Tourism Vancouver Asks The Right Questions

I am confident that all of my readers will agree that asking the right question before starting any strategic exercise is vital at any time but particularly so when the context in which you operate is undergoing profound and radical change.

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. Albert Einstein

Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers. Anthony Robbins

Given this belief, you can imagine how pleased I was when the Chair of Tourism Vancouver – Howard Jang, CEO of the highly successful Arts Club Theatre – posed two particularly important questions at their recent Business Plan Launch on Tuesday (Jan 17, 2012). I couldn’t attend because I knew I would be in Auckland, so was able to contribute via video.

The depth of thinking being expressed by Tourism Vancouver is most encouraging so I have re-printed, with permission of course, Howard Jang’s side of the conversation below.

Howard Jang, Chair, Tourism Vancouver

This musing by Jan Myrdal started me thinking about what the “cause” of tourism is really about:

Travelling is not just seeing the new; it is also leaving behind.  Not just opening doors; also closing them behind you never to return.

My own thinking on these topics has been evolving since the AGM and much of it was enabled by a new friend of mine, though an old friend of many in this room.   Anna Pollock is a highly respected Futurist, perhaps though you’ll let me also add the designation of Visionary, as you’ll see.

Following our conversations and my reading of some of her writing, I asked if she’d speak with you today, during this presentation of mine, via video. Stay tuned.   First, let me take up the “cause”.

I’ve long felt that there is more to tourism than making the cash register ring – important and fundamental though that is to our industry’s well-being and to this very organization. Yet there seemed to be values inherent in tourism that are broader, more meaningful, and possibly at the very foundation of a sustainable industry – one that is in the longer term profitable on many fronts. In discussions, I asked Anna, “what she feels is the ‘cause’ of tourism?” and here is how she responded:

Anna’s words both echoed and informed some of my own thoughts, posing fresh views that I wanted to share with you. It’s crucial that our tourism industry engage wide support with the citizens of Metro Vancouver, indeed within British Columbia.   The Team at Tourism Vancouver, are at the forefront of generating demand, attracting visitors, ensuring a business model that works for you, our members.   However, we are also about ensuring that the visitors’ experiences while here are unparalleled, and that when they leave us, they have an ambition to return and a willingness to speak highly to others about our destination.

I once heard this quote:

Once a place becomes special, it’s no longer special  Peter Storey

And then there is the other concept from our AGM.

When I first used the term – a presumptuous declaration of sorts, now that I look back – that the coming years would be Vancouver’s Decade of Culture, I was wearing more than one hat.

Understandably, I was speaking as your new board chair, and also I obviously come from ‘the arts’, from the cultural industries.

True though both those hats are, there was another – it is that of a Vancouver resident.   We call this place home – and that gives us notable privileges, huge opportunities, and a host of responsibilities.    For me, Culture has never been about just the Arts but, rather reflections of our soul.  I wanted to take the “decade of culture” beyond a comforting phrase and give it depth and context.

And, I asked Anna’s thoughts.

Those two clips and my own words are but a part of how we hope to inform, guide and learn with you during today’s presentations.

_____________________

Thanks Howard! – looks like you are already letting your guests define what Culture means to them. I see you have a great Youtube Channel and a number of vignettes on Culture in Vancouver.

Let me end with another quote from my favorite poet, Rainer Rilke,  that applies to all of us

Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

 

To see how Vancouver’s community (its residents) rescued its brand – click here 

Be Inspired: Join a Movement – try Conscious Travel

There are some words such as those in Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech that will inspire listeners whatever the time or era. Paul Hawken’s commencement address to the Class of 2009 at the University of Portland is another.I’ve reproduced it below but it was found on the excellent Global Mindshift blog here.

While it was delivered to graduates before entering the world of work, it can also inspire work-weary managers and business owners. It’s especially relevant to people working in the travel community as we can play such a key role in making the transition so needed by Planet Earth.  Because, dear fellow members of the global travel community, our task is no less than this:

1. To wake up to the fact that the biggest shift in human perception is taking place right now given there is no guarantee it will take place fast enough to avoid our extinction as a species. It’s up to each of us to become awake, aware and alert, to tell ourselves the truth of our situation & accelerate that shift. Every other sector of society is having a deep and open discussion about the need to profoundly “re-think” the way it operates – travel and tourism must do the same (see the WorldShift Council and their insightful alternative to the G-20 Declaration) .

Note: this is NOT to say that fantastically inspiring change is not taking place throughout the tourism community by individuals and many groups – just look at the latest round of Responsible Travel Awards or GreenTravelGuidesTV with their stories of operators and destinations doing things differently. All I am saying is that the rationale and thinking behind these efforts needs to be front and centre in all tourism planning and decision making and, sadly, many DMOs still consider these thoughts as fringe and continue to set volume growth targets that make no mention of the costs associated with their ambitious targets.

2. To grow up – crises help all people mature and we need to move from adolescence to full adulthood by asking not what our communities should do to help tourism but what travel & tourism can do to help our communities (for more, see here). Former entrepreneur and now respected futurist John Renesch has applied his thinking about the need to mature in his new book: For more, read John Renesch’s New book: The Great Growing Up or listen to his recent podcast on Conscious Leadership.

Shaping and implementing a vision for a spiritually fulfilling, socially just and environmentally sustainable version of travel should be on everyone’s agenda. The venues run by people in travel and hospitality are the hubs in any community and their operators can be the true connectors. It’s through connections that places and people become smart and create the conditions for innovation and creativity. It’s through being exposed to worldviews or ways of perceiving, which differ from our own,  that help us wake up to the fact that our paradigm is one of many and can change. There is no reason or appeal to be just the writers of invitations or silent pourers of coffee. Tourism operators can become active change agents and find real purpose and meaning in their daily work as well by actively protecting, preserving and rejuvenating precious cultures and ecosystems.

