Max Haberstroh
Five Years After Covid-19 Breakout: How to empower responsible Tourism in a world of trouble
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Max Haberstroh
Five Years After Covid-19 Breakout: How to empower responsible Tourism in a world of trouble
Little seemed to have changed ever since Covid-19 was declared over. Reprocessing the pandemic and investigating its responsibilites are largely given way to business as usual, while the focus of public discussions has been set on challenges like climate change, economic recession, rotten infrastructure, knife-terror and social unrest.
In the apparently parallel world of Travel & Tourism, the wear and tear of the sustainable tourism mantra has prompted critical experts to ring the alarm clock. What has gone wrong with sustainability? Has the temptation to business greenwashing become too strong? No doubt, the bell tolls for a mislead life in many a comfort niche, and linguistic cosmetics to embellish product and service properties have ceased to match up with the increasingly urgent proposition of change. But who is in charge? Is anybody responsible out there? Responsibility is the essence of decisions and resolutions.
Alas, responsibility does not seem to be the preferred approach of many present-day figureheads, who, rather than bend on making decisions, rely on delegating, protracting and postponing, following the slogan: Let's have a look – then we will see.
For too many people, the word change is equal to trouble, but spin doctors are on the alert: Is there a notion to replace the word 'sustainable', bleached out as it is? Wouldn't 'Responsible Tourism' instead be a more accurate approach, even cause some mental change? After all, Tourism's focus on the eonomic, social and environmental balance of pros and cons has the time on its side to outlive the traditional, easy-handed practice of playing with merely numerical values gladly submitted to economic growth in GDP statistics.
Talk shows may be good to update audiences and brush up experts' image. In the beginning is the word, yet word should follow deed. As a matter of fact, responsible Travel & Tourism, carefully projected and stringently implemented, could be upgrading Tourism intrinsically, reaching beyond its core business as an outstanding service industry. Besides making benefits as the outcome of entrepreneurial performance, enterprises do have a social commitment – and they know about it. Charity and sponsoring are just two fields of activities companies indulge in, to enhance their social reputation and image. But there is something else that has to do with extending functions and responsibilities.
Embedded in a political setting, Travel & Tourism, to boost cooperation, is prone to seek commonalities with likeminded organisms in both government and business, using 'cultural diplomacy' as the tool to launch cross-sector or cross-industry initiatives. It is true that Tourism is capable to shape up regional identity and boost the emergence of an image desired as a travel destination, but even more so, in a supplementary way, as a 'place to live, to work, to invest and to travel'. The idea of an extension is: Tourism would not be just promoting a holiday destination, but spearhead the country's (region's, city's) 'place marketing' altogether: a more holistic approach that would be covering the needs and aspirations of the visitors, the local people, and the environment. It could attract a maximum of public awareness and, at last, enhance the perception of 'Travel & Tourism' as an amazingly comprehensive 'communication tool-box', or a cluster of muti-level communication tools.
Tourism is the world's largest employer (WTTC) and a very important one in Germany, generating 11 % of GDP. But there are defaults that leave a lot of the sector's political potential untapped: its volatility to negative occurrences especially outside Tourism's immediate scope, its fragmentation in mostly small and medium-sized enterprises and public units, and its prevailing image of a happy-go-lucky leisure and fun business.
Consequently, the sector has been assessed "non-relevant", in timely reminiscence to comments regarding the political perception of Tourism during the pandemic. In order to underscore the eonomic and social importance of Tourism, making the perception of its crucial properties 'relevant', its extended function as a 'an orchestrated cluster of muti-level communication tools' would be a great asset, accompanied by a structural reshuffle and an increased empowerment of its public organisms. Tourism Ministries would have to play a more effective role as the spearhead of place marketing, guardian of 'umbrella' branding and promoter of place-marketing policies.
Therefore, the traditional Ministry of Tourism ought to be upgraded, from the functional 'line organization', as it is widely practiced, to the level of a 'staff organism' at the very top of state/government leadership. In order to assure that the Ministry, besides its commitment to the typical public administration regulations, acts according to market priorities, the Ministry of Tourism should be completed by a free-wheeling Promotion Board that holds a defined autonomy status to maintain operational flexibility. Responsibilites would include the elaboration of an integrated mission-vision statement, consistent guidelines, strategy and operations.
Tourism indeed has never been reluctant to herald another element of its 'higher purpose': its claim to be a leading global peace-maker. To everyone's shock and dismay, today's war-and-crisis ridden time has not been prevented, not even mitigated -- neither by politicians, nor by peace movements, climate gluers, Friday-for-future coryphes, Olympic Games stakeholders, not by global Canival's court jesters, not even by the unheard voices from churches, mosques and temples – and last but not least, not by the leaders of global Tourism.
How can Tourism uphold its mantra of being a global peace-maker? Has the given pattern turned out good enough to serve as an uncontested fact? There are plenty of examples in the political bag of tricks, stipulated as dogmas „without option“. At last the mainstream prompts the fake to emerge and to perpetuate itself as correct and true – albeit due to its perennial repetition.
Our hope that despite all odds things may turn out well may go along with a good deal of humour and our transcendental understanding that we are only guests on earth. Our world is our host, and we are all co-hosts, guests and co-creators. Therefore, to a high degree, we are responsible for the „Human Condition“ (Hannah Arendt).
It seems, however, that we cannot escape the suspicion of conspiring with the „Part of that Power, not understood, Which always wills the Bad, and always works the Good“ (Goethe in 'Faust'). With the litmus test still outstanding, Tourism's peace claim remains almost as controversial as the dragging Covid-19 root cause analysis.
Author: Max Haberstroh
International (Senior) Consultant on Sustainable Tourism
The authors are responsible for the choice and presentation of the facts contained in this document and for the opinions expressed therein, which are not necessarily those of Tourism and Society Think Tank and do not commit the Organization, and should not be attributed to TSTT or its members.
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