About the judges of the Responsible Tourism Awards
The Responsible Tourism Awards judging process is chaired by Harold Goodwin, Professor in Responsible Tourism Management in ICRETH at Leeds Metropolitan and Founder of the International Centre for Responsible Tourism, and draws on the expertise of carefully chosen professionals from throughout the tourism industry. Find out about the judging process here
Our panel includes representatives from responsibletravel.com, ABTA, World Travel Market, bgb, UNEP, and CESHI, Royal Photographic society and Metro. Read about our Judges below.
Chair of Judges, and Professor at ICRETH, Leeds Metropolitan University and Director of the International Centre for Responsible Tourism. The ICRT is a community of Responsible Tourism Practitioners in business, government, NGOs, conservation and heritage. The ICRT is for Responsible Tourism. Their work focuses on the principles of the Cape Town Declaration on Responsible Tourism in Destinations, working in originating markets and destinations around the world, to harness tourism to make “better places for people to live in and for people to visit.” They work with governments, tour operators and accommodation providers to realise the aspirations of the Responsible Tourism Movement in which we have played a major part since 1997.
There is a postgraduate Masters in Responsible Tourism Management which is taught in the School of Events, Tourism and Hospitality at Leeds Metropolitan University with ~100 blended learning students pursuing our MSc in Responsible Tourism Management and ten doctoral students. Harold drafted the Cape Town Declaration on Responsible Tourism in Destinations in 2002 which defined the agenda for change and has written extensively on responsible tourism and worked with UK companies and with governments in Bhutan, South Africa and The Gambia to develop and implement responsible tourism policies. He is a partner in the Pro-Poor Tourism Partnership and Director of the Responsible Tourism Partnership. http://www.haroldgoodwin.info/
is founder and director of the Responsible Tourism Awards; managing director, http://www.responsibletravel.com/, http://www.responsiblevacation.com/, http://www.iknowagreatplace.com/
Justin set up responsibletravel.com in 2001 following a career in marketing at the advertising agency J. Walter Thompson and later on, as Head of Worldwide Marketing at The Body Shop.
The idea for the business was borne out of a camp fire conversation with a village headman in Zambia. An MSc in Responsible Tourism had provided him with the academic grounding in responsible tourism and a keen understanding of the difficult issues that faced the travel industry. Anita Roddick (founder of The Body Shop) invested and it became the first, and remains the world’s leading company for responsible, green, eco or sustainable tourism.
In 2004 Justin founded The Responsible Tourism Awards. Justin was one of the founding trustees of The Travel Foundation in the UK. He also sits on the Advisory Board of The International Centre for Responsible Tourism at Leeds Metropolitan University and the Advisory Board of Hidden Britain. He is a Non-Executive Director of Basecamp Explorer Kenya.responsibletravel.com organises The Virgin Holidays Responsible Tourism Awards in association with The Metro, World Travel Market, Geographical Magazine and headline sponsors Virgin Holidays. Justin is a Trustee of The Travel Foundation, and writes regularly on responsible tourism for magazines and papers.
is Research and Consultancy Fellow to the Department of Hospitality, Leisure and Tourism Management at Oxford Brookes University; Visiting Professor to the International Centre for Responsible Tourism at Leeds Metropolitan University, a core member of the Considerate Hoteliers Association management team and Director of the consultancy group CESHI Ltd. Rebecca has worked in the field of sustainable tourism for more than 15 years and has played a key role in the development of a number of the publications and tools that have driven this agenda. Rebecca was the main author of Agenda 21 for the Travel & Tourism Industry (published by the World Travel & Tourism Council, World Tourism Organisation and Earth Council), has worked extensively with the International Hotels Environment Initiative, was one of the consultants that devised the criteria that underpin what is now the Travelife standard, was the author of the WWF analysis of the credentials of sustainable tourism certification programmes and has written much of the guidance available to hotels in the UK on issues regarding energy and waste management and sustainable procurement.
is the Managing Director Four bgb communications and has worked on sustainable travel issues for organisations ranging from tourist boards to NGOs. She is also a Member of the United Nations World Tourism Organisation's Crisis Action Team, the UNWTO Global Business Leaders Forum and represents bgb as a member of the Travel Foundation's Forum. Debbie says "bgb communications was founded in 1991 and is now the UK's leading specialist travel and leisure communications company. bgb's clients range from destinations such as the Caribbean, Wales and Lisbon, through to hotels, online travel companies, airlines, ferry and cruise companies. bgb is a wholehearted advocate of harnessing responsible tourism to protect and support local people and wildlife in the places we visit. All bgb's staff travel is carbon offset through Friends of Conservation.
was Chairman of World Travel Market until earlier this year. Staged annually in London under one roof, World Travel Market is the UK's most important business to business exhibition for the whole global travel trade industry to meet, network, negotiate and conduct business.