3. To live up to our potential. It’s taken 13.5 miliion years to produce the species “homo sapiens” that is now aware of and can control its own evolution. What we do with that power is now up to each of us. It’s also taken 13.7 billion years to produce the amazingly diverse landscapes and cultures on which tourism depends so we have no right to sell them off at discounted prices while failing to steward, protect and care for them.

The act of waking up means recognizing that those of us who are alive today are participating in the greatest evolutionary shift that has ever occurred on the planet. For the first time in history of this planet a species is now participating consciously in its own evolution as a species and our decisions will determine the fate of many other life forms as well. But we are not helpless – we do have access to infinite wisdom and intelligence; but it will take a shift in mindset and perception and daily practice to access the bounty within each of us. That’s why the Conscious Travel movement is different (not better) because we start with the inner world and potential of the person running a tourism business and work from the inside out.

(c) Delicioustoys.de

4. To open up. The travel community must now seek to engage with and support all other members of the planet. It’s time to break down the invisible walls that deny our own embededness with all sectors of society and economy and our utter dependence on a healthy biosphere. It’s time to stop maintaining our differences or pleading that we are a special case with rights but instead focus on the  key role we can  play in creating a better world. And that will mean shifting our perception from a competitive “I,” who wins while another loses, to a collaborative “we” who co-create the innovative responses to the challenges we now face.

5. To step up. Our ubiquity and our size,  combined with our embeddedness in all aspects of what is now a global economy (“tourism is everybody’s business”), enable us to become effective agents of change, the midwifes of this transition. Our purpose (the higher purpose of tourism)  is to heal, to connect and to revitalize that deep sense of wonder and awe of Nature that re-connects human beings with their source.  People – yes the human beings working in the travel community – are in the best position to inspire our guests to make the shift but only if we  shed our tendency to see sacred places as products (objects) and our customers as walking wallets (more objects).

6. To meet up. The biggest paradigm shift that’s taking place right now is the recognition of our inter-connectedness and our interdependence. That shift combined with the connectivity made possible by current technology are enabling us to increase the pace of learning and innovation but the potential of that will only be realised if we also shift from actions based on collaboration to actions based on cooperation. 99% of enterprises in tourism are small.We have to work together in our communities to co-create a vision for tourism that does more harm than good. Change will not occur because self or institution-made leaders with titles write declarations but because ordinary men and women, in community, decide to do things differently. Change will start and emerge from the bottom up; from the grassroots – see: Grassroots Tourism Article, and follow the Local Travel Movement started by visionaries WHL.

Back in 1995, when I wrote the paper Shifting Gears1995, I expressed these beliefs in a slightly less radical and strident way. Like other “cultural creatives” I felt alone. But I was far from alone – a few years ago, they estimated that the global population of cultural creatives numbered some 20 million and now its 200 million. Paul Hawken’s book Blessed Unrest written some five years ago demonstrates the nature of grassroots change that is taking place if you have eyes to see it.   And thanks to the Occupy MOvement is hard to ignore!

So even if you do not yet agree with the rationale for change, please take five minutes to read Paul Hawken’s more eloquent words below and then re-visit the list above. If you share this perspective, please “like” this post; better still comment or share with colleagues. Most importantly join a “change movement” – whichever works for you. And, of course, it would be great if you’d keep us company here!

Paul Hawken’s Commencement Address
Class of 2009, Portland University

Paul Hawken

When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was “direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful.” No pressure there.

Let’s begin with the startling part. Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation… but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, civilization needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.

“…the earth needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.”

This planet came with a set of instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water, soil, or air, don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food—but all that is changing.

There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: You are Brilliant, and the Earth is Hiring. The earth couldn’t afford to send recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here’s the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote,

“So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.” Adrienne Rich

There could be no better description. Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the action is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses, companies, refuge camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums.

“YOU ARE BRILLIANT, AND THE EARTH IS HIRING”

You join a multitude of caring people. No one knows how many groups and organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more. This is the largest movement the world has ever seen. Rather than control, it seeks connection. Rather than dominance, it strives to disperse concentrations of power. Like Mercy Corps, it works behind the scenes and gets the job done. Large as it is, no one knows the true size of this movement. It provides hope, support, and meaning to billions of people in the world. Its clout resides in idea, not in force. It is made up of teachers, children, peasants, businesspeople, rappers, organic farmers, nuns, artists, government workers, fisherfolk, engineers, students, incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets, doctors without borders, grieving Christians, street musicians, the President of the United States of America, and as the writer David James Duncan would say, the Creator, the One who loves us all in such a huge way.

There is a rabbinical teaching that says if the world is ending and the Messiah arrives, first plant a tree, and then see if the story is true. Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it resides in humanity’s willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider.

“One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice,”

is poet Mary Oliver’s description of moving away from the profane toward a deep sense of connectedness to the living world.

Millions of people are working on behalf of strangers, even if the evening news is usually about the death of strangers. This kindness of strangers has religious, even mythic origins, and very specific eighteenth-century roots. Abolitionists were the first people to create a national and global movement to defend the rights of those they did not know. Until that time, no group had filed a grievance except on behalf of itself. The founders of this movement were largely unknown — Granville Clark, Thomas Clarkson, Josiah Wedgwood — and their goal was ridiculous on the face of it: at that time three out of four people in the world were enslaved. Enslaving each other was what human beings had done for ages. And the abolitionist movement was greeted with incredulity. Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists as liberals, progressives, do-gooders, meddlers, and activists. They were told they would ruin the economy and drive England into poverty. But for the first time in history a group of people organized themselves to help people they would never know, from whom they would never receive direct or indirect benefit. And today tens of millions of people do this every day. It is called the world of non-profits, civil society, schools, social entrepreneurship, non-governmental organizations, and companies who place social and environmental justice at the top of their strategic goals. The scope and scale of this effort is unparalleled in history.

“Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich.”

The living world is not “out there” somewhere, but in your heart. What do we know about life? In the words of biologist Janine Benyus, life creates the conditions that are conducive to life. I can think of no better motto for a future economy. We have tens of thousands of abandoned homes without people and tens of thousands of abandoned people without homes. We have failed bankers advising failed regulators on how to save failed assets. We are the only species on the planet without full employment. Brilliant. We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time rather than renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank but you can’t print life to bail out a planet. At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the other exploitation. And whenever we exploit the earth we exploit people and cause untold suffering. Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich.

The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago, and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally you are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by Moses, Mother Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Our fates are inseparable. We are here because the dream of every cell is to become two cells. And dreams come true. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90 percent of which are not human cells. Your body is a community, and without those other microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processes between trillions of atoms. The total cellular activity in one human body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment, a one with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body has undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the universe, which is exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science would discover that each living creature was a “little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars of heaven.”

“We are here because the dream of every cell is to become two cells.”

So I have two questions for you all: First, can you feel your body? Stop for a moment. Feel your body. One septillion activities going on simultaneously, and your body does this so well you are free to ignore it, and wonder instead when this speech will end. You can feel it. It is called life. This is who you are. Second question: who is in charge of your body? Who is managing those molecules? Hopefully not a political party. Life is creating the conditions that are conducive to life inside you, just as in all of nature. Our innate nature is to create the conditions that are conducive to life. What I want you to imagine is that collectively humanity is evincing a deep innate wisdom in coming together to heal the wounds and insults of the past.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would create new religions overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead, the stars come out every night and we watch television.

This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and the multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened, not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years. Each of us is as complex and beautiful as all the stars in the universe. We have done great things and we have gone way off course in terms of honoring creation. You are graduating to the most amazing, stupefying challenge ever bequested to any generation. The generations before you failed. They didn’t stay up all night. They got distracted and lost sight of the fact that life is a miracle every moment of your existence. Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn’t ask for a better boss. The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hope only makes sense when it doesn’t make sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it.

……….

Paul Hawken is a renowned entrepreneur, visionary environmental activist, and author of many books, most recently Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming. He was presented with an honorary doctorate of humane letters by University president Father Bill Beauchamp, C.S.C., in May, when he delivered this superb speech

Can Conscious Travellers Help Protect China’s Heritage?

China’s rich cultural heritage is under threat of either neglect or rapid commercial development. The long-term viability of its own future as a tourism destination depends more on protecting its rich cultural heritage than on building chains of hotels. Now is the time to do all we can to safeguard, protect and rejuvenate heritage sites and indigenous cultures.

The China Chapter of the Pacific Asia Travel Association together with Sunny Conventions & Exhibitions is holding a one day Responsible Tourism Forum to explore the ways in which tourism can make a positive contribution. I have been asked to speak about the Conscious Traveller.

There’s a great line up of speakers as you can see from the program and much we can learn from each other. I’ll be reporting back progress made by organizinations likeWild China, Red House China, the China Wall Group, the schoolhouse at Mutlanyou, and the Mekong Tourism Coordinating Office.

Why Conscious Hosts Will Help Their Guests Fall in Love

The most popular post in this young Conscious Travel web site is the one titled: Tourism What’s the Point?  Its popularity reflects the fact that:

• travel and hospitality enterprises need to attract and engage a diverse and intelligent workforce;
• there’s widespread recognition that money is no longer a sufficient motivator.  As companies describing themselves as “Conscious Capitalists” have discovered,  it pays to put a sense of higher purpose first, if you wish to increase profitability;
• there’s a growing need to align the members of a company around a common set of values and principles that can shape and guide behaviour on a day-to-day basis. A company’s culture (the sum total of its mission and values)  – even though it may be invisible and hard to measure or articulate – is often its key point of advantage or disadvantage as it most directly affects the level of engagement, productivity and creativity.

In that post we started to explore three deeper motivators:

Picture from Hubble Space Telescope

1. Tourism as a healing agent that rejuvenates guests ‘ well-beiing,  regenerates despoiled landscapes and resuscitates indigenous/local cultures;
2. Tourism as a connecting agent that helps guests encounter people from different culture and settings to both widen and deepen their mindsets and cause them to face the unexamined assumptions that underpin their behaviour;  and
3. Tourism as a “wonder and awe making” agent that helps guests not only appreciate the beauty of our Planet but also find deeper levels of meaning, purpose and contentment from their experience.

While clearly these motivators offer a greater sense of purpose than the act of “making money,” they still sound a little dry.  Perhaps our language should be more inspiring, colorful and clear so may I suggest this:

The purpose of travel is help people fall in love with a place, with each other
and with the miracle we call Life. 

This concept came to me after watching Filmmaker Louie Schwartzberg  summarize 40 years of work studying flowers and the critters that pollinate them. This is what Louie had to say at his TED talk:

To watch them move is a dance that I’m never going to tire of.  It fills me with wonder, and it opens my heart. Beauty and seduction, I believe, is nature’s tool for survival, because we will protect what we fall in love with. Their relationship is a love story that feeds the Earth. It reminds us that we are a part of nature, and we’re not separate from it……

The concept that “Nothing lasts forever. Everything in the universe wears out “ blew my mind. Because I realized that nature had invented reproduction as a mechanism for life to move forward, as a life force that passes right through us and makes us a link in the evolution of life. Rarely seen by the naked eye, this intersection between the animal world and the plant world is truly a magic moment. It’s the mystical moment where life regenerates itself, over and over again.

