Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Are we moving toward sustainable travelism?


Someone famously said that “an elephant is a very hard thing to define, but if you see one coming down the street you know what it is”. It’s rather the same about sustainability, travel and tourism – we’ve stopped describing it and started to engage it.

Twenty years ago at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit – when the modern approach to sustainable development was set out in Agenda 21 – the focus was on preserving the planet’s resources. For our sector, it was very much about ecotourism that often translated into: “take pictures, leave footprints”.

Back then, our industry was not seen as a major polluter so it was under limited pressure to embrace the new sustainability mindset. The big thing then was notices in hotel bathrooms telling guests to save the planet by not changing their towels every day.

See full Article: http://forumblog.org/2013/03/are-we-moving-toward-sustainable-travelism/