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2. What are the ethics of volunteering?
Participants: Michael, Planeta, Mary Finn, Guyonne, Advlife
& STIreland
Archive
Participants were divided about the merits of volunteering.
Maasai and Thai Community Tourism organisations together with
a leading UK academic in a debate said... "Volunteer tourism
markets itself to young people wanting to gain experience and
boost their CV using negative stereotypes of the Third World
and is therefore a continuation of colonialism." Our question
is how are these programs evaluated? We ask travelers to listen
to locals and respond to their demands, but the practical question
is how.
Codes of conduct would be great use and would an index of locally
managed projects. Tourism Concern's Ethical Travel Guide lists
more than a dozen countries with volunteering options. Volunteer
programs have the potential for doing some good work, for example,
in conservation, or teaching English or environmental education.
Negative impacts of volunteering include: Gap year students
of all genders, 'mooning' and insulting locals, dancing semi-nude,
exhibiting loud public drunkenness, and in general imitating
episodes of wild college kids on vacation. The excuses are that
this behavior is 'normal', or that both locals and vols are
'having a good time`, and that these were activities between
consenting adults, and so 'no harm was done.' 'whatever the
community wants to do is no one else's business`(including their
'right' to actively set out to seduce visiting women for travel
visas or other personal gain - or as one community leader put
it, 'everyone has the right to try to win the lottery'). But
isn't there a fundamental tension in putting together tourism
and volunteering?
For the vast majority of people, tourism is something we do
for our own pleasure whereas volunteering is a gift for the
benefit of others. Isn't it inevitable that putting the two
activities together will erode the value of both? Are we better
off focusing on the "tourism" part of volunteer tourism?
Maybe renaming it "experiential travel" as this puts
the focus firmly on the traveler's satisfaction?
Rather than view this tension as an indication that there is
a fundamental problem 'eroding the value' of two apparently
conflicting activities, We need to recognize and explicitly
manage this tension, finding the appropriate balance point at
which individual as well as communal benefits can be best served.
The main ethics/behaviours of a voluntourist are - Generosity
(money paid and time spent can provide invaluable resources
to local organisations/communities.) Openness, (to take in as
much as possible in the place visited) Act consciously, thoughtfully,
and willingly, in dealing with new cultures he or she is meeting
without offending them, and Passionate about new cultures and
people.
3. How should an Ethical Traveller select
places to visit?
Participants: Gerhard, Northern Canopy, Planeta, MichaelBKK,
Xfont, China Contact
Archive
Where to go or not to go? Personal research seemed important
to everyone.
Research seems to be the answer, and it's something that any
real Ethical Traveller does as a matter of course. In most cases
the question about where to go is far less important than what
we do there. Ethical travelers can prepare themselves by learning
about the places they wish to visit – reading and asking
on online forums or in person once in the area.
The best we can hope to do in terms of ethics is finding a few
very widely accepted common denominators as very basic terms
of conduct and then it becomes more individualized for each
country, community and person by adding to these general terms.
For the tourism industry an ethical response to a community
opposed to tourism would be for agencies to stop visiting, possibly
even with official regulation. Insensitive, patronizing guides
and agencies from outside of the community, who leave little
or no benefits in the communities are a very likely cause of
opposition to tourism. The ethical tourist can also assist in
making public any such behavior they witness.
If we are to successfully get more people to travel responsibly,
we need to give them clear, easy to follow guidelines that don't
require them to give up to much in exchange for feeling better
about their vacation. The challenge is figuring out which accommodations
or activities are good members of their communities and which
are not. Some are easy, like don't ride elephants on the beach
and don't visit places that let you play with baby monkeys,
but how do we find out about environmental programs or community
relations?
Criteria and standards need to be explained on tourism portals
as well as tourism business websites. If more outbound travel
operators explained online what they expected of inbound partners,
we could see a radical improvement in how tourism is developed
and marketed.
4. How can tourism be used to alleviate poverty?
Participants: Valere, Xfont, ChinaContact, Planeta, Gerhard
Archive
How can we truly help the poor if consultants are charging
$1,000 a day and development agencies are assisting in the creation
of "all-inclusives"?
Morocco has a plan to build 170,000 new beds in coastal resorts
in the next three years, and all the concessions except one
have gone to foreign developers. The thing is that these large
hotels will be built anyhow, and anything we can do to organise
local communities to provide the products for these hotels should
surely be better than further economic leakages from importing
goods.
In Colombia, over 80% of products are national, although the
trend is to import more. Egypt is planning 300.000 new beds
in the next three years too, while also having a token ecotourism
budget using USAID funds. Most of North Africa plans to grow
by building all inclusives, if they are perceived to be sufficiently
stable politically. the hotels will be built anyway not only
do they need staff and supplies but their guests need lots and
lots of things the hotels can't deliver and locals can.