So in this context, the purpose of a conscious host is to help their guests become mindful, awake, alert and aware of the beauty, magic and mystery of life on this planet — in short to fall in love with it.

For when you are in love you are utterly present and when you are in love you will do whatever you can to protect the object of your love.

When you are in love, you slow down, you have no desire to rush away and seek another object for your affection.

When you are in love, you are most attentive and observant and take pleasure in the smallness of things.

When you are in love, you also experience peak health and vitality.

When you are in love, you are most awake, aware and alert – in short most conscious. You don’t need to be told how or  why to behave in a way that respects and reveres. It comes naturally because that’s your  real uncensored nature.

And there’s a reason it’s called falling in love and not climbing into love. It’s because it involves a spontaneous shift in consciousness – an “aha” moment when you “see” differently.

When you fall in love you are changed – albeit sometime temporarily and you experience a sense of infinite possibility. Isn’t that what latent or actual Conscious Travellers are seeking?

And when you are in love, all you want to talk about is your beloved. Isn’t that the source of the infectious spark that makes us share?

So dear Conscious Host, by helping your guests fall in love you will be playing a conscious role in the evolution of life itself – and surely that’s a good reason to come into work on Monday?

 

Pachamama: The Source of Inspiration

I have been privileged to spend a little time with indigenous people over the course of my life. Growing up in rural Sussex in England, I was attracted to the Druidic, pagan or Wiccan tradition; then in my late teens during a year spent on VSO in northern Labrador, Canada, I was introduced to some of the Inuit culture; then on my travels through Asia in the very early 70s was exposed to many different cultural perspectives. But I regret that I have not yet been to South America. Nevertheless the Achuar people in Ecuador and their partner-collaborators, The Pachamama Alliance, can be credited as the source of inspiration for Conscious Travel.

I became a facilitator of the Awakening the Dreamer Symposium a few years ago and have incorporated the concepts and some of the brilliant audio-visual materal into my presentations ever since. So I am very excited to be co-delivering the symposium with the Be the Change Earth Alliance and host, Joe Kelly, at Capilano College on November 22nd – see here.

Aware that humanity does not have time on its side, the creators of the Symposium have also invested in the development of a 170 minute DVD which is available here and the Pachamama Alliance just held an annual fund raising luncheon in San Francisco which attracted 1500 participants “in the flesh” accompanied by another 400 or so online. John Perkins is right, there is a power and a magic to the Awakening The Dreamer program. And as activist Paul Hawken, author of the seminal work, Natural Capitalism back in the 70s (long before sustainability became trendy), said in 2008, Pachamama is the most powerful NGO out there because it understands it’s all about mindsets:

I cannot say enough good things about the integrity, dedication and professionalism of the Pachamama team and urge you to have a look at their new web site: www.pachamama.org.

At the luncheon, two senior representatives of the Achuar people, German Freire and Patricia Gualinga spoke briefly, passionately and eloquently about their fight to prevent their sacred land being destroyed by oil exploration. Click the images below to view their presentations.

German Freire

Patricia Gualinga

They and the Pachamama Alliance have achieved wonders in the Amazon basin – not only protecting their lands but by creating history. Ecuador is now one of two countries that has successfully recognized the rights of the environment in the nation’s  constitution.

As many of my readers will be unfamiliar with this great program I am providing a link to a 15 minute video describing the amazing journey of the Pachamama Alliance and, if you are moved, encourage you to visit their web site and make a donation. I guarantee your contribution will be put to very good use.

Conscious Leaders Aren’t Better – They Are Different

Although we’ve tried to explain why we think the Conscious Travel movement is different in an earlier post here; the following image and the Primes’ animation sum it up perfectly.

“A butterfly is a transformation, not a better caterpillar.”  

Humanity is being called to transform itself, not simply change.

Transformation At Work

We don’t think that the future of tourism is about being more of the same (as expressed by the forecasters at UNWTO); or even just about being better (delivering a higher yield or net benefit); but really about a completely different vision altogether. The problem is that that a new “vision” has not yet been articulated or shared by enough people to become an alternative reality. So the movement part of Conscious Travel is really about the shift in consciousness needed to create a new vision that transforms our sense of self and our understanding of what is possible.

The Primes – a change management consulting company  - provides a concise yet dynamic explanation of the distinction between  Change Vs. Transformation here.

After watching this video distinction, it’s not hard to see that the tourism community is dominated by managers all beavering away with the admirable intention of making matters bigger and desirably better but, in so doing,  are  stuck in a form of time warp as the future can be nothing but an extension of the past.

True leaders – people we call Conscious Leaders – are free of the past. Their vision creates an imaginary future that has no ties to a past and is free, like a balloon that has escaped a child’s grasp,  to drift over the rooftops in search of a new home.

According to Chris McGoff, the purpose of leaders is to create visions that followers will  fall in love with.

Change, which is about fixing the past, is done by managers.

Transformation, which is about creating a new future, is done by leaders.

Are you ready for leadership?

Tourism: What’s the Point? Part 2 – Join the Conversation

This week my blogging experience confirmed an intuition.There exists “out there” a real hunger for meaning and purpose and, unless we as businesses, bloggers, associations and governments acknowledge this, we will fail to serve our customers, readers, members or constituents. I am at an early stage with this movement called Conscious Travel and testing the waters. Interest is building steadily. I am finding out which topics “move” people to comment, subscribe or share and this week we found a “hot button.”  The Tourism: What’s the Point? post was read and shared more than any other and also suggests a preference for positive messages. This experience is as thrilling as it is encouraging – there is a demand and need for a positive vision and most of us want tourism to “to good” as well as help us make a living. I am now on the search for practical examples, real life stories from the frontline as to how this Higher Purpose for tourism is fulfilled and how Conscious Hosts might better serve their customers.