Fiona joined the Marketing Department of Reed Exhibition Companies in 1986 and by 1988 she was a Group Marketing Manager responsible for the marketing activity surrounding 17 of Reed Exhibition Companies' leading annual events within the travel, catering, computing, electronics, book publishing, fashion and jewellery industries. She then became Marketing Director in 1991. In 1992 she launched Arabian Travel Market in the Middle East and in December 1993, took over responsibility as Exhibition Director of World Travel Market as well as British Travel Trade Fair in 1996. In 2000 she was appointed Group Exhibition Director for World Travel Market & British Travel Trade Fair and Marketing and Business Development Director for Reed Travel Exhibitions responsible for the groups global communications and strategic development. In 2005 she became Managing Director, World Travel Market, and in 2007 was appointed Chairman.
In 1998 she founded and is now Chairman of the international travel and tourism industry charity - Just a Drop. Its aim is to deliver clean water to over 1.1 billion children worldwide who have no access near to their homes and to reduce the instance of child death caused by polluted water in the world.
is Travel Editor of the Metro Newspaper now read by over 3.5 million people each weekday. She took on the role last October so is relatively new to the post (although enjoying it immensely) and is keen to remind her readers that responsible travel is now a sexy, viable holiday option.
Her favourite responsible travel trip was to La Combe farm in southern France which has an outdoor compost toilet and raises all its own beef, lamb, chickens and eggs. A wind turbine provides the farm with electricity while solar panels heat their water. By day Lisa rode the farm’s horses and by night she drank the local wine (making the outdoor compost toilet quite a challenge). It is these kinds of hard-working places she is looking forward to learning about while working on the Awards.
is a tourism professional with 30 years experience, principally in the mainstream, UK outbound market, with a particular interest in sustainability. He was literally born in to the industry, being the son of a Spanish resident manager for an ABTA tour operator to Spain and an English customer, so tourism is in his blood. John's career, after an academic background in Engineering, returned to tourism in 1980 when he joined the International Leisure/Air Europe Group, ultimately becoming Director of Consumer Affairs. John went on to work for the Tour Operators' Study Group (TOSG), the forerunner of the Federation of Tour Operators (FTO) and as a contractor for the Civil Aviation Authority, Consumer Protection Group. He joined the Thomson Travel Group where he stayed until after the creation of TUI UK Limited, where he was Holiday Services Director. John then joined the MyTravel Group plc, where he was Consumer Affairs Director and in 2007 became a Group Director of the newly formed Thomas Cook Group plc in 2007.
In 2009, John moved to ABTA, where he is a Director of the trade association, Travelife (ABTA's Sustainability System) and ABTA's charity, the ABTA Benevolent Fund. John has been closely involved in the completion of the ABTA and FTO merger, the subsequent organisational change and restructuring of the new ABTA and the creation of ABTA's new strategic Vision. Sustainability and Responsibility are at the heart of that vision for a successful industry. John also Chairs ABTA's disciplinary committee, responsible for the ABTA Code of Conduct, a key element of ABTA's self regulation and consumer protection. John is a Fellow of the Institute of Travel & Tourism; a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators; an Associate of the Chartered Quality Institute and a Fellow of the Institute of Directors. He is also Director of External Affairs at the Shearings Group (Shearings, National Holidays, Caledonian Travel, Wallace Arnold Travel, Coast and Country Hotels and Bay Hotels.)
is Head of Ecosystem Assessment at the World Conservation Monitoring Centre for the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP-WCMC). After graduating from Cambridge, Matt spent ten years with the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE), where he undertook a range of research and consultancy focusing on the role of nature-based tourism as a tool for conservation and local development in and around national parks and protected areas in Africa and Asia. His PhD, on the impacts of dragon tourism in Komodo National Park, Indonesia, was one of the first inter-disciplinary studies of its kind. His later time in Kenya's Masai Mara National Reserve included working with safari tour drivers to map their patterns of use of the park, examining the impact of tourism on wildlife including the endangered black rhino, and bringing together local Maasai communities and eco-friendly tour operators to explore options for small-scale community-driven tourism. He also helped to research and develop strategic tourism plans for various parks in Africa, and taught and supervised dozens of international postgraduate students in tourism and conservation. In 2004 Matt moved back to Cambridge and into the NGO sector to direct Fauna and Flora International's Biodiversity and Human Needs programme, exploring the widespread links between poverty and conservation and developing staff and organizational capacity to deliver multiple benefits from FFI's field programmes.
