Sustainable tourism management is more than picking a few eco-things and doing them when you remember. Sustainable tourism management requires a range of actions that must be actively managed. It requires a long-term commitment to performance improvement. The best certifications support ongoing sustainable tourism management. Good certifications are transparent, have credible, technically sound standards, and include independent third-party assessment. Good certifications help sustainable tourism enterprises manage the variety of activities they must undertake to achieve their goals and help them "ratchet" up their performance over time. Certification isn't...

19 August, 2019 /

We live in a world of big hits and long tails and it has a big impact on tourism. It was linguist, George Zipf that noticed that the most common word is used twice as much as the second most common word, three times a frequently as the third most popular. It is called inversely proportional. When you graph this relationship with the most popular thing on the left and the least popular on the right, you get a line that is starts high, drops quickly, and but never seems to end as it...

04 August, 2019 /

Monterey is a leader in promoting responsible travel. Their "Sustainable Moments" tips help travelers minimize the negative impacts of travel. Monterey County Convention and Visitors Bureau (MCCVB), the Destination Marketing Organization (DMO) for the region, has been an important catalyst in developing this program. They work with the destination community, particularly the tourism industry, to help them encourage responsible travel. While sustainability is always a team effort, MCCVB shows some of the ways DMOs can make a difference. Enjoy this video featuring their groundbreaking program. https://youtu.be/1xY9bh-Ns3A Credit...

09 June, 2019 /

It has become common for calls for sustainability in tourism. But what does that mean ? The definitions of sustainable tourism don't help answer this question much. Most definitions these days include the Triple-Bottom-Line (People, Planet, Profits), TBL, and the importance of taking a long term view - considering both today and tomorrow. These definitions are conceptually appealing but frustratingly vague. In some ways, sustainable tourism requires three-dimensional thinking. On one dimension, there are the activities required for each component of the TBL. For example, the simplest...

07 June, 2019 /

[caption id="attachment_754" align="alignright" width="300"] Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash[/caption]   Sustainable tourism is not a niche, suitable only for a small group of specialist travelers traveling to out of the way places. Sustainable tourism principles can be applied to all tourism destinations and all tourism businesses. While it can be applied to everyone, it’s not easy. Ensuring that we maximize the benefits of tourism, and reduce the negative impacts of tourism, is a complex set of activities that require the active participation of a variety of folks working together. That’s true...

09 February, 2019 /

Overtourism is a significant problem for many of the world’s most popular destinations. In the summer of 2017, the issue of overtourism came to a boil with many media outlets questioning – what can be done about overtourism? The problem was (and is) immediate and seemed to have come upon us suddenly - almost by surprise. Of course, overtourism wasn't a surprise. Like many feedback loops in systems, the problem of overtourism had been building in the tourism system for a long time before it was noticed by the...

04 June, 2018 /

The idea that tourism is a system has been around for a while. Morrison and Mill wrote the first edition of The Tourism System in 1985 - and they weren't the first to recognize the concept. Since then there have been advances - Louise Twining Ward - added that tourism was a Complex and Adaptive System and Noel Scott and his colleagues have done great work on understanding the dynamics within these networks. So - if we know its a system - why don't we treat it like one ?...

22 May, 2015 /

Tourism is a system. A big, complex, ever changing, system. Within the tourism system are thousands of embedded systems. Each destination, each distribution channel, each sector - is a system. Each system is unique. ...

12 May, 2015 /
Show more