Why all travel is local

and why Conscious Hosts Will be Indigenous

While I also subscribe to the importance of the journey and, where possible, would prefer to travel slowly and savour the transition from the familiar to the unknown, most times I have to fly.

the shoeless airport shuffle

Then I stop being a traveler and, instead, become a producer of air passenger miles and carbon; a unit of yield as far as the airline is concerned; and a human piece of baggage that doesn’t have the benefit of being placed on a conveyor belt!

Instead, I must negotiate kiosks, print boarding cards and baggage tags, have papers scrutinized, be required to undress and dress at various points and to varying degrees, avoid the bright lights and temptations of that garish place called “Duty Free” to traverse  more sterile corridors before reaching an anonymous staging area devoid of food or water. Next comes the delight of sitting in an aluminum tube, fretting over whether the movies will be sufficiently distracting, the food palatable and my neighbour of average weight and girth!

Room with a View - first night in Wellington

Most people survive this transition in their own version of coma. One is transported but sadly not in the rapturous and ecstatic sense our forbears imagined when they applied the term. The ordeal is not yet complete – shortly after the tube engages with the terminal’s tentacles, the weary shuffle commences down more anonymous corridors to be welcomed by personnel trained in the art of suspicion not hospitality.  Hopefully a re-union with one’s own baggage will soon occur.  Finally, the opaque doors slide open and we weary but expectant tourists are   “there” – the place that has been capturing our imaginations for weeks.

And now you can and must wake up – for now you are a stranger in a foreign land, a visitor, and ideally a welcomed guest.

The ground on which you now stand is unique – it took 13.5 billion years for this piece of geography to form and it expresses a unique relationship with our sun, the moon, the planets and our galaxy.

But does it feel different on being ejected from that sterile place called in transit? Might it have the capacity to affect a transformation of some kind? Are you aware of the essence or spirit of this place? Do you sense that you have arrived somewhere truly else?  For if you don’t, then was the toll on your body and the cost to the earth, really worth it?

The biggest tragedy of modern, mass industrial tourism is that it has completely missed the point – the essence of travel is about being changed by our experience of unique places – yet, in our earnest attempts to standardize, homogenize, and render efficient or convenient, we have sucked the life blood, the juice, and, worse still, the mystery out of places.

An indigenous person will tell you that the land on which you stand is sacred. Their individual identity is shaped by their relationship with all aspects of the place they call home; the relationship they treasure with their ancestors and, in turn, the relationship those ancestors had with the place. Their presence also changed the place because all beings – whether perceived as sentient or not – are in a dialogue, a dance of vibration. So your presence will also affect this place and, if you are awake, aware and alert, you will let it change you.

Hence my assertion: all travel is local. Despite the act of getting there, all travelers do eventually arrive at a locality and experience its uniqueness.

And if all travel is local, then ideally all hosts should be indigenous in the deepest sense of the word….

Welcome to the Marae in Te Papa, Wellington

So local travel is not a peripheral aspect of travel; a nice “add on” but central –  the core of travel.  Local travel isn’t just about meeting the locals – people who live in the locality – or even about buying handmade things from local people but about ensuring as, as guest, your every sense is buffetted by the rich mix of sounds, smells, sights, textures and tastes that convince you that you have arrived are somewhere different, unique, and, as a result, sacred. For inspiration just see the Flickr Group: Local is Beautiful. Ron Mader, thanks, I can taste those Flores de Frijolin con Guacamole from here.

Indigenous people know how to do this naturally – they don’t need a course in hospitality. It’s in their DNA, regardless of which tribe they associate with. They have been doing it for tens of thousands of years. They don’t need to be brought into the mainstream. We must sit at their feet by the campfires that have been burning for millennia and learn from the shadows on the cave wall or the stars that rise and fall on the velvety purple sky outside.

The only way we’ll rescue the future of tourism from the insanity and tyranny of its current model is to become indigenous in mind, heart and soul, given that indigenous means to “originate or occur naturally in a particular place.” To my mind, being indigenous doesn’t necessarily mean to have got there first but  to have developed and respected a profoundly moving and dynamic relationship with the spatial and temporal dimensions of a place.  To be indigenous or native is to have been shaped by the geography and history of a locality and to be able to express that shaping in language, cuisine, ritual, architecture, mythology, dance, agriculture, costume, poetry and, most of all, in stories.  It means to honour its manu, its essence, its spirit. But most importantly, to be indigenous is to know that as a human being you have a duty of custodianship for the sake of all sentient beings, for your tribe, your guests and the generations yet to be born let alone conceived.

