Lori Robertson has published a piece which leads with a piece about the MSc in Responsible Tourism at Leeds Met – it is accessible from outside the UK at
www.bbc.com/travel/blog/20120822-ethical-traveller-getting-a-degree-in-sustainable-travel

For some, travelling is a calling — not just to see the world, but to build a career.

And as the ideas of responsible and sustainable tourism have taken hold, so too have university degree programs designed to give students the skills to influence how tourism is managed, with the goal of benefiting local communities, preserving their cultures and protecting their environment.

Here’s a look at a few academic programs that can turn a passion into a full-time job:

Leeds Metropolitan University, Leeds, UK
The masters in responsible tourism management at Leeds Metropolitan University is a pioneer in this course of study. Professor Harold Goodwin brought the course to Leeds from London’s University of Greenwich in 2007. Goodwin, who founded the  International Centre for Responsible Tourism (ICRT), also at Leeds, in 2002, said the course is “designed to enable people to make change: to use tourism for sustainable development, to use tourism to make better places for people to live in and better places for people to visit.” Distance learning allows mid-career professionals to live and work around the world while taking classes such as responsible tourism theory, local economic development and poverty alleviation. The ICRT works with governments and tourism professionals around the world to promote responsible tourism.

The WTTC and UNWTO led the way in establishing the idea that tourism is the world’s biggest industry, or at least one of the largest. It was Sir Colin Marshall, then chairman of British Airways, who let the cat out of the bag when he launched the Tourism for Tomorrow Awards in 2004. He described tourism and the travel industry as “…essentially the renting out for short-term lets of other people’s environments, whether this is a coastline, a city, a mountain range, or a rainforest.”

This is factually correct, when we are tourists, staying away from home for at least one night; we are using someone else’s place for business or pleasure. When we are away from home, whether for business or pleasure, we use both private places and public spaces, we pay for the use of hotels, restaurants, bars, cafés and some attractions. But for the public spaces we use and enjoy, we pay nothing – in London for example tourists pay nothing to climb on the lions in Trafalgar Square, walk on the South Bank or visit the British Museum. It is the local people and their governments who fund these attractions.

The same issues arise in the countryside, both natural and cultural heritage needs to be funded. It needs to be maintained, litter needs to be removed, footpaths restored, buildings maintained and visitors managed. Scotland, Switzerland and Swaziland attract tourists for a range of reasons, but prominent amongst those reasons are the views. And tourists do not pay to look at the view or walk in the countryside. The tourists and the tourism businesses do not contribute to the costs which arise from their use of the landscape or the public spaces.

The industry argues that it pays tax like any other. And that’s the problem, like any other. The dairy pays taxes too, but the dairy does not collect rent from the tourists for the use of other people’s environment – hotels and tour operators rely on the public realm but do not contribute any more than other businesses to its maintenance.

On the Thursday of World Travel Market we shall be asking the question: Are tourists paying enough for entrance to the world’s natural & cultural heritage?   Hetty Byrne of the Forest of Bowland and Ruth Kirk of Nurture Lakeland will be sharing what they are doing to encourage tourism businesses and tourists to put back into the places we love to visit.

I don’t think that tourists and tourism businesses are paying enough – how do we ensure that they do not collect and keep all the rent – some of it needs to be used to support the natural and cultural heritage which attracts the tourists in the first place.

What do you think?

Responsible Tourism is about taking responsibility, doing what you can to use tourism to make our world a better place. Responsible Tourism is a movement of people, holidaymakers, travellers, guides and businesses committed to do what they can to make our world a better place and to pass on its rich cultural and natural diversity to our children.

We can all do our bit to increase the positive impacts of our travelling and to reduce the negative; that is the challenge WTM makes to the industry through World Responsible Tourism Day. If we can -and we can all do something – we should. With power and opportunity comes responsibility. We can all contribute to making the world a better place. 

Listening to the British athletes who won medals in the Olympics on Saturday that sense of responsibility shone through in the recognition, in so many interviews with medal winners, of the contribution which parents, clubs, trainers, physios, family and friends made top their success; and in their sense that they had to perform to avoid letting down them and the supporters.

Linda Cruse  prefaces her book Machine Guns and Marmalade with the words of the poet Robert Frost

“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less travelled by,
And that made all the difference.”

Each of the athletes took a different road, the hard road, driven by the compulsion to take part, to do their best, to give their all, and perchance to win.

 Taking responsibility, trying to make a difference can be daunting. It was Anita Roddick, Founder of The Body Shop and one of those who encourage Justin Francis and me to launch ResponsibleTravel.com who famously pointed out that “If you think you’re too small to have an impact try going to bed with a mosquito in the room.”

In her book, Machine Guns and Marmalade, Linda recounts her decision to take a different road, her road, and to make a difference. In her words “an incredible journey – humbling, exhausting, stressful, challenging but rewarding beyond measure.”

The book is inspirational. Read it for the energy in imparts and for its vision, one which we can all take something from. It raised my spirits and has inspired me to engage with Linda, her “Be the Change Academy” and with Chance for Change

Her ethos of ‘Hand up not Hand Out’ has caught the attention of business leaders, including Sir Richard Branson: “Linda makes the impossible, possible. What a great adventure.”

She has imbibed and applied the thinking of Lao Tzu and applied it to tourism in Morocco where she has worked with Virgin Unite and Branson’s Kasbah Tamadot:

Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, you feed him for life.”

Read the book, be inspired, get involved, do your bit, make a difference.