Image @jessofarabia

A skilled travel writer, photographer and former guide working in the Middle East, Jessica Lee,  was one of many bloggers who  engaged in this conversation and kindly agreed to become my first guest contributor. Author of five guidebooks to the Middle East, North Africa and Turkey, Jess tells us in the intro to her blog that she:

“loves searching out the quirky and odd little details that lie under the surface of a place. She aims to help inspire travellers to go beyond the highlights and venture out off the-beaten-track to discover the soul of their destination for themselves.”

Jess’ thoughtful contribution to the discussion is presented in its entirety below. I have highlighted in purple some of the key points that Jess made. The beautifully written essay is illustrated with Jess’ own images. _______________________________________________________________________________

The Purpose of Tourism: from the frontline of the industry

Jess Lee 

One of my favourite places for leading tours was always Damascus. With the slumping architecture bearing down upon us amid the labyrinth alleyways, I would begin my group’s introduction to the Old City by taking the winding path that leads to the Shi’a pilgrimage site of Saida Ruqqiyeh Mosque. Invariably, as we threaded our way through the medieval streets, we’d become caught up in the great tide of Iranian pilgrims who were all heading that way as well.

Image @jessarabia

For many in my group it was an uncomfortable situation where we would end up separated from each other; thrown to the mercy of the crowd as it surged forwards, and backwards, and to either side in relentless waves of people. When we finally washed up at the end of the street outside the mosque my group would be sweating, slightly frazzled and usually all looking a bit dazed after this very Damascene version of crowd surfing. What they didn’t know was that I could have avoided the crowds quite easily by taking another route but had deliberately guided them into the chaos. I didn’t want my clients just to see pretty monuments and nice museums. I didn’t want to keep them swaddled from reality in cotton wool but rather I wanted them to be able to get in there and smell the sweat of the crowds; to become part of a place, if only for an instant.

Image @jessofarabia

Like most people who’ve worked on the frontline of tourism as a tour leader or guide, I have developed a healthy disrespect for the industry’s marketing jargon. For years there has been a very obvious disconnect between the tourism industry’s love affair with hyperbole and how it actually operates on the ground. The fluffy throwaway phrases in the glossy brochures offering clients ‘once in a lifetime adventures’, ‘off the beaten track experiences’ and the ubiquitous ‘responsible travel’ become hard to swallow when every year you see the trips get cheaper, more ‘extras’ squeezed out, and the itineraries grow ever more homogenized in the quest for competitive pricing.

image @jessarabia

The industry has been feeding the same line of cheaper, faster, now, for so long that we seem to have bred a style of tick-list tourism where clients demand more but pay less and see everything but experience nothing. On returning home a tourist may be able to reel off an impressively long list of sights they saw but did they stick around long enough to be able to describe to you the uncomfortable sensation of the layer of gritty sand that sandpapered their sun-parched skin in the desert. They can walk through an ancient, bustling souq but are so busy documenting their visit so that they can remember it later – their camera permanently glued to their face – that they fail to see the stall-vendor in the corner beckoning to them to come drink syrupy tea. Is this the style of tourism we want to be involved in? And more importantly, is this what clients want? I seriously don’t believe so.

Image @jessarabia

As those involved at the top of the tourism tree become more and more focussed on pricing and marketing it’s now more important than ever for those down at the roots of the industry to realise the role we can each play in promoting a different ideal; an approach that, for me, is the true purpose of tourism. Seeking connections between people, places and cultures so that the tourist is no longer just a spectator peeping through the window into an exotic ‘other’ land but part of that world, if only for a minute, themselves. By their very nature of packing in as much as possible in the least amount of time, it is difficult to do little more than scratch the surface of a destination on a tour. But a good guide or leader can make all the difference in helping to lift the lid off a place and allow tourists to travel not just further but deeper. We need to foster a sense of inclusion where it’s not ‘us’ against ‘them’. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve overheard guides tell their clients to not talk to anyone in markets and at sights and on the street. If you dive into the market and are comfortable chatting to the vendors, your clients will feel that they can do this too. If you just walk through simply giving a spiel on the history along the way and ignoring everyone, that’s the way your passengers will act as well. For our groups we are the benchmark for how to behave and by using this responsibility wisely we can inspire our clients to go out and make local connections themselves.

Image @jessofarabia

There was this one time trapped amid the flow of pilgrims in Damascus, when a car insanely tried to navigate down the road and caused the crowd to suddenly tip madly to the side. An elderly Iranian woman, shielding her face from view by clutching the corner of her black shroud in her teeth, lost her footing and grabbed the wrist of one of my female clients in an attempt to regain her balance. This then caused my client to stumble and she in turn reached out and grabbed the shoulder of the tiny Iranian lady in front of her until it looked like it could turn into a domino effect of tourists and pilgrims tumbling endlessly down the street. I heaved them all onto the narrow ledge of a shop front where I’d managed to shelter the rest of my group until the car to blame for all this chaos finished manoeuvring through the street. We all looked at each other and burst out laughing. There was no ‘us’ and ‘them’. No strange line drawn by different clothing or eye colour, religion or politics. We were simply some people who’d all nearly ended up face-down on the ground. When the car finally managed to grumble past the Iranian ladies patted my client’s hand to say thank you. Then some young men pushed towards us through the crowd. The ladies waved excitedly back and beckoned them over and suddenly we were all waving madly into their video camera and shouting ‘Hello Iran!’ with the Iranian ladies beside us grinning broadly. We were no longer observers. Just fellow actors in this crazy carnival called the world. _________________________________________________________________________________

If you work on the frontline as a guide, at the front desk, or helping a visitor enjoy an activity, you have likely a practical perspective and can share ways of tapping into Tourism’s real purpose: to heal, connect, and invoke wonder. This experience needs to be shared so we can all get better at it and restore tourism to an activity we can all be proud off. Please comment or email me: theconscioushost@gmail.com  

First Conscious Travel Event in Canada

AWAKENING THE DREAMER SYMPOSIUM – Nov. 22^nd - 4:00 – 8:00 p.m. 