Thus first task of every conscious host is to become an “indigene” …

We’ll explore what that means in Part 2 to follow.

LINKS
Indigenous Tourism Festival in Brazil today: http://gobrazil.about.com/od/brazilindiantribes/ss/National-Indigenous-Culture-Festival.htm 

Bookmark Link to Planeta’s Indigenous Tourism Conference in August
http://www.planeta.com/indigenous.html

A reason to be hopeful – Happy Easter!

We all know that Easter is a time in the calendar of the northern hemisphere when humans have celebrated the arrival of Spring and the commencement of a new growing season. Being English, daffodills and primroses are the signs that Easter is soon coming!

The significance of what has only recently become a religious festival or even more recently a commercial one, pre-dates Christianity by thousands of years. I write this in Sydney where the days are shortening as “winter” approaches but that is no less reason to be hopeful as winter is a great season for reflection and spending time with friends and family knowing Spring is not that far away.

I wanted to take a break from writing to sharing two videos that express why I do what little I can do to midwife the birth of a new era in our common story. Because I have worked for about 40 years in travel & tourism and because this phenomena connects and touches so many people’s lives, I do believe that it has the potential to be an effective agent of change but only if we become conscious of all aspects of its influence – the positive and the destructive. We must resist the tendency towards “wilful blindness” and pretend that tourism – as practiced – is just a force for good no matter how appealing that message might appear.

I have spoken at three conferences since December: PATA’s Responsible Travel’s Forum in Beijing; PATA’s Adventure and Responsible Tourism event in Bhutan and, most recently at the Pacific Asia Indigenous Tourism Conference in Darwin organised by ATEC & PATA where we witnessed the birth of the World Tourism Indigenous Tourism Alliance. Each presentation was unique (my slides are here) but conveyed the message expressed in the previous paragraph. What struck me was the enthusiastic and passionate response that was evoked and affirms that many people in tourism are indeed waking up, growing up, and stepping up and creating Places that uniquely Care!  It’s an exciting time to be alive and working in a field that encompasses and integrates the work of eco, geo, sustainable, responsible, fair trade, local, ethical travel and tourism.

The first video presents the thoughts of one of the greatest cosmologists of our time, Thomas Berry. More information on the work of Thomas Berry can be seen here: http://www.earth-community.org/

The second describes the process of change that is taking place right now using the well established metaphor of the transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly to cast light on current events. This video is produced by a former geneticist, Dr Bruce Lipton,  who is now integrating much of  current thinking into an exposition of the crossroads facing humanity. His current book Spontaneous Evolution is my favourite book purchase in a very long time. I first heard the caterpillar story some 7 years ago and it’s even more inspiring when you see it paying out in reality.

Thank you subscribers, readers and commentators for all your support and encouragement. If you like these videos, please share…

Happy Easter!

Conscious Consumerism is Catching On in New Zealand

Is it coincidence or might there be a trend emerging here? In the space of 24 hours, I’ve discovered two mainstream media that are highlighting “conscious consumers” in New Zealand.

1. The bi-monthly money magazine Good which boasts a circulation of 9,341;  over 15,900 unique users per month;  and 2057 active monthly Facebook users  describes itself as follows:

Good inspires women to create a wholesome, healthy life for themselves, their children and future generations. The Good world is luscious, warm, nurturing and authentic.

Good targets ‘conscious consumers’: intelligent, motivated women who want to live lighter and live well. They actively seek information to help them make smarter, healthier and more ethical choices for themselves and their families. They may not consider themselves to be ‘green’; they’ve simply realised they can change the world by changing what they consume.

Good is aimed at the LOHAS (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability) demographic, constituting 31% of the population. LOHAS are well-educated, with an average to high income. They are interested in personal development, health, sustainable living and social justice. Over half of Good readers have children, a major driver of health-focused, eco-friendly living.

2. Element – a monthly insert in the New Zealand Herald that “aims to inspire and guide Kiwis to transform New Zealand into the healthiest, most liveable destination on the planet”. The Herald’s newest magazine, which desires to be New Zealand’s largest mass-reach health, sustainable lifestyle and ethical business publication, is focusing on a Conscious Cafe per month.

