Going on holiday needn’t mean leaving ethics at home, says Rosie Burke.
How clear is your conscience? You may eat organic carrots, recycle your newspapers, and contribute to charity. But now you're going on holiday so you don't need to think about all that. Do you?
“No, it’s as important people apply ethical issues to their holidays as to the rest of their lives.” Lara Marsh, campaigns officer at Tourism Concern, doesn’t want to spoil your trip, but she does think people have an obligation to consider the impact they may be having on their destination. “Ethical tourism can mean all sorts of things - where you decide to go in the first place, who you travel with and how you behave when you get there. Tourism is the world’s largest industry. It can bring benefit, but it’s not spread evenly.”
The World Tourism Organisation predicts that in the next ten years the number of tourists will reach one billion a year with a quarter of those travelling to the Third World. And while some of the developing nations are delighted at the influx of foreign currency, on the whole local people see little benefit from our spending. The World Bank estimates 90 per cent of income from tourism goes straight to the multinational operators, with local people seeing as little as 10 pence in every pound. “Building hotels and resorts can lead to short-term jobs, but they can also lead to the destruction of habitats and so of livelihoods. Precious water supplies are often diverted to the large hotels or swimming pools, fishing grounds are cordoned off for snorkeling and any villages in the way of development are simply pulled down,” explains Lara Marsh.
“Tour operators are there to make money and there are some who have adopted the buzz words and use them for marketing rather than being genuinely concerned, while others who do good things may be keeping quiet about it,” says Mike Sykes, Managing Director of one operator.
To try and help the ‘quiet’ ones, Tourism Concern has published a community tourism guide. This shows us how to have holidays in the developing world in ways that benefit poor communities. For example, you needn’t book through a large multinational company; you can book directly with a local operator. You need to be careful when deciding on your destination. Tourism Concern urges people to react with their feet to hostile regimes. “If a country has a record of human rights abuses you should simply stay away,” instructs Lara Marsh.
But not everyone thinks that absence makes the country stronger.
Hilary Bradt, who publishes Bradt guidebooks, believes boycotts are basically detrimental. “Staying away doesn’t do anyone any good while going can make a difference. By depriving an area of tourism it’s the locals who are suffering.” The Dalai Lama agrees. He argues that Tibet needs tourists to continue visiting his country so that they can see and report back on the conditions the local people have to cope with.
Tourism Concern would like people on package holidays to widen their horizons and travel beyond the confines of their tourist compounds and luxury hotels. It has produced a film now shown on some flights to the Gambia that suggests some steps to ethical behaviour. Tourists are urged to travel further afield, visiting the villages, learning about the country’s culture and purchasing local products - as long as they are dressed decently.
People in the Gambia have had their modesty offended by tourists’ style of dress. But by visiting markets, tourists can inject some money into the local economy by buying home-grown goods, something the large hotels tend not to do. “I knew of one hotel in the Gambia that imported all their tomatoes from the Canary Islands when they really needn’t have done as they had tomatoes growing yards away from their compound,” says Mike Sykes. Hilary Bradt also felt an ethical policy was betrayed on a recent trip cruising poverty stricken areas of Russia. All the food consumed during the cruise had been flown in from Holland.
As an industry, tourism is almost impossible to regulate. “Tourism isn’t a single product, there are a whole range of services provided by a whole range of people,” explains Jackie Gibson who works for the Association of British Travel Agents. “It’s up to the airline, to the hotel, to the tour operator and to the local government to limit the damage. In Mauritius they have a local law that no hotel can be higher than the trees which is great, but then they have to justify to the local people why there aren’t as many tourists as there might be. It’s a question of balance, everything we do has an impact. Tourism can have a beneficial effect, it can also mean that we end up destroying what we’re going to see. Most people just think relaxing thoughts on holiday; maybe if they also think about the kind of life the locals are living there and what they can do to help, they’ll actually have a better time.” And you could supplement your suntan with a virtuous glow.
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Like many other industries, the tourist industry changes from year to year. Firstly, this is because people want to see and do different things. (For example, more and more people today are becoming interested in eco-tourism.) Secondly, it is because the world changes; one part of the world can suddenly become more or less dangerous. For example, 2000 was a good year for tourism in Hungary, Slovenia and Croatia, because people stopped fighting in Kosovo. The economy can bring changes, too. When the Japanese yen is strong, Japanese people can travel more cheaply, but visiting Japan is more expensive for people from other countries. In 2000, 16 million tourists from Japan visited other countries, but only 4 million visitors from other countries went to Japan.
What about tourism in the future? People have talked about holidays in space since the 1960s, and some people are already planning them.
In 2001, a rich American man called Dennis Tito had the first holiday in space. For 20 million dollars he got a ride to the International Space Station.
Some companies plan to sell holidays in space. They will take tourists about a hundred kilometers up into space and fly them around the earth. One of these companies, Bristol Spaceplanes Limited, is planning three kinds of spaceship. The largest of the three, the Spacebus, will carry tourists space for about 10,000 dollars per person.
Perhaps there will soon be hotels in space, too. Hilton International are already planning a hotel on the moon; it will be 325 metres high, and they will build a beach for it.
Now people are using computers when they look for a holiday. With virtual reality, you can ‘visit’ different holiday resorts before you decide on your holiday. And virtual reality is getting better all the time. Soon, the real world and virtual reality will look nearly the same. Then tourists will be able to go on holiday and stay at home at the same time!
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