Binoculars or beer: a tale of two tourists
Justin Francis argues for authentic experiences while Jeremy Skidmore defends package tours RESPONSIBLE tourism these days doesn’t mean confining yourself to a mud hut in Africa in your hair shirt. Take the five-star $440-a-night Banyan Tree in Phuket, which was built on reclaimed useless tin- mining land. The site now has an abundance of vegetation and provides local jobs. There are hundreds of eco-chic luxury hotels like this year’s First Choice Responsible Tourism Award winners Nihiwatu Resort in Indonesia and Bird Island in the Seychelles to choose from. There really is no excuse for not making your next holiday a responsible one.
Responsible tourism is about authentic holiday experiences that bring you closer to nature and local cultures, as well as benefit destinations and local people. It’s wrong to assume that we can’t have a great time on holiday as well as do the right thing.
In Kenya that means staying in a small lodge run in partnership with the Masai and going on a walking safari with proud tribal elders. They will inspire you with traditional stories and teach you wildlife tracking, rather than cramming you into a zebra-striped minivan and putting you up in a faceless, overseas-owned lodge.
On a cheap family holiday in Spain it means staying in a hotel that treats waste properly; pays staff a fair wage; provides chances for local staff to develop into managers; and sources fresh produce from nearby suppliers. It means choosing to spend a night out of the hotel eating at local restaurants or staying in locally owned accommodation.
In both cases the tourist enjoys a deeper travel experience, the local community gets a fair share of the benefits, and negative environmental impacts are minimised.
Let me disabuse you of any notions that tourism is a benign industry. On an all-inclusive holiday in the Dominican Republic, 89 per cent of the cost of your holiday stays in the UK. This leaves little for local hotel staff, who, although grateful for a job in such a poor country, barely earn a living wage before tips. A single cruise liner produces 210,000 gallons of sewage a week. Most is pumped directly into the sea, some treated and some not. The UN claims that at least 1 million children are sexually abused by tourists every year. Surely these are reasons enough to encourage more responsible tourism?
Those who argue that responsible tourists should never leave the UK miss the point that UK travellers spend £2 billion a year on holidays in developing countries, and that if we stopped travelling then both local economic development and conservation would be severely affected.
Justin Francis is the managing director of responsibletravel.com.
Why spend your holiday stuck in a shanty town?
WHEN buying holidays, most people want value for money, sunshine and the chance to relax in a safe environment.
Mass-market packages provide these in spades. No wonder more than 10 million of them are sold every year.
Benidorm, Europe’s biggest resort, is choc-a-bloc with fish-and-chips shops and pubs packed with beer-swilling Brits watching Premiership football. A cheap package to the town buys you a little bit of England, with the crucial difference that the hassle is replaced with glorious sunshine.
And what’s wrong with that? Nobody has the right to tell people how to enjoy themselves. Why should you have to visit cathedrals and museums and experience local culture just because the chattering classes say it is the thing to do?
Far from destroying resorts such as Benidorm, tourism has been the making of them. In the 1950s, it was a road with one property; these days its bars and hotels have turned it into a thriving town offering employment to thousands.
On mass-market holidays, people are contained in packed charter planes and taken around resorts in air-conditioned coaches. Tour operators are able to keep them in one area, which is handy if they’ve had one drink too many. It’s certainly preferable to allowing them to rampage across Europe’s towns.
Package operators use huge hotels with crèches and kids’ clubs, which give parents a well-earned break that is impossible in a small, boutique property.
For all this, you’ll pay an average of less than £500 per person per week and, if you shop around, you’ll probably get it even cheaper.
For those who want to fly long-haul, an all-inclusive package to the Caribbean is ideal. Often derided as prisons holding people captive, nothing could be farther from the truth. All-inclusives are places to unwind, with food, drink and water sports provided. With those facilities available, why would you want to spend your holiday trekking around a shanty town?
So-called responsible travellers claim these big complexes destroy the environment and put nothing back into the community. Nonsense. The resorts provide jobs, and holidaymakers regularly buy handicrafts from locals and pay for boat trips that are not included in their packages. Meanwhile, mass-market operators donate more to environmental charities, such as the Travel Foundation, than small specialist companies. So, as well as giving people great holidays, packages are leading the way in protecting resorts for future generations.
Jeremy Skidmore is a freelance journalist.
Interested? Take a look at our tips for responsible travellers, Kenya safaris and eco chic holidays.