Matt joined the UNEP-World Conservation Monitoring Centre at the beginning of 2008 to lead the Ecosystem Assessment Programme. This encompasses a broad range of work on biodiversity indicators, ecosystem services and linkages to human wellbeing. A major emphasis of current work is the coordination of the 2010 Biodiversity Indicators Partnership (2010BIP), which is tracking global progress towards achieving the internationally agreed target to significantly reduce the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010. Amongst other things, Matt sits on the Inter-Agency and Expert Group on indicators for the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), responsible for ensuring that biodiversity and environmental trends are fully incorporated in reports to the UN General Assembly. Matt still finds time to publish research on protected area tourism patterns, and is often called upon to provide expert input to tourism environmental impact assessments. He also lectures and supervises students studying people-parks interactions and the role of tourism therein. His work has allowed him to travel in over 50 countries worldwide, gaining first-hand experience of tourism, particularly nature-based tourism, in all its guises.
joined ABTA as Head of Destinations and Sustainability in October in 2009. Nikki has gained an impressive grasp of travel and tourism strategy over her years as Head of Strategy and Development at travel and leisure marketing experts Fox Kalomaski.
Here she worked with a number of destinations as well as specialist agents, tour operators and airlines devising a range of strategic policies. Nikki's expertise in sustainable tourism has recently been enhanced by her completion of a Masters degree in Sustainable Development. Nikki is Head of Destinations and Sustainability at ABTA which includes responsibility for sustainability, operations, health and safety and crisis management.
Michael Pritchard has been Director-General of The Royal Photographic Society since 2011. He was a photography specialist at Christie’s for twenty years before completing a PhD in photographic history in 2010. He is an active photographer with a particular interest in landscape and travel photography.
Our panel includes representatives from responsibletravel.com, ABTA, World Travel Market, bgb, UNEP, and CESHI, Royal Photographic society and Metro. Read about our Judges below.
Harold Goodwin
Chair of Judges, and Professor at ICRETH, Leeds Metropolitan University and Director of the International Centre for Responsible Tourism. The ICRT is a community of Responsible Tourism Practitioners in business, government, NGOs, conservation and heritage. The ICRT is for Responsible Tourism. Their work focuses on the principles of the Cape Town Declaration on Responsible Tourism in Destinations, working in originating markets and destinations around the world, to harness tourism to make “better places for people to live in and for people to visit.” They work with governments, tour operators and accommodation providers to realise the aspirations of the Responsible Tourism Movement in which we have played a major part since 1997.There is a postgraduate Masters in Responsible Tourism Management which is taught in the School of Events, Tourism and Hospitality at Leeds Metropolitan University with ~100 blended learning students pursuing our MSc in Responsible Tourism Management and ten doctoral students. Harold drafted the Cape Town Declaration on Responsible Tourism in Destinations in 2002 which defined the agenda for change and has written extensively on responsible tourism and worked with UK companies and with governments in Bhutan, South Africa and The Gambia to develop and implement responsible tourism policies. He is a partner in the Pro-Poor Tourism Partnership and Director of the Responsible Tourism Partnership. http://www.haroldgoodwin.info/
Justin Francis
is founder and director of the Responsible Tourism Awards; managing director, http://www.responsibletravel.com/, http://www.responsiblevacation.com/, http://www.iknowagreatplace.com/Justin set up responsibletravel.com in 2001 following a career in marketing at the advertising agency J. Walter Thompson and later on, as Head of Worldwide Marketing at The Body Shop.
The idea for the business was borne out of a camp fire conversation with a village headman in Zambia. An MSc in Responsible Tourism had provided him with the academic grounding in responsible tourism and a keen understanding of the difficult issues that faced the travel industry. Anita Roddick (founder of The Body Shop) invested and it became the first, and remains the world’s leading company for responsible, green, eco or sustainable tourism.