 (Capilano University Library 322 — 2055 Purcell Way, N. Vancouver)
For information, please contact: Joe Kelly by email:  jkelly@capilanou.ca

Conscious Travel is  a movement and an e-learning community designed to help travel suppliers become Conscious Hosts so that they can can attract, engage and support Conscious Travelers and develop a viable alternative to mass industrialized tourism. The end goal is to create and enact a vision for a tourism economy that doesn’t cost the earth.

Who better then to inspire and recruit but the next generation of leaders – those energetic, connected and free-thinking members of Gen Y and Gen Z who will be responsible for stewarding tourism towards a more prosperous and stable future?

To raise awareness of the issues affecting humanity and to encourage future hosts to become active change agents in their community, the founder of Conscious Travel, Anna Pollock, is teaming up with Capilano University’s Project Change initiative, LinkBC and the  Be The Change Earth Alliance to host the symposium known as Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream. The symposium is a transformative educational experience that empowers participants to respond to humanity’s current situation with action and informed, grounded optimism about our future.

Through dynamic group interactions, leading edge information, and inspiring multimedia, participants in this half-day event are inspired to reconnect with their deep concern for our world, and are empowered to make a difference.

The Symposium was developed by The Pachamama Allliance.  Designed with the collaboration of some of the finest scientific, indigenous and activist minds in the world, the Symposium explores the current state of our planet from a new perspective, and connects participants with a powerful global movement to reclaim our future.

It is an exploration of four questions:

• Where Are We?
An examination of the state of environmental, social and personal well-being
• How did We Get Here?
Tracing the root causes that lead to our current imbalance
• What’s Possible for the Future?
Discovering new ways of relating with each other, with the Earth and looking at the emerging Movement for change
• Where Do We Go from Here?
Considering the stand we want to be in the world and our personal and collective impact

What to Expect – here’s the trailer:

Awakening the Dreamer Symposium Trailer from Pachamama Alliance on Vimeo.

A youth version of the Symposium – Generation Waking Up - is currently being developed.  We hope one outcome would be for tourism students in British Columbia to take this version back into their communities. The individuals behind this project, Valerie Love and Esteban Duarte,  recently raised over $20,000 in crowdsourced funding to complete the development of materials that will make this symposium partucularly appealing and relevant to the younger generation. You can see their appeal on Kickstarter here. With commitment and creativity like this, humanity is  in good hands. Breakthrough rather than breakdown might just be possible.

Tourism: What’s the Point? Why Should These Graduates Work for You?

I’ve recently been given a deliciously interesting assignment:  - answer, in one page, “what is the cause of tourism?”

Perhaps the questioner has read Simon Sinek’s great book Start with Why? which can be summarised in one ket phrase: People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.

Perhaps the questioner is a conscious capitalist in the making and understands the power of having a Higher Purpose.

Regardless of the motivation underpinning the assignment, I’m pleased and excited that someone has been thoughtful enough to ask.

Having just spent the past two days in the company of some of British Columbia’s brightest and best tourism students, I am fully aware of just how important it is that we have an meaningful answer. This bright, connected, plugged in generation deserves and expects to be fulfilled and inspired when it goes to work.

I could, of course, trot out all the normal but often empty sounding benefits of tourism put forth as a justification for its existence – the creation of jobs, the preservation of cultures, tourism as a force for peace, tourism as the most effective method of transferring wealth from rich to poor etc.. etc. but I won’t. I won’t because the tourism establishment has failed to identify and measure the costs associated with these outcomes and therefore might just be deluding itself.

I would, however, like to test out a three  concepts with my readers and hear your views.

1. Tourism as “wholesome”  healing agent. The deeper cause or purpose of travel and hospitality is to heal, or to make whole, or to enliven. It’s no coincidence that the words hospice, hospital and hospitality have the same etymological root – i.e., to make whole. The word recreation is virtually synonymous with the concept of rejuvenation meaning to recreate some sense of balance and order that had disappeared. The word holiday comes from “holy day” and the notion that, if balance was to be restored in the human psyche, there needed to be a day (the Sabbath or Sunday) or days (festivals) when the spiritual aspect of one’s being was honoured and nurtured. Even the word vacation, which comes from the Latin verb vacare – to empty – suggests the need to empty oneself to make room for fresh ideas. And isn’t this what most operators know is their role in life – especially those operating a resort or boutique hotel or B & B within driving distance of a bustling metropolis? Their guests arrive late on a Friday, stressed from the demands of their working week in the “rat race,” exhausted by the struggle to fight through the traffic to reach their “get away escape”. The hosts’ task is to restore mood and body and ready the guest for another round of relentless production and consumption after they have left!

But it could be bigger than this. Tourism could (and often does) become an agent for change in a community stimulating and encouraging the renewal and revitalisation of its landscapes, infrastructure, amenities, culture and environment. There are, of course, countless tales of places being transformed by the vision and efforts of one or two individuals. The European EDEN project is an excellent example replete with case studies of regeneration. The potential for Conscious Hosts and Conscious Travellers to become positive community change activists knows no limits.

2. Tourism as Human Connecting Agent. Tourism’s second purpose is to connect people with each other and with places – preferably people and places whose perspective is different from that of the visitor. Conscious travellers are those most keen to have authentic experiences that reveal the unique sense of place as interpreted by locals.

