Thank you for attending our first webinar. We hope that you found the discussion instructive, if not enlightening, and that you will join us for our next session — scheduled for 1pm GMT on 18 June and focussing on responsible tourism in publishing.
If you wish to listen to and/or share the proceedings of this completed webinar, a full recording, a chat transcript and written summary are all available online.
As discussed, our inaugural session was the first of a regular series of online gatherings. In coming webinars we will continue to bring together vocal advocates and practitioners of travel and tourism who share a belief in a responsible way forward.
However, in keeping with our ‘responsible’ theme — and given our guiding desire to keep our discussions both interesting and relevant — we are eager to hear what you have to say.
- your thoughts (constructive and deconstructuve) about this first webinar
- the topics/themes you would like us to address in coming sessions
- the names and/or kinds of qualifications of guest presenters you would like us to invite to coming sessions.
We hope to see you again: 1pm GMT on 18 June. Register here, mark it in your calendars and share the news with others.
Posted under General
This post was written by editor on June 4, 2009
Hello,great webinar! Looking forward for the next ones and also for the recordings.
Best regards,
Corina Georgescu
Romania
Please feel free to leave any comments… for future webinars we will have a more interactive forum available afterwards…. but please leave your thoughts and share ideas…
This was impressive! Participants identified the challenges and positive actions that we can undertake right now.
One of the common threads in the discussion was the disconnect between top-down and bottom-up strategies. “The development organizations are very good at developing themselves,” said one participant. This type of silo thinking is a primary obstacle for engaging the travelers and locals. My question – are there ways to connect the dots, bring the ‘experts’ and the ‘clients’ together?
In the past ten years my work has focused on this very question, but with medium success. Most donors, academics, officials don’t want to participate in public events. Reflecting on this, it seems to be a matter of control. The experts don’t want to give it up! But if we manage to view responsible tourism in a more holistic manner, then giving up control generates strength. It’s a matter of looking at one another at team players, not as competitors.
Waking up for a 7am global conference call certainly puts my day in perspective. I look forward to listening to the recording and I’ll be editing the RT page on the Planeta Wiki
http://planeta.wikispaces.com/responsibletourism
Hello, and thank you, for an important dialogue.
As a traveler, I have been really digging into online communities and searches to uncover sites about responsible tourism. The turn of phrase “socially conscious tourism,” which I first saw in the American publication ODE: For Intelligent Optimists (published out of San Francisco), provided at least an initiating term for my searches, otherwise I would have been blind to where to begin.
Following this session, and the issues brought forward by Ron, Valere, and Len, I am now regarding my search struggle from the other side: how Tourism-Vision, WHL, and ICRT, for instance, can/should become more visible to anyone who is traveling.
And here I find a crossroads. For, those practising responsible, or sustainable, tourism, are typically those who are willing to slug out some effort to create the experiences that make up our lives. Thus ensues the internet search.
Is a ‘hashtag’ enough? I think it is an important start. Perhaps what is also vital is a direct line of communication among people: travelers, and locals. And, I suppose, the infrastructure to support this …
Anyway, looking forward to the next one!
I think you touch on the point there Ron which has been a key reason as to why the lessons around Responsible Tourism have not been heard as widely as they could be.
The desire to retain control of a movement and knowledge is a real inhibitor to any sort of progress. This is why diverse groups coming together through these webinars, beginning to exchange ideas and thinking is so crucial.
I’m delighted that Amber attended today as an interested traveller, amongst all of the businesses and organisations who registered to attend. That’s exactly what this is about – engaging everyone.
This morning’s exchange of ideas was very interesting. However, I often find that responsible tourism is mostly connected to tourism in small communities and developing countries. I would like to see how responsible tourism could be integrated to all types of destinations,travel forms, forums and social media since this is where the ‘volume’ of tourists can be found.
Thanks again for this morning!
Interesting session and I thank the hosts.
I would tend to agree that there is often a tendency for those who are passionate about an idea or movement to speak to each other (”preach to the converted”) rather than to a larger audience, but such discussions can provide new perspectives to reach out beyond the subgroup.
I suggest one other approach for those whose websites or organizations are not focused on responsible travel alone: try to make such notions implicit in your content/mission such that the ethical imperatives do not frighten the larger traveling population. The Italians are typically brilliant in their Slow Food and Agriturism movements by combining pleasure and ethics in a complementary fashion, and I fear that too much talk about ethical imperatives may put off the larger travel population.
While you may not know much about the magazine (Transitions Abroad) founded by my late father Dr. Clay Hubbs in 1977 and continued as a website, we have long made Responsible Travel an implicit and as well as explicit element in our editorial to reach a larger audience. The core of our original mission was actually “educational travel,” with the notion being that those who travel, work, study, live abroad as much as possible throughout their lives will generally develop a sensitivity–an empathy–which will foster notions of responsible travel and make them “common sense.”
We cover work, study, living, and travel abroad in a manner which places respect for local people and cultures to the fore — and inspiration for empathetic travel is hopefully the consequence amongst our fairly vast audience (of which only 50% U.S.).
Web 2.0 tools have great potential to spread various messages and form temporary or permanent groups, but I believe that the various technologies which come and go remain problematic in terms of actually finding the information I seek. I still end up using Google to do much of the research for my own site in many cases since it is often hard to find information consolidated in an organized and edited manner via Twitter, etc. And I worked as a software engineer consultant for 20 years…
Ron Mader’s use of his Wiki is a good model, I find, as is Wikipedia in general for the consolidation of knowledge as a reference point for social networking.
Excellent point Marie-Andree for future webinars…we will certainly look to address that theme. Thanks also for your thoughts Gregory, Im sure we would all like to hear more on this in future session/s.
I\’d like to propose a guest presenter for next session if it\’s not too late…
Richard Hammond is a freelance travel writer (principally for the Guardian) and have recently finished co-writing
\’Clean Breaks – 500 New Ways to See the World\’, which is published by Rough Guides and will be available in early August 2009. He also edited Alastair Sawday\’s Green Places to Stay (pub. 2006) and writes regularly about Green Travel.
I think he can be a great addition to the discussion!
Hi Giulia,
Thanks for your thought on future speakers. Richard Hammond is certainly someone we have included on our long lists, but your extra support here will given us extra reason to consider him.
A full recording of the Webinar, a chat transcript and written summary are all available online now at http://bit.ly/jx3hY.