typical village house.

These tourists or travellers, are happy to know that while doing so they promote the economic wellbeing of those same people they spend time with.

Humane tourism is part of Responsible tourism. The concept of Responsible Tourism originated in the work of Jost Krippendorf in The Holiday Makers[9] called for “rebellious tourists and rebellious locals” to create new forms of tourism.

His vision was “to develop and promote new forms of tourism, which will bring the greatest possible benefit to all the participants – travellers, the host population and the tourist business, without causing intolerable ecological and social damage.” As one can see he already talked, back in the 80s about benefits for the host population and used the term human tourism. Humane travel focuses on that host local population.

The South African national tourism policy (1996) [10] used the term "responsible tourism" and mentioned the wellbeing of the local community as a main factor.

The Cape Town Declaration on Responsible Tourism in Destinations,[12] agreed in 2002, that Responsible Tourism is about “making better places for people to live in and better places for people to visit.” The decleration focused on "places" but did nention the local population.

From the Rio summit or earth summit on 1992 [13] until the UN Commission on Sustainable Development in 1999,[14] the main focus of the tourism industry was the earth, the planet, the places, "green" or "eco" tourism. Now there is a trend to include the local population. This trend or branch of responsible tourism is called humane tourism or humane travel.