Friday, March 16, 2018
With growing concerns about over tourism, industry leaders have been focusing on sustainable business practices for protecting the environment, local people and cultural treasures.
For that cause, Virtuoso released a white paper last week, “Sustainable Tourism: From Trend to Transformative Movement,” to intensify the success of early adopters in this movement and to promote sustainable practices in travel planning.
The paper said that in 2015, there were 1.2 billion international tourism arrivals and billions more domestic tourists. Those numbers are expected to nearly double by 2030, and this prompted former World Tourism Organization secretary general Taleb Rifai to ask, “Will tourism bring us one billion opportunities to make the world a better place, or one billion disasters?”
The paper outlines Virtuoso’s plan to advance this goal via new programs focused on preferred partners, member advisers and consumers.
It focuses on increasing sustainable tourism awareness and training; establishing an interest group for Virtuoso travel advisers and partners and creating a sustainability specialist designation.
For consumers, it calls for more education and promotion of sustainable tourism.
Virtuoso Chairman and CEO Matthew Upchurch said he believed Virtuoso’s role is “to be a catalyst in the travel industry, helping to drive positive action for sustainable tourism, and shining a light on Virtuoso partners and member who are leading the way.”
Tags: sustainable tourism