Tours, meals, souvenirs, performances, experiences these are
the things that build local tourism industries. There should
be a simple document or system that helps locals do it themselves,
limiting the often doubtful benefit of expensive outsiders assistance!
If tourism is to help with poverty, governments need the political
will to make brave decisions that may not be popular or profitable
in the short term, only in the long term. In many developing
countries, the arguments for giving out concessions and contracts
to foreign developers and foreign workers is that the local
population does not have the resources, training, education
etc. Any foreign operators or investors must undertake to support
training programs for local communities and guarantee a percentage
of skilled jobs and management jobs will eventually go to local
people through this training. This has to be in the contract
they sign with the government.
How much should consultants, universities, development agencies
charge for development work to alleviate poverty? Also, when
do we offer our time for free? If it is outrageous to charge
$1,000/day for 'pro poor' consulting, do we get any credit for
professional volunteering? It would be good to see more work
done in an inexpensive manner.
Many failures in creating poverty alleviating tourism are caused
by ignoring some simple basic prerequisites before starting
a community project.
Here is a list of a few essential prerequisites:
1. An actual attraction worth visiting
2. A real interest by at least a part of the population to receive
tourists and a willingness to learn
3. A reasonable level of internal organization
4. A longer term sustainability vision
5. Accessibility (being near to existing destinations helps)
6. A strategy to inform and reach the potential market (links
with existing operators, internet, strategic contacts etc.)
On the ground, Planeta co-hosts an annual rural tourism fair
that charges exhibitors about $10 (US) for a one-day affair
that last year attracted nearly 400 people and generated a ton
of media coverage.
5. How should ethical products and services be marketed?
Participants: Valere, chinacontact, Planeta
Archive
Participants offered a number of suggestions of how ethical
travel can be promoted.
In May Planeta.com launched a Tourism Marketing Survey that
asked what tourism professionals (hotel owners, in-bound and
out-bound operators) and guides thought of government marketing
campaigns, particularly as it relates to ethical travel -- ecotourism,
responsible tourism, etc. Respondents have given government
marketing campaigns a low mark. Travel operators either do not
know the PR agencies that represent the country or have no meaningful
contact.
Many individual operators say that government marketing campaigns
are of little assistance or that they work against them. That
said, they have some interesting recommendations:
If there was 1/10th as much time spent on facilitating the connection
between existing ecotourism suppliers (or suppliers that could
be ecotourism if it they saw the benefit) and wholesaler clients,
as is spent on "training" people in-country on how
to start an ecotourism business, those businesses would have
an exponentially better chance of succeeding.
Much is said about the important role of ecotourism in the context
of conserving biodiversity and in the context of "bridging"
the gap between biodiversity and poverty. Few things are done
in concrete to reach this goal. What from my point of view really
would be important (and very simple) is that the organizations
working toward conservation and biodiversity (UNEP, World Bank
and others) evaluate local promising ecotourism companies and
dedicate a page that link to responsible ecotourism tour operators
and their projects.
We need to learn to visualise our benefitting communities and
environments and cultures with tourism and transfer this knowledge
to our practical marketing. We need to learn to use our clients
to create great "Word of Mouth" BUZZ campaigns.
We need to learn how to attract appropriate clients through
the internet. We need to learn how to market ORGANICALLY and
use these methods to change the way tourism is seen and to fulfil
its many potential benefits.
The Fair Trade movement has shown to work well in Europe when
it comes to produce and can be applied to tourism with the right
research and commitment. Tourism Concern is leading this work
and needs all of our support to complete it and launch a Fair
Trade label for hotels, holidays and package.
6. Does global warming make it ethical to travel?
Participants: STIreland, Rosie, Planeta Mary Finn
Archive
Participants discussed the integral role of transportation
and resources for travelers that lessen the negative impacts.
Rapidly rising oil and gas prices and repeated warnings on the
likely severity of climate change are increasingly underscored
by recent news events. There can be no doubt that the twinned
issues, both rooted in our historic relationship to energy sources
and uses, will redefine virtually every aspect of our lives.
Of course we can't imagine we will stop driving cars and flying
planes. But energy crises are an opportunity to raise public
awareness and get the public to understand the need for an alternative,
as in 5-10 years the cost of flying will change the tourist
options for the public.
Many nations, particularly small island economies, such as those
in the Caribbean, are almost completely reliant on tourism revenue
for income. Decline in air transport might very well be an economic
disaster for the people who live there.
Perhaps now it is time also for governments to realise that
tourism will not always be the bountiful economic and political
stabiliser that has bailed many economies out over the last
50 years. The problem here is that small developing nations
have no stake in the global market place other than tourism.
We could investigate and encourage the use of the most environmentally
friendly local transport.
On planting trees, there are controversies about carbon offsets,
that among other things these let the polluters off the hook.
But does that mean that we shouldn't for example, make planting
a tree or two part of the visiting experience for each ecotourist?
Are there any other small (or even biggish) steps that ecotourism
operators could take? |
