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.

Ron Mader asks Anna Pollock about Conscious Travel

Introducing Conscious Travel TV

We’re slowly building the Conscious Travel Channel on Youtube with a combination of short conversational videos in which Anna (that’s me) talks about  Conscious Travel instead of writing about it. We’ll also include videos we think are relevant to the Conscious Travel movement – so if you have any to share, please email me: theconscioushost@gmail.com

The Introduction, as its title suggests, provides a brief highlight of the key issues affecting tourism.

Why Conscious Travel – looks at both the need for an alternative vision and why the term “conscious” has been used.

In the Challenge of Industrial Tourism I talk about  the need for industry to “wake up” and “grow up” so the most relevant posts to this conversation are: Good Morning Tourism Time For Your Wake-up Call, Parts One & Part Two.

The video What is  a Conscious Host highlights those attributes that an operator could develop in order to attract travellers that are also awake, aware and alert.

What is a Conscious Host?

Do UNWTO Figures Mislead?

The UNWTO recently published its latest set of forecasts for the future of tourism between 2010 to 2030.  On the surface, there is plenty of reason for satisfaction provided that you are charged with producing the appearance of growth. The reality underneath the superficial glee that tourism will be growing again is very different.

According to the UNWTO, international arrivals increased by 412 million trips per year between 1995 and 2010 such that in 2010 940 million overnight trips across international borders were made. Even though the rate of growth is projected to slow to a mere 3.3% per annum over the next 20 years, the effect in terms of people on the move is staggering. By 2030, the present volume will have doubled to 1.8 billion – that’s an extra 1.8 billion feet walking over and through precious attractions in 2030 than now.

Despite having spent an entire career serving the travel and tourism sector, I find the numbers and the way they are presented just prove the need for the tourism community to wake up.

If tourism wants to be taken seriously and,  by that,  I mean if people who work in the tourism sector want to be taken seriously by people working outside of it, it has to demand more of its leadership and engage one another in a more honest, reflective debate.

We have to give thought to what these numbers actually mean in terms of impact on the quality of people’s lives in either the receiving or the generating countries where an expansion in terms of supportive infrastructure (hotels, airports, parking lots, rail-lines, shopping malls, cruise ship terminals) will be essential if the quality of a visitor experience is not to plummet. How many local people will be displaced by the development of more tourism ghettos or priced out of their own housing market due to the influx of second home buyers from wealthier urban centres?

Has anyone calculated the net benefit of this growth and the cost of providing and maintaining the supportive infrastructure or estimated the opportunity cost of investing funds into this activity versus other forms of economic development?

I have to wonder whether words have finally lost all meaning when the Secretary General of the UNWTO can look at these figures and say “This growth offers enormous possibilities as these can be years of leadership with tourism leading economic growth, social progress, and environmental sustainability.”

Tourism does not lead tourism growth – it depends on surplus wealth being created in the country of origin. At best it distributes that wealth but not as effectively as it might. A significant portion of the growth forecast for the next 20 years will originate from the emerging economies of Asia where tourists will travel on packaged vacations delivered by vertically integrated companies able to achieve economies of scale. Based on current patterns, less than $5 out of every $ 100 spent by vacationers on packaged holidays stays  in the receiving nation.

Why should it be assumed that more visitors to a place leads to “social progress.” when the opposite effect is normally the result – locals are displaced to make room in pristine locations for visitor-related facilities; visitor spending has an inflationary effect on housing, transportation and food costs; residents are encouraged to move from rural to urban centres in search of cash employment; and many of the social-cultural customs that evolved over thousands of years to produce social cohesion are eroded.  The UK-based NGO, Tourism Concern, offers many examples of displacement and social cost It’s not that tourism can’t be a force for good – it’s just that it most certainly is not inevitable and care needs to be taken.

And finally to describe a doubling of tourism volume as providing “opportunities for tourism to lead environmental sustainability” confirms to me that our leaders are walking their long corridors in some form of trance. Every year the UNWTO spins its econometric model and spews out more numbers offering no sign that they have any idea as to their impact or desirability. As recently as two weeks ago, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), warned that emissions from the global tourism industry will double in the next 25 years unless new sustainable policies are developed.  What kind of “leadership” is that? If Titanic-style corporations like Walmart can turn themselves on a relative dime and commit to a sustainable path, couldn’t our leaders even acknowledge that a debate might be necessary when they issue these forecasts? Shouldn’t they exercise leadership by stimulating that debate – not resisting it or pretending that the problem might simply go away?

What is also worrying is that no mention was made of the other feature of tourism growth that can cause so much personal havoc and hardship and that is the volatility of demand. The gently rising slope of the demand curves as shown in this slide provides a false sense of security and comfort – there’s an aura of stability and certainty conveyed that bears no relation to reality.

When we tell it like it is and provide data on what has happened in the past, we get a different picture. The headline to the next  chart is moderately reassuring “growth in tourism will continue but at a more moderate pace” but distracts from the reality of wild gyrations in tourism demand experienced over the past 40 years.

