Working overseas as a volunteer, voluntourism, continues to grow as more people seek the experience of helping others abroad. People volunteer for lots of different reasons, most of them altruistic. Well organised and with the right safeguards in place volunteering is a good thing. But volunteering is complex – it can have unintended consequences and can be abused.
There is good reason to be concerned about some of the potential negative impacts of volunteering – these two papers from the first edition of Progress in Responsible Tourism address some of those challenges from the perspective of an originating market organiser of volunteering opportunities abroad and from a destination perspective. We share Harold Goodwin’s concern about both the unintended consequences of volunteering and the abuses which it can facilitate. We need to demand more Responsible Volunteering.
Goodfellow Publishing has made these two journal articles freely available as our contribution to an important campaign. Good intentions are not enough. Volunteers and organisers of volunteering need to consider carefully the consequences of their activity and to guard against exploitation by the careless and the unscrupulous alike.

Click here to download fileGoodwin Children Articles.pdf

World Responsible Tourism Day has now expanded to include events well beyond its original plan of the Wednesday of  World Travel Market, with now having a full three day programme. This year’s programme include discussions on progress in Responsible Tourism, disability access, tourism and employment, the role of government, partnerships for sustainability in destinations, all-inclusives, marketing Responsible Tourism, human rights, World Heritage Sites and corporate social responsibility in the meetings and hospitality industry.http://www.wtmwrtd.com/

Journalist Leo Hickman is in the Hot Seat and of course on the Wednesday this year’s Virgin Holiday’s Responsible Tourism  Awards will be announced. This year there is also a debate “Who Profits From Tourism?”

WTM has four realistic objectives for this day of action. WTM WRTD, with support from the UNWTO wants the industry to work together to:

• help drive change by educating more responsible behaviour with the travel and tourism industry and travelling public
• explore the issues of how countries and destinations are made more sustainable including case studies of best practices
• educate the marketplace and debate key environmental related issues to push the agenda and be a catalyst for change
• harness the influence of World Travel Market as an international business forum to encourage the industry to drive the responsible tourism agenda forward

Harold Goodwin,  professor at Leeds Metropolitan University and director of the ICRT, is central to the development and delivery of this intensive and cutting edge programme, and this year WTM celebrates this by selling his book, Taking Responsibility for Tourism, throughout WTM. You can also buy the book online.

12 PhD students and 15 staff came together last week for our annual PhD training programme, for a week of practical learning, networking and building confidence and momentum.

Designed with part time distance learning students in mind, we gathered our current cohort from as far as Mexico, Lebanon and Macau, in a truly multicultural group of mature students that generally work full time in academia or consultancy, and study part time to improve their employability skills and to satisfy their thirst for knowledge.

This year’s programme broadened the scope to attract students from events and hospitality, joning our already well established group in responsible tourism. This reflects the growing PhD community in our School of Events, Tourism and Hospitality and provides economies of scale for more dedicated training.

Besides staff training sessions, students are encouraged to present methodological aspects of their PhD appropriate to their current stage of research. The meeting opportunity is ideal to also use your 24/7 library, organise staff-student supervisory face to face meetings, procedural aspects of confirmations of registration, annual progression and viva rehearsals.

2012 dates are now set as October 29th to November 2nd. These are followed by a two day training on responsible tourism, November 3-4, before heading for World Travel Market Nov 5-8, providing a true intensive learning programme for international students.

We have limited places for self-funded distance learning PhD, starting July 2012. We usually work with applicants for a number of months before we accept an application to make sure you are capable of succeeding, and that the programme is right for you. For enquiries, please email Dr Xavier Font at x.font@leedsmet.ac.uk

Following the success of our two conferences earlier this year on Tourism and Livelihoods and Responsible Aviation, please join us for the third in the series, addressing the question…
“What would Responsible Skiing look like?”
Once again the conference will be chaired by Professor Harold Goodwin of the International Centre for Responsible Tourism and there is an exciting line up of speakers…

ABTA, Alpe d’Huez , The Ski Club of Great Britain, Neilson, Responsible Skiing, Austrian National Tourist Board, Crystal Ski, Eurostar, The Green Tourism Business Scheme, Exodus , Whistler Blackcomb  Read the rest of this entry »

Lucy McCombes (ICRT staff) and Yvette Evers (Consultant & ICRT student) are undertaking a new initiative to investigate whether the social impact assessment (SIA) approach is a useful tool for responsible tourism practice. Their recent pilot study in Bulgaria with a local travel company, Odysseia-In , has uncovered key aspects of this approach that can be integrated into their operations to effectively identify, monitor and manage the social impacts of their tours. Read the rest of this entry »

The Tourism Society Yorkshire Autumn Programme in association with Leeds Metropolitan University hosted the Tourism Question Time monthly event, focusing on responsible tourism, on the occasion of launching Professor Harold Goodwin`s book – `Taking Responsibility for Tourism’ Read the rest of this entry »

The deadline to apply for this year’s PhD bursaries has now passed, with shortlisted candidates currently preparing their presentations to the panel of professors. We are offering 5 post-graduate research studentships available to study for a Doctorate of Philosophy for a period of 3 years. Carnegie faculty offers annually a number of bursaries of £13,590 per yr plus UK/EU fees, for outstanding candidates to conduct research in pre-assigned PhD topics.

The Commonwealth Scholarship Committee have recently announced their selection of 10 successful candidates to study in The Gambia for an MSc Responsible Tourism Management with ICRT at the University of The Gambia, starting October 2011. This year 5 Gambians received an award, including staff from the Ministry of Tourism and Culture, the Gambia Hotel School and a tourism development consultancy. There are also 5 non-Gambians from Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana and Sierra Leone who will be joining the class, including staff from tourist authorities, local government and Kenya Wildlife Service so we are really looking forward to a diverse and rich learning experience, hopefully building regional responsible tourism networks in the process. Congratulations to all the successful candidates. For further information on the Commonwealth Distance Learning Awards contact Lucy McCombes on l.mccombes@leedsmet.ac.uk.