Source: Element Insert in The New Zealand Herald

The Conscious Cafe Network is the first project of a movement called Conscious Consumers founded by Ben & Fran Gleisner and Melissa Keys. We blogged about this movement back in March of 2011 here.

Cafes and Suppliers to cafes are awarded badges for demonstrating a commitment to environmentally and socially conscious business practices. Thus far the network has been established in Wellington, Auckland and Waikoto with over 70 cafes participating. Thanks to funding recently obtained from the Ministry for the Environment, the network will be expanded to other communities and will be able to promote network members to conscious consumers. Ben and Melissa tell me that they also hope to expand to restaurants and catering establishments next and we hope to join forces to bring the concept of Conscious Consumerism to the travel sector in New Zealand.

Nine Badge Types Awarded Conscious Cafes In New Zealand

Participating cafes can be awarded up to nine badges for various achievements:

1. Allowing customers to bring their own recyclable cup for takeaway coffee

2  Composting organic watse

3. Using eco friendly cleaners

4. Using compostable packaging for their takeaway coffee cups

5. Selling fair-trade coffee

6. Using certified organic cow’s milk

7. Recycling glass, plastic, paper and cans

8. Selling seasonal dishes using local ingredients that are “in season”

9 Using exclusively free range eggs.

It’s early days yet, but this does provide further evidence that a growing number of consumers are becoming awake, aware and alert and suppliers can seize the opportunity to cater to  this market.

Here is Ben Gleisners’ slide deck from Slideshare on the topic

Engaging the conscious consumer (Conscious Consumers)

View more PowerPoint from Squiz New Zealand

Latest Conscious Travel Scoop.it! Out Now

The latest issue of Conscious Travel Scoop.it! is out with a focus on the changing role of business; the growing interest in Bhutan’s Gross Happiness Index and discussions regarding the feasibility of sustained economic growth in a world of finite resources.  Click here to read. Below is an image of the latest front page.

Why Contribute To Responsible Tourism Week?

We’re in the middle of Responsible Tourism Week – a global unconference made possible by the hard work and dedication of Ron Mader and anyone who is committed to sharing ideas related to creating a tourism sector that doesn’t cost the earth. If you want to know how you can contribute, check out Ron’s slideshow here .

Responsible Tourism Week 2012

View more presentations from ron mader

Tweet this link (don’t forget the hashtag #RTWEEK2012) and encourage your friends and colleagues to get involved; join Ron’s wiki, contribute case studies; and, wherever possible travel responsibly. All you have to do is budget some time to draw attention to the need for and benefits of creating travel experiences that maximise the net benefit to host communities.

My contribution today is a reminder why we cannot afford to shirk our responsibilities. Just because Al Gore is no longer taking his slideshow around the world or the IPCC is no longer in the news, and climate change, as a news topic, has become so yesterday,  doesn’t mean that the earth is not warming. In fact, Co2 emissions continue to rise at an accelerating rate. For those of you who like the numbers, they reached 393 parts per million in January 2012 and you can watch the monthly increase here.  (Now, I fully recognize that my European friends might find it quite ironic and unsympathetic of me to write this while they are experiencing another brutally hard winter in Europe – see Europe’s Deep Freeze: Why Climate Change is Not Entirely to Blame. ) One reason for the acceleration might also be the positive feedback loop effect when warming reduces the weight of Arctic ice allowing methane, long trapped beneath the ice, to push through to the surface – see article in methane plumes  here

So here’s the reminder of one reason why we have to use each waking moment to work together to create a less polluting form of tourism if we are to live up to the name and dream of “responsible tourism.”

High Value Tourism: Low Volume Footprints

High Value Tourism: Low Volume Footprints

View more documents from Anna Pollock

TOO BIG TO SAIL?

Via Scoop.it – Conscious Travel

The industrial model demands volume and scale. Consolidation leads to bigness. We’ve seen the folly of letting our banks assume they are too big to fail. Isn’t it time we questioned the wisdom of allowing cruise ships to be built at this scale?

