The Parliament will be paying more attention to the role that travel and tourism have- from airport capacity and taxation to financial protection and the domestic economy, as showcased in this month’s special supplement of  The House Magazine July2010, the UK Parliament’s publication.

Articles from the new ministers in tourism and transport, the chairman of the all party parliamentary group on tourism, MPs and a former MEP, come together with the viewpoints of ABTA, Thomas Cook and TUI- and our very own Prof. Harold Goodwin.

The House is more than another magazine, its importance goes beyond who is featured- it informs the viewpoints of politicians, it’s contents speaks of signs of the things to come.

by Harold Goodwin

Responsible Travel.com is supporting a campaign launched on its website by an unknown hacker.  A Rebellious Touristmanifesto has been launched.
“We like it, we’ve kept it and we want to share it. It reinforces our core message – responsible travel is not only a better was to travel but a more enjoyable way – for you and your holiday destination.

We’ve decided to give the Manifesto its own page because it helps us lift the lid on responsible travel. For too long there’s been this misconception that responsible travel is somehow weighty, worthy and just no fun. We know that’s not true and being rebellious is in fact a founding principle of responsible tourism. Using your curiosity to get behind the tourism “stage” and create change for the better will ensure that the positive impacts of tourism always outweigh the negative.

From today we will be holding up the Manifesto as a mantra for today’s responsible traveller. A way to hit the reset button on the way we travel – to save us all from predictable and unimaginative holidays. If your holidaying has gone a bit Simon Cowell then the Manifesto is as refreshing as Rage Against the Machine!

The Rebellious Tourist claims to know how to reinspire us:

“You’re tired; you’re spent; you’re overworked. You need to switch off. YOU NEED A HOLIDAY. The year-on-year formula of one sun lounger, two books, three bikinis and a several cocktails has left you cold. You have just two precious weeks to refocus and recharge. You are not convinced your holiday destination should hang on the exchange rate, the weather or the cheapest flight offer. In fact you know its worth comes from the experiences you’ll get and how invigorated and human you feel when you get home. You’re not against breaking a few rules – if that’s what it takes to break away from bland holidays – you just need a nudge in the right direction.”

The straight-talking Manifesto is here to help you take charge with our Rebel urging us to:

“Throw down your sombrero; hold that order for a Pina Colada and step away from the tour bus. Down with the nanny state and prescriptive holidays, open your eyes, join the revolution and bring back your stories from the frontline of tourism!”

This campaign builds on Krippendorf’s approach when back in 1987 he called for rebellious tourists and rebellious locals – rebel.

You can debate the initiative and post examples at

http://www.artyforum.info/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=530&PID=710#710

The UNWTO event “Energy solutions for hotels” at Fitur (Madrid’s tourism fair) was a timely reminder of the long road ahead to reducing CO2 emissions in the hotel industry. Most of what the 23 speakers covered in 5 hours has been evolving for a decade, and yet the sector (and particularly small firms) have failed to change their behaviour. Why?

The business case made for energy management is eco-savings- yet none of the presenters showed return on investment periods that would be sufficiently tempting. Instead each speaker went off on different directions to present less focused reasons for behaviour change, with few showing a product that is more experiential as a result.

The greatest disappointment did however come from the floor- from a maximum audience of 150, half the room was empty and this worsened as the event progressed. This first ever Fitur event on sustainable tourism failed to capture the attention of industry in a way that WTM and more recently ITB have.

www.hotelenergysolutions.net is set to be however a valuable tool for hotels aiming to reduce their operational costs, and the UNWTO plans a second and final event at Fitur in January 2011 to conclude their three year project. My concern is that we seem to have failed to understand how and why small businesses take decisions and what can contribute to positive behaviour change.

Presentations will be available on the UNTWO project’s website

I (Lucy McCombes) have recently returned from speaking at a conference in Sofia, Bulgaria on The Business Case for Responsible Tourism. I was invited to attend by the organisers, the Bulgarian Business Leaders Forum who we have been working with to submit a EU funding proposal to support a network of organisations in Eastern Europe wanting to take a more responsible approach to tourism development.

The conference was successful in bringing a range of stakeholders together and it was a very interesting insight into the experience of trying to deliver responsible tourism in the face of some serious challenges. On the second day three developers who are working on ski, sea and golf resorts were put under the spotlight by the “international experts” to answer questions on what they were doing in practice in terms of responsible tourism which led to vibrant debate.

During the conference the Bulgarian Association of Alternative Tourism (www.baatbg.org) and Odysseia-In Travel Agency (www.odysseia-in.com) were very welcoming and kindly took the time to show me a few sites of Sofia. They are doing a lot of great work on the ground in rural and mountain areas which is well worth taking a look at. All in all the conference was a great opportunity to start to get to know our Bulgarian partners in person and hopefully we will be hearing more from them in the future.

Former ICRT student, Veronica Tonge, who has founded www.responsibleskiing.com, also went down very well as there was a great deal of discussion about how skiing can be made responsible and she made some useful contacts who were interested in her work in this area.

On the last day I was lucky enough to have some time being a tourist in Sofia which included stopping off at the Russian market outside the Sveta Nedelya Cathedral to buy a painting of an icon….I chose St Christopher – the patron saint of travel! (see photograph)

The UK’s newspaper The Guardian spoke yesterday about Egypt’s premier ecolodge, a former winner of World Responsible Tourism Day.

Basata – arabic for simplicity- is based 90 minutes from Sharm El Sheikh, the best known international resort in this region where ICRT has been part of the EU funded sustainable tourism strategy 2007-17 and subsequently collaborated with the Travel Foundation UK and NL to roll out training plans for snorkelling guides and desert guides. (more…)

With three weeks before Fitur 2010, Spain’s main travel and tourism fair, it is evident once more that the bonfire of vanities continues, business as usual. Public sector stands and limited direct industry participation, few learning opportunities and virtually no mention of sustainability issues.

The exception is Green Fitur- a brand new half day programme that for the first time aims to position Fitur in this field. Disappointing however as the remit is eco-efficiencies for hotels- most of the world was speaking about this ten years ago, the International Hotels Environment Initiative (now International Tourism Partnership) wrote numerous manuals and the key international hotel chains have already set out comprehensive programmes for cost reductions.

Xavier