As tourism is the tail on the end of many economic dogs, it is subject to huge whip saw effects from specific events – be they natural hazards, terrorist acts, epidemics, or financial meltdowns and they are impossible to predict.  It is this volatility that undermines any benefit that could accrue from the growth in demand and causes the greatest hardship in so many destinations.  Given the convergence of such forces as climate change, resource depletion, population growth, water shortages, national and personal debt levels we can expect that demand will continue to oscillate with increasing frequency and intensity. Given that 95-99% of businesses engaged in tourism are small and independently owned, the real issue of the next decade for them won’t be growth but survival.

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

I am not anti tourism; only anti thoughtless, careless tourism whose proponents avoid counting and minimizing its costs. That’s what Conscious Travel is all about – not the end of tourism but the shift to the kind of tourism we can all be proud of; the kind of tourism that sustains decent livelihoods year after year while enriching and enlivening local cultures and restoring local ecosystems.

It’s the kind of tourism that is driven by a Higher Purpose than simply making money. So what is the point of tourism? Here are some thoughts a deeper purpose of tourism that give it meaning and that attract people to do extraordinary things:

This kind of tourism can only be created  if we develop a degree of honesty and self-criticism that George Orwell would have recognized as being revolutionary.

I don’t pretend to have all the answers. If I did, I’d be rich and famous. But I am prepared to ask some of the right questions simply because I KNOW the answers lie within our own community (not industry). If you CARE at all – and I believe THE issue is all about caring (see here) then you’ll comment, subscribe and encourage others to join the discussion…

See also:

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

Good Morning Tourism: Time fr Your Wake Up Call – Part Two

Conscious Host @ Work

The Beauty, Sensuality and Transformative Power of Bread

Bread: the stuff of life.

Millions of people daily ask their God to “give them this day their daily bread.”

Millions also consume something akin to cardboard sold erroneously in the name of bread. It is stuffed hurriedly and unconsciously into millions of mouths as people rush to start their day.

Supposing we could change the way people think about, savour and consume this most staple of foodstuffs in the temperate regions of western world?

Perhaps the act of making and eating hand crafted bread – which has to be locally sourced – could help us slow down and in so doing reflect on the important stuff of life? Bread as a tool for consciousness raising.

Far fetched?  Not at all.  Here’s the inspiring story of Dan Lewis, a bread maker in New York, who is doing just that – changing the way we approach the making and eating of what would otherwise be a commodity.By teaching us to savour a staple like bread we might learn to savour our travel experiences, and rekindle a sense of place and wonder?

Let Dan tell you his story in this video and then read David Sampler’s inspiring account here.

Handmade Portraits: Wild Hive Farm from Etsy on Vimeo.

(P.S. the source of this tale was actor Edward Norton who just happened to be at the S.L.O.W. Life Symposium on an alternative form of travel held in the Maldives a week or so ago and that is another inspiring source of change stories. Catch his conversation with Mark Lynas on why tourism has to recognize that it is an extractive industry that must pay the full cost of the services it uses here.We’ll be adding some of the videos to The Conscious Travel Channel soon.)

It’s Not Social Media, It’s Social Business – Do you Care?

Conscious Hosts conduct what we call Conscious Marketing based on an understanding that all business is now Social. There’s a good blog post and discussion from Edelman on what makes a Social Business here and from IBM here. Before we look more closely at what Social Business means, here are five reasons why Social Business is emerging as a concept and practice:

1. Customers now have the power to talk back, to talk with each other; and to attract enormous attention simply through the power of their own creativity. The value of a company is now directly related to the subject and quality of the conversations that take take place about it and determine a reputation. Between 60-80% of all market capitalisation of companies is tied up in intangibles such as brand equity, reputation, human capital,and  intellectual property. Never has it been so important, or, for that matter, so easy to LISTEN.

source: Marketing Works

2. There’s finally a recognition that companies aren’t things - corporate entities only with legal rights and no responsibilities – but collections of human beings keeping company with each other and working to a common purpose. As Simon Sinek has said: 100% of employees are people; 100% of customers are people; 100% of investors are people; 100% of supliers are people etc. So it’s not surprising to see that companies behave like the people who work in them.

Some companies seem to be super cheerful, energetic, happy, passionate and devoted to serve; others are rigid, buraucratic, stiff, slow, and affect a bored disinterest. We still talk about them as “brands” but what we mean is personality.

This trend, by the way, is sometimes described as “the humanisation of business” – as if there ever was a time when companies were run by robots. (That’s in the future not in the past). So instead of companies fretting about transactions; we have collections of people focused on relationships. It’s all soft & fuzzy; about feelings not product atttributes; and behaviours are harder to measure; highy subjective and utterly intrinsically SOCIAL. Hence the title of the post. So congrats if you have a Facebook page, a twitter account and your company President blogs. But that won’t be enough. Unless you’ve opened up every business process (in human terms – every human task; item of communication; element of service) and looked at ways it WOWs the customer; while enabling the employee who are doing the wowing to feel that they are growing and developing too.