Here are some of the first dramatic images depicting the last moments of the Costa Concordia have been caught on film, showing the stricken liner and lifeboats scattered in the black water.
Via www.huffingtonpost.co.uk

Why Tourism Will and Must Change Its Operating Model

Marketers and managers of destinations have long absorbed the concept that places go through a cycle of development from the initial discovery of a place, through its early development, growth, consolidation and then stagnation phases.  Yet, this same cycle has not been applied to the macro pattern of mass tourism. This is strange because virtually every other aspect of human society is in the midst of a radical re-think and is starting to examine, question and evaluate the deep assumptions and beliefs that have sustained human progress and economic growth over the past 100-150 years.

Illustration by Antonello Silverini

We’ve outlined why we think Tourism will and must change its operating model on the home page of this site. What is Conscious Travel? and explore it more in a Whitepaper Can Tourism Change Its Operating Model: The Necessity and Inevitability, obtainable by subscribing to this blog or on request from theconscioushost@gmail.com .

In short, survival and prosperity depend not just on becoming green but waking up to a whole new way of doing business that addresses the need to be environmentally sustainable, socially just and spiritually fulfilling.

We’re not bucking a trend here – as outlined in an earlier post, Screw Tourism As Usual, there is a fundamental shift going on in the world of business. Capitalism is not being jettisoned – business remains the most efficient wealth generation agency on the planet – but is being re-tweaked to address some of its flaws. Not all tourism operators will agree with these changes but many will.  The evidence from outside tourism suggests that, those who do re-think the way they operate, will fare better in a world in which the only constant is uncertainty and change.

It’s premature to specify what the emerging model will look like and how it will work but we can speculate and, more importantly we can come together to create it.

In my paper titled,  I have started to explore its features in more detail. All we can do here is outline some key characteristics:

1. In the old model, the starting point is the Product, an object that is assembled, packaged, produced and priced according to the rules of manufacturing. In the new model, the starting point is a Place that is recognized as qualitatively unique and therefore scarce. While products become commodities and lose value as they become more alike, “Places” that are celebrated for their unique geography, history and culture, gain value and are acknowledged as the primary motivator of travel.
2. In the old model, guest and hosts act in an adversarial role, playing an “I win-you lose” game in which each party tries to win at the cost of the other. In the new model, that puts relationship building ahead of transactions, guest and host co-create experiences of meaning, benefit and value to both parties.
3. In the old model, Hosts are producers who focus on the attributes of their product in order to persuade a target market to purchase. In the new model, hosts orchestrate unique experiences of places that are perceived of value and as transformative by guests.  Guest are attracted to a host for his or her personal, subjective qualities  – what they value; their sense of purpose; contribution to community; their integrity and authenticity over and above the physical artefacts and amenities
4. In the old model, Producers PUSHED their products in front of potential buyers through various promotional techniques and, when that failed, they dropped their prices. The cost cutting methods deployed to maintain profit margins (standardisation, homogenisation and automation) further devalued the experience and guest satisfaction while suggesting that cheap travel was a right.
   In the new model, producers focus on protecting, rejuvenating and expressing the elements of a place that make it unique, attractive and worth paying for. Hosts who can communicate a strong signal about their values and their appreciation of the uniqueness of their place and corporate culture, PULL towards them customers whose values are aligned with theirs.
5. In the old model, producers assumed that their first priority was to maximise profit for their shareholders. In the new model, producers understand that profit is an outcome that occurs when the enterprise has a higher purpose and when it works to generate net benefit for all its stakeholders (guests, employees, suppliers, and the host community). In the old model, tourism entrepreneurs were followers – applying models and values developed in manufacturing. In the new model. They will be active change agents in their communities and on the forefront of innovation.

It was John Lennon who said:

“A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality” 

Now is the time for all of us working towards a better tourism – be it green, sustainable, responsible, eco, local, slow, philanthropic – to come together and co-create a new vision and a new operating model that unifies and inspires rather than fragments and dilutes. We do have to change our dream (the mindset or paradigm through which we view the world) and ironically, to do that we have to wake up and become aware of the assumptions that underpin our current model and determine whether they still work for us.

Screw Tourism As Usual – Will 2012 Be The Year To Make That Happen?

I’ve borrowed the title of this blog from Sir Richard Branson’s new book Screw Business as Usual partly to get your attention but also to flag the speed with which old concepts are being discarded in the business community at large.  2012 could well be that the year made infamous by the Mayans for being the year in which we tip from one Era to another.

Business gurus are climbing over each other to be the first or the loudest to refute Milton Friedman’s assertion that the purpose of business is exclusively to make a profit.

