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.

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  

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/