The idea of sustainable tourism can leave a weird taste in your mouth. This is only made worse when, as today’s guest notes, the term is used incorrectly in all kinds of contexts and scenarios. But the idea, in its authentic form, is an important one, and one that we know many of our listeners are interested in learning more about, so we decided to tackle it on this week’s episode of The Travel Writing Podcast.
Jeremy Sampson is the CEO of The Travel Foundation, a nonprofit organization that helps the travel industry better manage its impact and improve local livelihoods. He was also the co-author of the Glasgow Declaration on Climate Action and Tourism. If anyone was going to help us approach this topic with nuance and candidness, it was going to be Jeremy.
During the episode we talked about the important questions for travel writers to ask when writing about a destination, why the health of small businesses can be a great indictor of how a destination is approaching tourism, how the Glasgow Declaration has created and maintained momentum toward positive change in the tourism sector, how writers’ ability to demonstrate nuance can be key in advancing positive tourism practices, and much more.
Here are a couple of acronyms that may be helpful as you listen:
DEI: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
DMO: Destination Management Organization
Listen to the full conversation here:
(You can also listen on Spotify or iTunes.)
Here are links to the websites and documents referenced during the episode:
The Glasgow Declaration on Climate Action and Tourism
Get access to Envision 2030 here
Finally, you can learn more about Jeremy on his LinkedIn.