Digital technology is now enabling us to “meet” and make friends of hundreds of people in an instant and this only accentuates our desire for there to be a human interaction that involves all the senses. I once learned that, when two people are talking, their cells start to dance and become entrained such that 80% of what’s being communicated is going on at the cellular level and goes unnoticed by the participants – unless, of course, romance is involved! It’s hardly surprising in this context that e-mails can cause so many communications breakdowns. The purpose of real live connections and the joy of “breaking bread” with another (sharing a meal; visiting a home; participating in an activity) with someone from a completely different culture is that it reminds us that our perspective/paradigm/mindset is just one of many.

At a time when, according to ethno-botanist, Wade Davies we are losing one foreign language every fortnight, the maintenance of cultural diversity has never been so important. An earlier DestiCorp post called On Homecoming and Wayfinding – re-thinking sustainable tourism introduces the critical thinking of this British Columbian adventurer, explorer and ethno-botanist.

Simon Milne from NZTRI talked yesterday at the BC Tourism Industry Conference (#TIC2011) how all the residents of rural communities in Southeast New Zealand were being encouraged to interact with guests through podcasts, personal tours and story telling. In other words, the art of connection and engagement was being taken to a whole new level and, by slowing down the tourist, yield rose as a by-product.

3. Tourism that Inspires Wonder & Awe: I’ve left what I think is the real, most ennobling, most important, most inspiring cause of travel to last and that is to re-kindle a sense of wonder and awe at the mystery of the universe and the miracle of evolution. The biggest tragedy associated with the application of an industrial model and mindset to tourism has been the objectification of guests who have become wallets; of unique places that have become points on a checklist that need to be “done” and of residents who become objects of curiosity to be captured on film or digital memory card. Thanks to customers’ belief that they have a right to cheap travel and suppliers’ tendency to drop prices when demand ebbs, the tourist economy is on a “race to the bottom.” Standardisation and automation have lead to a “sea of sameness” and the sheer congestion and toil associated form getting from one place to another cause numbness to replace wonder.

It has taken 13.7 billion years to evolve the magic and mystery that exist in each destination and that are often missed as we rush to fill a room, cater to an impatient diner, or meet a departure schedule. Most tourists are so numbed out by the very act of getting there, that it can take days before they slow down enough to really appreciate the wonder that’s all about them.

The critical first step towards dealing with the challenges facing humanity is learning how to care and to live in harmonious relationship with the Nature of which we are a part. That comes when we realise that we are all one family travelling on what Buckminster Fuller called “spaceship earth.” It happens when we realise that we are not helpless specks in an unfeeling universe but central characters in an evolving drama. It happens when we look at the miraculous results of 13.7 billion years of evolution and stop dismissing it as “nothing but.” It happens when we slow down enough to observe the miracle of germination, sprout, growth, fruition and harvest that centers us back to the earth. It is mindfully feeling our steps on the grass and appreciating weeds that help us understand our place. There is something praiseworthy in the symphonic chorus of pre-dawn birds, the melody of barking dogs and the final notes of dusk’s insects. Until we remember that the dirt we plow is where we originate and where we will finally rest it will remain a meaningless obstruction to progress.(Source: Shekinah Glory)

So please I beg you to SLOW DOWN this weekend and reflect on why you really work so hard in tourism. Are you really supporting “the cause?” In the endless promotion of “products” to targets are you losing the point and does that loss account for the feeling of emptiness and a reluctance to jump out of bed on Monday mornings and say “Yippee!!”

Perhaps the real cause of Conscious Travel is to help people LIVE consciously and compassionately?  To follow in the footsteps of Thoreau who wrote of his year by Walden Pond:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

Or to come to understand as Tomas Berry noted:

The universe is not a collection of objects but a communion of subjects

The following short photographic essay by Caroline Webb and the words of one of the greatest cosmologist/philosophers of our time, Thomas Berry might help and inspire:

For the sequel post: http://conscioustourism.wordpress.com/2011/11/04/tourism-whats-the-point-part-2-join-the-conversation/

Good Morning Tourism: Time for Your Wake Up Call – Part One

During my 40 year career in travel and tourism, the number of people crossing international borders has grown from 100 million a year to just under a billion. At the same time, I have watched distinctly different, magical and remote communities with cultures whose unique worldview had so much to teach us, be engulfed, usurped, diluted, and become endangered. As lamented in a previous post called On Homecoming and Wayfinding – Re-thinking Sustainable Tourism, present generations simply don’t know what they have been deprived of experiencing.

According to the UNWTO, the current volume of international trips is confidentially forecast to double over an 8 year period – in other words at rate 5 times that of the past growth I have witnessed. What alarms me is the lack of serious, considered debate as to whether such growth is possible or even desirable and what the costs of trying to meet those forecasts might be let alone the probability that they could be achieved or sustained.  What does the doubling of tourism really mean? Who will benefit and who will suffer?

There is no doubt that tourism has become a powerful economic and social force with both positive and negative effects. It has provided entry jobs that have enabled hundreds of thousands of people to lift themselves out of poverty and helped spread wealth from what were once called “have nots” to the “haves”. Tourism has preserved some cultures and provided an economic justification for protecting some natural landscapes but at an enormous cultural, social and environmental cost that has never really been systematically inventoried or assessed.

The Tidal Flow of Tourism
The returns from each incremental visitor are now diminishing year by year due the very nature of how the industrialized model works. In the same way that the ocean tide is controlled by the phases of the moon, the tide of tourism is driven by forces outside the control of the receiving community.  Changes in exchange rates and the economic vitality of source countries account for over 90% of tourism traffic.  So when the tide comes in and volume surges more capacity is increased (more hotels are built, roads are widened, and runways extended or increased.)   When the tide flows out due to external factors that can range from terrorist attacks, epidemics, natural hazards to the collapse of stock markets, then prices are discounted and suppliers attempt to fill their time-based perishable products of rooms, airline seats and restaurant covers at whatever price consider necessary to meet an internal revenue target. Tourism demand is a roller coaster and its frequent and often unpredictable boom and bust cycles can cause untold hardship experienced mostly by vulnerable workers located at the bottom of its wage pyramid.

