The growth in travel has been mind-boggling. The change has taken place in front of our eyes and we are only starting to come to terms with what it means. To put it all in perspective, let me share the numbers in terms of my life so far. I did my first international trip as a student in grade 10. It was 1980 and we went to New Caledonia on a school trip. It was awesome – and started my lifelong love of tourism. According to the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) In...

20 November, 2019 /

The great migration of Chinese people from the countryside to cities is one of the most incredible things of the last 50 years. The growth of cities has transformed China in many ways. It is not surprising that Chinese people today look to their village roots with great nostalgia. Push back on urbanization has happened in other cultures. In England, the Romantic movement responded to industrialization and the fascination with cowboys and The West happened as the importance of cities grew in the US.    In a recent study...

20 November, 2019 /

The summer of 2017 a new term - Overtourism - burst into discussions about tourism. While the issues of overtourism have been around for some time, the folks at Skift named it and featured it in their 2017 megatrends. People in some of the most popular destinations, frustrated with the negative impacts of tourism, reached their tipping point, and a tourist backlash began. There is no question that overtourism is a problem. But overtourism is a symptom of a bigger challenge - sustainable destination management -...

08 September, 2019 /

Conversations about sustainability in tourism can seem a little vague. This is particularly true for sustinable destinations. Often there are general conversations about the environment, social issues, and economics that seem to lack action steps or measures. Too often these conversations fail to move to practical steps to getting started. Sustainable tourism management is both actionable and measurable. The good news is that no destination needs to "start from scratch". Over the years several organizations have developed sets of actions required to achieve sustainability in destinations. These criteria...

20 August, 2019 /

My team in Purdue's Sustainable Tourism and Responsible Travel Lab are doing fantastic work. Check out this introduction to our work that recently aired on the Big 10 network...

19 August, 2019 /

We live at a time of incredible travel freedoms. If you have the time and money, you can go almost anywhere. ( We'll talk in another post about issues around time, money and travel another time). With these freedoms, comes responsibility. As a traveler, you are visiting someone else's community. Your journey of discovery or relaxation takes place in a destination community where people live their lives. Your freedom to visit is based on their hospitality - don't take it for granted. With the freedom to visit...

17 August, 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 /
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