Insights
Do planet and profit need to be at odds?
DestinationThink! is getting ready for its Summit in New York in October (pdf) and one of the themes is titled Profit and Planet. Partly in preparation, the following discussion formed the third in a series of interviews conducted by David Archer of Destination Think!...
Has the growth of tourism become a wicked problem?
This post describes the characteristics of “wicked problems” and suggests that given forecasts of tourism’s continued growth, the term might apply. The designation is important because wicked problems cannot be solved in conventional ways. A new kind of thinking is required.
Why Tourism Needs More Meerkats and Fewer Ostriches
The capacity to thrive in periods of change develops when people behave like meerkats and look out for one another and the group. Given a potential unwillingness to identify “over tourism” as a threat to tourism, it would appear there are more ostriches at work and we need more meerkats.
Travel + Social Good – It all starts with Why
On Wednesday of this week I set off for New York to join 150 people committed to figuring out how to make responsible tourism go mainstream at the Travel + Social Good 2016 Summit. I’m encouraged because it won’t be a talkfest but a re-design workathon. I am...
Future Prosperity Depends on Managing Success Today
Almost for as long as tourism has existed, we've heard the expression " don't kill the goose that lays the golden egg" yet over the same time has carried on growing regardless. It looks like 2016 will be the year when it becomes obvious that the golden eggs are...
Towards Opening a Sensible Debate on Tourism Growth
On April 19th, Jeremy Smith’s post on the WTM London blog, When will the tourism industry start talking sensibly about growth? generated a flurry of shares and the beginnings of a debate within the Responsible Networking Group on Facebook. Thank you Jeremy for raising...
Walking the halls of hope and despair, WTM 2014
I confess I have never been wild about the World Travel Market – its central hall was the site of my personal “Road to Damascus” several years ago when I experienced the full extent to which tourism has become an industrial production and consumption machine. I admit...
An invitation to explore the beneficence of limits
Tell a two year old not to touch something (especially a yummy looking cake); to share their favourite toy; or it's time for bed, and you'll likely get an uncensored reaction, possibly a stamping of the feet, a defiant, screaming NO. It's at this young age we have...
Goodness and Wisdom Come in Threes
For three hundred years or so, so-called western society has operated in the world shaped by an Old Story – the story of separation, scarcity, and fear that together generate a need by many to hoard and control. Over the past 60 or more years, that story has been...
Climate Change: Implications for Business as Usual Tourism
Seven years ago, several experts in sustainable tourism in Canada and I founded The Icarus Foundation and published a report called the Climate Change Challenge; Implications for the Tourism Industry urging destinations to develop a climate change strategy. It's...