With each passing year the vitality of the sector is sapped. Consumers’ ability to make instant price comparisons increases the downward pressure on prices and converts what were once scarce, magical, mysterious retreats into commodities. Cost cutting follows. Processes and procurement are standardized and unique places lose their distinctiveness as services and places start to look the same. Automation strips the cost out of many services but deprives the traveler of human and humane care.

Tourism as Time Bomb 
Tourism has become a time bomb, according to Accenture’s Paul Newman and Mark Spelman in this Havard Business Review Paper of the same name.

They suggest that a doubling of demand will have serious impact on the cost of living in key attractive cities where local businesses will have to compete with tourists for many services and, presumably, taxpayers in the host city will have to pay extra infrastructure costs (water, waste management, transportation, policing etc)

While vulnerable places like England’s Stonehenge, Ecuador’s Galapagos and Peru’s Machu Pichuu are having to limit visitation, it’s Venice that is probably the most obvious  “canary in the mine”. We publicly may mourn “the death in and of Venice”  - see previous post on this blog but fail to address the real problem: there is only one Venice and its capacity to absorb more and more visitors every year is limited.

USA today recently published an article on the tourism hotspot, observing:

Venice is “under siege” by tourists and faces “irreversible” catastrophe if limits aren’t imposed on visitor numbers, warns a report released Monday by Italy’s leading heritage group.

Italia Nostra (Our Italy) accused the Italian government of ” underestimating the devastating effects of past and future development projects and tourism policy,” Reuters reports.

The group will ask UNESCO, the United Nation’s cultural organization to place the city on its endangered list and consider removing it from its list of World Heritage Sites. The lagoon city is besieged by 60,000 tourists a day, including many from an increasing number of cruise ships that come to call, says Reuter

How can we as a tourism community be proud to say “we destroyed Venice?” Furthermore,  if sustainability is all about acting now to provide subsequent generations with the same choices and opportunities we enjoy, then how could our actions of the past 50 years be considered even remotely sustainable.

Disappointment with Leadership From Above who avoid “The Elephant in the Room”
I am disappointed with the leadership shown from both governments and the private sector. The UN-related organisations send out mixed signals. They talk a good talk about sustainability – even issuing Green Passports- but get positively gleeful when volume projections bounce back to “near normal” and growth gets back on track.

They talk about tourism being resilient and a force for good but continue to demand more recognition and influence. Despite the fact that their demands for recognition have been made year after year on every Tourism Day with boring monotony, they have to admit that their approach is not working. In March 2011, Taleb Rifai, Secretaru General of the UNWTO was reported saying that tourism ministers around the world lack authority.

Even the WTTC, an exclusive club comprised mostly of the large vertically integrated corporations that have benefited most from the industrialization of tourism, continues to put out a begging hand and, every World Tourism Day, plead for more marketing support, less taxes, less red tape etc. None of these so called leader organizations puts serious pressure on the airline sector to raise prices necessary to cover the “externality” cost associated with spewing carbon into the upper atmosphere. In this Linked In Discussion Valere Tolle is right in part – the “big fat elephant in the room” is carbon but Valere is right only in part though. The real elephant is bigger. Until all the costs – social, cultural, economic and environmental – associated with international travel and tourism are completely and accurately measured and paid for, the elephant we’re trying to avoid is the one with the banner –

Can we Afford the Cost of More Cheap Travel?

We know that polarized arguments between environmentalists and industrialists doesn’t work; we know that finger wagging and making people feel guilty for their sins doesn’t work. We also know that dictats from global and national agencies don’t work.  Until recently there were no market mechanisms in place to provide the sticks and carrots that might change behaviour and when they were introduced (as in the Carbon Trading Scheme), they meet fierce opposition from vested interests…

In short, we think it’s time we all woke up – which is why we are talking up Conscious Travel.

To be “conscious” is the be awake, aware and alert. It means taking a fearless inventory of where we’re at, where we’re going, our strengths and our weaknesses. It means facing reality and speaking the truth.

“In times of universal deceit, speaking the truth is a revolutionary act” George Orwell.

So in an Orwellian sense is is a revolutionary act. But it’s not about blaming or shaming. It is  about coming together and supporting one another in envisioning and then creating a viable alternative that doesn’t cost the earth.

In addition to waking up,  we think it’s time we grew up.

Conscious Travel is about responding to the general question that JFK posed half a century ago.

“Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”

Until members of the tourism community – be they operators of small businesses or leaders of global associations – address that question with sincerity; unless we start to engage in the same level of debate and soul searching that virtually every other economic sector is now embracing; unless the tourism community is willing to step forward and say this is what we can do to change and how we can help make the  transition, we’ll continue to be considered superfluous and trivial. Our ministers – even if we can keep them – will continue to be considered lightweight and lacking authority; and our corporate leaders will continue to whine and complain.

We’ve not started this to compete with all the other good people and projects that have been trying to minimise the negative effects of tourism.  We are trying to integrate and support.  Our only point of difference is a firm belief that tourism is about people and places and that change must start in the hearts and minds of the individual tourism operator.  It is this the operator of the small, unique, boutique style operations that make up 99% of enterprises associated with travel and hospitality that can collectively make the transition. For more on how, who and why, read

Good Morning Tourism: Time for Your Wake Up Call, Part Two (coming shortly)

So if any of these thoughts resonate with you – either positively or negatively – please join the conversation and make a comment.