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.

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  

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

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/

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!

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.

Is Conscious Business “Capitalism 3.0″?

Jean Houston

Dr. Jean Houston, scholar, philosopher and researcher in human capacities, and one of the foremost visionary thinkers and doers of our time and principal founders of the Human Potential Movement sent me a summary of the major mindset shifts taking place at this point in history. What an amazing time to be alive!.

If you are interested in and committed to envisioning and co-creating a fresh new vision for the travel and hospitality community, now’s the time to find fellow kindred spirits and get started. Many brave souls have prepared a path before us. All the  great work in sustainable tourism, ecotourism, geotourism, and responsible travel is building towards the same end – ensuring our travel activities don’t cost the earth. Conscious.Travel is not designed or intended to duplicate or fragment but to integrate and support. Our focus is on people not product; on helping nourish and grow leaders with courage and imagination. It was Victor Frankl who said,

When we are no longer able to change a situation – we are challenged to change ourselves.

Here are Dr. Houston’s five shifts with my comments in italics..

1. We are changing our understanding of who and what we are and what we need to become in order to be able to deal with the complexity of our time. It was Theihard de Chardin who coined the phrase – “we are not human beings having a spiritual experience but spiritual beings having a human experience”. That being the case, there are no limits to what we can achieve. In the same way that we can acquire superhuman strength when in a dire emergency and loved ones are trapped, so can we find the power in ourselves to cope when the stakes get really high – and they are increasing every day. 

2. Human societies are in the process of re-patterning. Social constructs are dissolving and whole new stories are trying to emerge, such as the rise of women to a full partnership with men across the globe, and many others. Women are a vital and significantly important part of the travel community and are driving the movement towards conscious consumption. Time we stepped forth in our own communities. It’s not about seeking to climb to the top of decaying institutions but being a change agent at the grassroots level

3. How we conduct business and commerce is shifting. This is perhaps the most important social event of the last five thousand years, because commerce impacts almost everything in our lives. Capitalism as practiced in the past is seriously flawed. Even Alan Greenspan had to admit it contained flaws he hadn’t acknowledged. Now is not the time to discard the only means of sustaining ourselves but to re-think, re-set- re-create a better version. Simply put, Conscious Business is Capitalism 3.0

4. The rise and fusion of different cultures–we are swiftly moving towards a planetary civilization that accentuates the uniqueness of each culture while blending them together. Think of the great fusions of food and of music and of beliefs. Now if travel & tourism had a higher purpose, then this is it. But we won’t make our contribution to building a planetary civilisation so long as we continue to displace vulnerable cultures in our attempts to secure the few remaining unspoiled, remote spots of beauty left where indigenous cultures have existed for thousands of years. To be involved in travel means to care about the disappearance of a language every two weeks and to speak out where the actions of the travel community have created injustice.

5. Whole new orders of spirituality are emerging that are not about religion. The new cosmologies are giving us a view of ourselves that we never had before. For the first time ever, we find that we don’t live in the universe, but that the universe lives in us. In other words, for the first time in human history we’re consciously aware that our own evolution as a species is in our hands and not left to random chance. That’s both wildly exciting and terrifying. Isn’t that enough to jump out of bed with passion and enthusiasm?

Time to wake up folks. Fresh, organic coffee lovingly grown by a cooperative is brewing!

To quote our friends at Interaction Associates:

ROI = Return on Involvement

It doesn’t matter whether you get involved in Responsible Travel, Sustainable Tourism, Green Travel, Geotourism etc. what matters is that you participate and take a stand for what you believe in.