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Location: What is Sustainable Tourism?
Discussion: Welcome to the Wiki
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mickdundee |
Welcome to the Wiki
Jun 19 2008, 9:12 PM EDT
Dear PATA colleagues,I would like to take this opportunity to welcome you to this new PATA initative. I hope that it will bring us all closer together and that it will prompt us to share our views, opinions,problems and concerns regarding the sustainability of tourism with each other. I see the wiki as an excellent forum for enterprises that want to do progress towards a more sustainable future of their businesses by becoming more environmentally sensitive but don't know how to go about it to get on-line advise from other wiki members. A few years ago I did some work for Conservation International in Cebu. We looked into the barriers that prevented hotels from implementing positive environmentgal changes and what we found was that: 1. It all starts at the top of the organisation - if the owner is convinced that environmental issues are important, than the organisation will head in that direction and 2. That many organsisations were willing to be more environmentally friendly but they did not know how to go about it. I hope that our wiki can help. Best regards Thomas Bauer, Chair PATA Sustainable Tourism Advisory Committee 1 out of 1 found this valuable. Do you? |
renton |
1. RE: Welcome to the Wiki
Jul 19 2008, 1:33 AM EDT
Ayubowan! (The Sri Lankan Greeting meaning 'May all beings on earth have long life' ) Thanks for the definitions on sustainability. About a decade or so ago a good friend of mine and of PATA, a man orginally from Oregon living in Singapore at that time, most respected for his pioneering work on conservation of our heritage through tourism, late ROBERTSON COLLINS said, and I will never, ever forget or discount those profound words.... He said " Please don't call Tourism NAMES.... for all tourism must be sustainable, conserve the resources it utilizes, be eco-friendly... all tourism must benefit communities and all its stake-holders, all tourism must negate social ills and enhance nature, culture and heritage.... all tourism must be good business and must profit all alike. If you MUST call Tourism a name, he said ... please call it GOOD Tourism" . I urge all of us to ponder on what Late Robbie Collins said before we attach every adjective available in the English language, before the word 'Tourism'. Please note that the context in which Robbie said it and I was personally there, when he said it.... It was to demonstrate the danger of attaching adjectives such as eco or sustainable as lables to tourism and as tags for gaining promotional mileage and thereafter with passage of time, believing ourselves that what we do is eco firendly or sustainable. This contribution is also in honour of Late Robbie Collins for the very significant contribution he made to heritage conservation and to PATA in the 80's and the 90's. For sustainbility must also have a sense of history, a profound knowledge of the present and a realistic vision for the future. Renton de Alwis Sri Lanka Tourism Please visit www.earthlung.travel or www.srilanka.travel to learn of how little Sri Lanka contributes in our own small way. Thank you Do you find this valuable? |