So let me add my prediction to the thousands that will litter the digitized airwaves over the next few months:

2012 will be the year the profit cart will be moved back behind the purpose horse and capitalism, as we knew it, will experience a profound makeover.

The current prophets of this emerging vision vary from seasoned corporate veterans such as Bill Gates, Tex Gunning of Unilever, John Mackey of Whole Foods (founder of the Conscious Capital Institute) and Joe Stengel (former CEO of  Proctor & Gamble & author of Grow) to perennial entrepreneurs like Richard Branson (author of Screw Business as Usual); upstart academics like Umair Haque (author of Betterness and the New Capitalist Manifesto)  and consultants/thinkers such as Fred Kofman, (Conscious Capitalism); Richard Barrett (The New Leadership Paradigm) and Steve Denning (Radical Management)

The names they have independently applied to describe this emergent form of capitalism also vary from Capitalism 2.0; Conscious Capitalism; Good Capitalism; Creative Capitalism, New Capitalism, Caring Capitalism and, thanks to Sir Richard, Capitalism 24092.

Despite the diversity of the pundits’ pedigree and their use of nomenclature, the message is the same and has three elements:

• doing good is good for business and business is the only global institution whose people can make things better for all of us; and
• conducting business as usual will only produce more of the same problems that challenge humanity today.
• The enterprises that differentiate themselves by “making a difference” will enjoy higher brand equity and profitability than those focused primarily on profit.

Like many good yet revolutionary concepts, those underpinning Conscious Capitalism are not as young as the current spate of authors might have you believe. It’s important to recognize that these authors stand on the shoulders of giants whose names are not as familiar to contemporary audiences but whose thinking created the compost for the current flowering. My source of inspiration in the 1980s were Willis Harman, founder of the World Business Academy and John Renesch who first coined the phrase “conscious capitalism” in 1990 as Editor-in-Chief of New Leaders Press.  Sadly Willis passed away in 1997 unable to witness the revolution taking place now but one of his last interviews shows the clarity and prescience of this thinking. John Renesh is fortunately still very creative and his latest book, The Great Growing Up,  should be included in this anthology.

This is the reason why we’ve brought this debate to tourism through an initiative called Conscious Travel and we think 2012 is the year to start some serious conversations. We’re inviting members of one of the world’s most pervasive industries to stop, re-think and re-make how and why they do tourism. We’re asking them to “wake up” to the unexamined assumptions that have guided their behaviour;  to “grow up” and take more responsibility for all the stakeholders affected by their activities and to “step up” and join the pioneers listed above listed above.

Conscious Travel is a movement, a community and an e-learning platform designed to stimulate and nourish the capacity of tourism entrepreneurs to flourish in new market circumstances. For more information, review www.conscioustourism.wordpress.com or contact founder, Anna Pollock at theconscioushost@gmail.com

Thank YOU

Before we proceed further into 2012, I just want to express my appreciation to all the individuals who have supported me with this initiative by giving me accommodation plus great food and wine, helpful feedback, financial support and moral encouragement; subscribing to the site; telling others to subscribe during 2011.

Source: positivepsychologynews.com

As I have learned to my cost in the past, timing is everything! But I know I have it right this time. The pace of change is staggering. 2012 will be the year when one Era, one paradigm will shift in front of our eyes. I now understand the saying in the Bible that “change can come in the twinkling of an eye”. All it takes is a change in perception and a desire to make a difference. In fact in 2012, I guarantee that product differentiation will all be related to how enterprises show they are making a difference.

At the same time, things may appear to get worse in 2012 – evidence for the stresses placed on nature by human action and the spillover impact on human societies will increase and accelerate. Many institutions will continue to resist and pray that business will return as usual. They will be sorely disappointed.

This is the year when individuals can really make a difference because we are not alone; we are all connected and we are and can create a better future for our children and grand children. The key to success in 2012 is to find kindred spirits and hold hands – so please encourage like minded souls to subscribe to this blog, make comments or “like” our Facebook page and follow our progress in New Zealand.

I write this from Auckland, New Zealand – a tourism destination that has a reputation for being innovative and resilient.  We’re planning to undertake a “roadshow” over the next two months in order to raise awareness of Conscious Travel and get input from these ingenious Kiwis for the emerging e-learning platform. More news on that to follow shortly.