3. Because companies are human and because humans are in such a fix right now, there’s a growing desire on the part of both employees to want to find meaning in their work and for customers to find fulfullment or feel good about their relationship with it. No longer can companies afford to be nothing but lean and mean transaction machines focussed on quarterly profits. Edeleman’s Good Purpose 2010 report found that 86% of global consumers believe that companies should place at least equal weight on societies interest as in business’ interest.
In fact, there’s now growing evidence that companies whose culture expresses a “higher purpose” are significantly more profitable than those that place return on investment as highest priority. If you want proof, read Firms of Endearment, a more inspiring book than Jim Collins’ Good to Great, that highlights the spectacular results achieved by 30 companies run by CEOs who are happy to call themselves Conscious Capitalists. There’s even an institute that is promoting an alternative to the kind of capitalism that has got western economies into the trouble we’re in now. So when you think ROI, remember that it stands for Return on Involvement (see Interaction Associates) and, as importantly, start to think of who is involved.

4. Customers are changing too. The recession accelerated a change that emerged in the late 90s when a growing proportion began to tire of the endless cycle of consumption, obsolescence and waste. As boomers aged, it was inevitable that they would be driven less by Maslow’s deficiency needs (security, belonging, esteem) and more by a need to develop, to serve, to find meaning and purpose. Perhaps as a result of watching their parents and deciding that they didn’t want to be like them, we find that GenY and the Millennials want more than a pay check. Some 61% of GenY employees say they feel personally responsible for making a difference in the world.

There’s a huge body of research that has been conducted since the recession that suggests anywhere from a low of 30% to a high of just over 50% of consumers could now be described as “conscious” – awake, alert and aware. They are taking more responsibility for their own decisions as their trust in traditional, authoritative “command and control” style organisations like Government, the Church, big companies is at an all time low. At DestiCorp we’re so convinced that this trend will provide a means for tourism to get off the mass, industrialised bandwagon that we think is so destructive, that we’ll be focussing all our work on ushering in a Conscious Travel movement.

5. The role of women. Women have already shown their proclivity for use of social media. See an earlier post The Web is Female. We simply love communicating. But it’s not all talk. Women also have the financial clout. According to Businessweek, American women make more than 80% of buying decisions in all homes.Their buying power  has soared 63% over past three decades. Some 30% of working women now outearn their husbands

While they are still hitting their head against the glass ceiling of senior management, it’s women who undertake the majority of tasks that involve face to face or voice to voice contact with employees and, thereby, are directly reponsible for a firm’s reputation.

In summary. the decade beginning 2010 will be one in which companies thrive or wane on their ability to show they care; to create working environments in which human beings flourish and are active contributors to the healing, well-being and prosperity of their communities.

Examples of travel-related Companies that Care include the Roger Smith Hotel in New York, where social media is derived from an inherent belief of its CEO and President, James Knowles. He believes in and encourages “the miracle of human growth.” The hotel’s connection to a community of people is based on story telling, off-line connections, and relationships built on passion, says the company. The team is always interested in telling stories that engage people while building relationships and relevant communities. The hotel says it is selling hotel rooms and events via the strength of its networking and content. To find out how Kimpton Hotels and the Joie de Vivre Group are showing they care, review this summary here.

So How Do You become a Social Business?

Becoming a truly social business requires some form of transformative shift in mindset at the top of an organization. First it means appreciating that a company, like a community, is a dynamic, living breathing system made up of living breathing systems who happen to be human beings. The distinctions between what is internal and external are artificial – the boundaries are highly permeable. And in these systems, the intelligence does not lie in the nucleus, the brain or the HQ of an organization but is distributed throughout with highest concentrations on the edges (or in the case of tourism, on the frontline where customers interacts with hosts).

A conscious business acknowledges that all value resides in the nature of the relationship between supplier and buyer and the quality of those relationships is determined by the amount of self respect and mutual respect that exists in those relationships. Employees that are kept in the dark, not trusted by management, treated as children not adults, required to adhere to rigid “inhumane” policies and procedures etc. will pass on this antisocial culture to customers with disastrous consequences. The business might have a very active social strategy but implementation will fail if it hasn’t addressed what it means to be a social business.

Sadly most businesses are jumping on the social media bandwagon by trying to master the tools without any consideration of the deeper change in mindset that’s required. This is where I find Simon Sinek’s observations helpful – treat the business as if it were a person not a thing because every interaction with customers, suppliers, other employees and other stakeholders will always be personal.

Here’s Simon Sinek speaking plain common sense about Social Business. Pour yourself a coffee and take 25 minutes to remind yourself how the world really works!

Empowering the Conscious Traveller

We’re pleased to discover a web site devoted to “Empowering the Conscious Traveller” that was created independently of us – see our thoughts on the Conscious Traveller. 

Their site iSeeiTravel  was founded by Marc Bollinger and Eytan Eltermann, filmmakers and storytellers currently creating a documentary about Conscious Hosts and Conscious Travel in Costa Rica.