In 2004 Justin founded The Responsible Tourism Awards. Justin was one of the founding trustees of The Travel Foundation in the UK. He also sits on the Advisory Board of The International Centre for Responsible Tourism at Leeds Metropolitan University and the Advisory Board of Hidden Britain. He is a Non-Executive Director of Basecamp Explorer Kenya.responsibletravel.com organises The Virgin Holidays Responsible Tourism Awards in association with The Metro, World Travel Market, Geographical Magazine and headline sponsors Virgin Holidays. Justin is a Trustee of The Travel Foundation, and writes regularly on responsible tourism for magazines and papers.
Dr Rebecca Hawkins
is Research and Consultancy Fellow to the Department of Hospitality, Leisure and Tourism Management at Oxford Brookes University; Visiting Professor to the International Centre for Responsible Tourism at Leeds Metropolitan University, a core member of the Considerate Hoteliers Association management team and Director of the consultancy group CESHI Ltd. Rebecca has worked in the field of sustainable tourism for more than 15 years and has played a key role in the development of a number of the publications and tools that have driven this agenda. Rebecca was the main author of Agenda 21 for the Travel & Tourism Industry (published by the World Travel & Tourism Council, World Tourism Organisation and Earth Council), has worked extensively with the International Hotels Environment Initiative, was one of the consultants that devised the criteria that underpin what is now the Travelife standard, was the author of the WWF analysis of the credentials of sustainable tourism certification programmes and has written much of the guidance available to hotels in the UK on issues regarding energy and waste management and sustainable procurement.Debbie Hindle
is the Managing Director Four bgb communications and has worked on sustainable travel issues for organisations ranging from tourist boards to NGOs. She is also a Member of the United Nations World Tourism Organisation's Crisis Action Team, the UNWTO Global Business Leaders Forum and represents bgb as a member of the Travel Foundation's Forum. Debbie says "bgb communications was founded in 1991 and is now the UK's leading specialist travel and leisure communications company. bgb's clients range from destinations such as the Caribbean, Wales and Lisbon, through to hotels, online travel companies, airlines, ferry and cruise companies. bgb is a wholehearted advocate of harnessing responsible tourism to protect and support local people and wildlife in the places we visit. All bgb's staff travel is carbon offset through Friends of Conservation.Fiona Jeffery
was Chairman of World Travel Market until earlier this year. Staged annually in London under one roof, World Travel Market is the UK's most important business to business exhibition for the whole global travel trade industry to meet, network, negotiate and conduct business. Fiona joined the Marketing Department of Reed Exhibition Companies in 1986 and by 1988 she was a Group Marketing Manager responsible for the marketing activity surrounding 17 of Reed Exhibition Companies' leading annual events within the travel, catering, computing, electronics, book publishing, fashion and jewellery industries. She then became Marketing Director in 1991. In 1992 she launched Arabian Travel Market in the Middle East and in December 1993, took over responsibility as Exhibition Director of World Travel Market as well as British Travel Trade Fair in 1996. In 2000 she was appointed Group Exhibition Director for World Travel Market & British Travel Trade Fair and Marketing and Business Development Director for Reed Travel Exhibitions responsible for the groups global communications and strategic development. In 2005 she became Managing Director, World Travel Market, and in 2007 was appointed Chairman.
In 1998 she founded and is now Chairman of the international travel and tourism industry charity - Just a Drop. Its aim is to deliver clean water to over 1.1 billion children worldwide who have no access near to their homes and to reduce the instance of child death caused by polluted water in the world.
Lisa Scott
is Travel Editor of the Metro Newspaper now read by over 3.5 million people each weekday. She took on the role last October so is relatively new to the post (although enjoying it immensely) and is keen to remind her readers that responsible travel is now a sexy, viable holiday option. Her favourite responsible travel trip was to La Combe farm in southern France which has an outdoor compost toilet and raises all its own beef, lamb, chickens and eggs. A wind turbine provides the farm with electricity while solar panels heat their water. By day Lisa rode the farm’s horses and by night she drank the local wine (making the outdoor compost toilet quite a challenge). It is these kinds of hard-working places she is looking forward to learning about while working on the Awards.
