Mr. Balla Musa Krubally was the
International Relation�s Officer at the Gambia Tourism Authority as well as the
Responsible Tourism Partnership (RTP) Coordinator until Monday 2nd June 2008
when he tragically died in a car crash while on duty travelling to the Roots
Festival Carnival. Balla Musa Krubally was a valued member of staff at the
Gambian Tourism Authority, He was an advocate for Responsible Tourism within
the Gambian Tourism Authority and a good friend of ASSET and the ICRT – West Africa.

When he died he was working on a new training programme for
the Official Tourist Guides (the OTGs) which would have enabled them to
specialise and develop their product. This would have improved their living
standards and the quality of The Gambian tourism experience.

His was an untimely and violent death and our sympathies are
with his family and friends.

ICRT alumni Marie-Sylvestre B�langer is now based in Churchill Manitoba

Nominations for the Virgin Holidays
Responsible Tourism Awards 2008 closed on Monday 16 June. Nominations were up
on last year with 1900 nominations received. Evidence that interest in
Responsible Tourism is growing, and make the job of the judges more
challenging.

Katie Frewing of Responsible Travel
adds “We have seen some great nominations come in � some old faces but
some brand new ones too! – with a good spread across the 13 categories.

The nominations are now with the
team from Harold Goodwin�s International
Centre for Responsible Tourism.  They are
going through them, checking responsible tourism policies and doing background
research to decide who should make the long list in each category.

A Toledo Council for Responsible Tourism held its inaugural meeting on June 18th. The organiastion has been founded to promote sustainable tourism in southern  Belize . A one day retreat has been planned for  the 21 stakeholder organizations ro determine their priorities.

The Secretary-General of the UNWTO, Francesco Frangialli,
has confirmed that he is to step down at the beginning of  2009, and asserted that the adoption of the
Global Code of Ethics for Tourism which had been recognized by the UN General
Assembly as the basis for responsible tourism.

Read the story at http://www.unwto.org/media/news/en/press_det.php?id=2381&idioma=E

Pioneering publisher and traveller Hilary Bradt has been included in
this year�s Birthday Honours List published by Buckingham Palace on
14th June 2008 �for services to the tourist industry and to charity�.
The honour acknowledges Hilary�s achievements in opening up new
destinations and encouraging �responsible tourism�, even before the
phrase was coined.

Read more at http://www.easier.com/view/Travel/Travel_Guides/article-185684.html

The first Evening with  ….. ICRT event took place at the Vintry
in the City of London
last night. More than a score of alumni and associates, gathered for drinks and
then we withdrew to the cellar bar for Simon�s informal chat about communicating
Responsible Tourism. Simon has set the tone for future events in this series – glass
in hand he shared with us his views about the worthiness of the idea of
Responsible Tourism arguing that we should look forward to a time when we could
just talk about tourism because it would all be responsible.

This provoked a lively discussion which continued in the bar
afterwards. It is clear that there are a diversity of ways of communicating the
messages of Responsible Tourism and that it is the experience that continues to
be central to our agenda, Responsible Tourism has to offer a better experience -
as Krippendorf pointed out in 1987 (earlier in German)

�Orders and prohibitions will not do the job – because it is not a bad
conscience that we need to make progress, but positive experience, not the
feeling of compulsion but that of responsibility�.

Proposals need to be as infectious as possible. We can all
make a difference �every individual
builds up or destroys human values while travelling�.