Tourism Concern
Encyclopedia
History
Tourism Concern is a non-governmental organisation based in the United Kingdom. It was founded in 1989 by Alison Stancliffe as an informal network, linking people around Britain with similar organisations elsewhere in the world. Stancliffe was motivated by her experiences when teaching and travelling in South East Asia, where she became concerned that tourists were contributing to economic exploitation in poor regions of the world.By 1991 the charity had reached 100 members, and had begun to lobby travel industry groups, initially encountering some resistance.
That's when Tricia Barnett, the current Director, joined the organisation, which moved to London. Today, Tourism Concern has about 1,000 members.
Following the 2002 Bali bombings, the group campaigned against travel warnings advising travelers to avoid Indonesia due to the threat from Islamist terrorists, and succeeded in inducing the government of the UK to drop their warning in early 2004. Tourism Concern director Patricia Barnett said "We can no longer just stand aside and watch destinations suffer whilst they have no voice on whether British tourists can visit them or not." Another attack did not occur in Bali until late 2005.
Impacts on the tourism industry
Early campaigns include work in Goa, where Tourism Concern fought to stop much needed water from being diverted from village wells to hotels. The campaign encountered much resistance from the tourism industry, while at the same time, Tourism Concern realised that there was little or no awareness of such issues among holidaymakers at this time, encouraging campaigns to be launched, and important issues of ethics in tourism to be raised.Major achievements:
- Lobbying for a World Responsible Tourism Day at World Travel MarketWorld Travel MarketWorld Travel Market is a UK event aimed at the global travel industry. Almost 46,000 senior travel industry professionals, government ministers and representatives of the international media, converge on ExCeL London each year in November to attend WTM. This year World Travel Market is scheduled...
, one of the two largest annual global travel trade shows, which takes place in London. In 2010, the Responsible Tourism Day, now in its fifth year, was attended by thousands of tourism professionals. - The Himalayan Trekking Code, the basis of the current Code for Working Conditions for Porters.
- Adding to the national curriculum: Tourism Concern's "Looking Beyond the Brochure Teaching Pack" offers a case study of the Gambia, which is now taught in UK schools.
- A report for the Rio Earth Summit outlining principles for sustainable tourismSustainable tourismSustainable 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...
, which led to the participation of Tourism Concern in the creation of the Global Sustainable Tourism Criteria - The adoption of policies on labor conditions for hotels, by all of the UK's leading tour operators, following a large campaign called "Sun, Sand, Sea and Sweatshops".
Noel Josephides, the Managing Director of tour operator Sunvil, said that Tourism Concern has been "like a small dog snapping at the heels of the industry. After years of throwing money at resorts to build rabbit-hutch hotels, the industry has finally realised that we're running out of carefully managed destinations. Tourism Concern is advising the big companies. It's working and it's worth all their effort."
Current Campaigns
Since 2007, Tourism Concern has worked to implement a voluntary code of conduct scheme for tour companies offering "gap yearGap year
An expression or phrase that is associated with taking time out to travel in between life stages. It is also known as sabbatical, time off and time out that refers to a period of time in which students disengage from curricular education and undertake non curricular activities, such as travel or...
" packages to British students. The aim is to increase 'Gap Year' benefits to the recipient countries as well as to the volunteers, while still very profitable for the companies arranging them. Tourism Concern director Tricia Barnett told The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, "We are at a point where volunteering is dovetailing into tourism. More people want to volunteer abroad and the age group involved is getting bigger".
Since 2004, Tourism Concern campaigns to raise the alarm on unfair tourism development in the areas affected by the Tsunami.
More recently, Tourism Concern has pulled together a think-tank of heavyweight NGOs and organisations, to support its Water Equity in Tourism (WET) campaign.