John de Vial
is a tourism professional with 30 years experience, principally in the mainstream, UK outbound market, with a particular interest in sustainability. He was literally born in to the industry, being the son of a Spanish resident manager for an ABTA tour operator to Spain and an English customer, so tourism is in his blood. John's career, after an academic background in Engineering, returned to tourism in 1980 when he joined the International Leisure/Air Europe Group, ultimately becoming Director of Consumer Affairs. John went on to work for the Tour Operators' Study Group (TOSG), the forerunner of the Federation of Tour Operators (FTO) and as a contractor for the Civil Aviation Authority, Consumer Protection Group. He joined the Thomson Travel Group where he stayed until after the creation of TUI UK Limited, where he was Holiday Services Director. John then joined the MyTravel Group plc, where he was Consumer Affairs Director and in 2007 became a Group Director of the newly formed Thomas Cook Group plc in 2007.In 2009, John moved to ABTA, where he is a Director of the trade association, Travelife (ABTA's Sustainability System) and ABTA's charity, the ABTA Benevolent Fund. John has been closely involved in the completion of the ABTA and FTO merger, the subsequent organisational change and restructuring of the new ABTA and the creation of ABTA's new strategic Vision. Sustainability and Responsibility are at the heart of that vision for a successful industry. John also Chairs ABTA's disciplinary committee, responsible for the ABTA Code of Conduct, a key element of ABTA's self regulation and consumer protection. John is a Fellow of the Institute of Travel & Tourism; a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators; an Associate of the Chartered Quality Institute and a Fellow of the Institute of Directors. He is also Director of External Affairs at the Shearings Group (Shearings, National Holidays, Caledonian Travel, Wallace Arnold Travel, Coast and Country Hotels and Bay Hotels.)
Dr Matt Walpole
is Head of Ecosystem Assessment at the World Conservation Monitoring Centre for the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP-WCMC). After graduating from Cambridge, Matt spent ten years with the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE), where he undertook a range of research and consultancy focusing on the role of nature-based tourism as a tool for conservation and local development in and around national parks and protected areas in Africa and Asia. His PhD, on the impacts of dragon tourism in Komodo National Park, Indonesia, was one of the first inter-disciplinary studies of its kind. His later time in Kenya's Masai Mara National Reserve included working with safari tour drivers to map their patterns of use of the park, examining the impact of tourism on wildlife including the endangered black rhino, and bringing together local Maasai communities and eco-friendly tour operators to explore options for small-scale community-driven tourism. He also helped to research and develop strategic tourism plans for various parks in Africa, and taught and supervised dozens of international postgraduate students in tourism and conservation. In 2004 Matt moved back to Cambridge and into the NGO sector to direct Fauna and Flora International's Biodiversity and Human Needs programme, exploring the widespread links between poverty and conservation and developing staff and organizational capacity to deliver multiple benefits from FFI's field programmes.Matt joined the UNEP-World Conservation Monitoring Centre at the beginning of 2008 to lead the Ecosystem Assessment Programme. This encompasses a broad range of work on biodiversity indicators, ecosystem services and linkages to human wellbeing. A major emphasis of current work is the coordination of the 2010 Biodiversity Indicators Partnership (2010BIP), which is tracking global progress towards achieving the internationally agreed target to significantly reduce the rate of biodiversity loss by 2010. Amongst other things, Matt sits on the Inter-Agency and Expert Group on indicators for the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), responsible for ensuring that biodiversity and environmental trends are fully incorporated in reports to the UN General Assembly. Matt still finds time to publish research on protected area tourism patterns, and is often called upon to provide expert input to tourism environmental impact assessments. He also lectures and supervises students studying people-parks interactions and the role of tourism therein. His work has allowed him to travel in over 50 countries worldwide, gaining first-hand experience of tourism, particularly nature-based tourism, in all its guises.
Nikki White
joined ABTA as Head of Destinations and Sustainability in October in 2009. Nikki has gained an impressive grasp of travel and tourism strategy over her years as Head of Strategy and Development at travel and leisure marketing experts Fox Kalomaski.
Here she worked with a number of destinations as well as specialist agents, tour operators and airlines devising a range of strategic policies. Nikki's expertise in sustainable tourism has recently been enhanced by her completion of a Masters degree in Sustainable Development. Nikki is Head of Destinations and Sustainability at ABTA which includes responsibility for sustainability, operations, health and safety and crisis management.
Michael Pritchard
Michael Pritchard has been Director-General of The Royal Photographic Society since 2011. He was a photography specialist at Christie’s for twenty years before completing a PhD in photographic history in 2010. He is an active photographer with a particular interest in landscape and travel photography. This year's winners
