Home HopSolutions : practical ressources Define: Responsible tourism

Define: Responsible tourism

Sustainable tourism development guidelines and management practices are applicable to all forms of tourism in all types of destinations, including mass tourism and the various niche tourism segments. Sustainability principles refer to the environmental, economic, and socio-cultural aspects of tourism development, and a suitable balance must be established between these three dimensions to guarantee its long-term sustainability

World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) -2004 definition

Responsible tourism, or sustainable tourism

Sustainable? overused term? we use it very loosely and largely. Still often perceived, wrongly, as a system of constraints while it is primarily the expression of common sense, at the scale of the human community, organization or individual. So, within Hopineo, instead of “sustainable” we prefer the term “responsible”. This semantic certainly retains its original meaning, “which must answer for its actions, all circumstances and consequences included” …

Responsible tourism, therefore, means to realize tourism activity as a provider or traveler, paying attention to the circumstances of the activity and the consequences of its implementation.

> Go to the key actors of responsible tourism

> See the schools and trainings

Stop the preconceived ideas !

To make it short, no, responsible travel is not necessarily going to sleep in a troglodyte cave or a hut deep in the bush of Burkina Faso; this is not necessarily going to work on an organic farm during your vacation, or making hats with a Kichwa community in Ecuador. All this is good, and they are all alternative forms of tourism; but responsible tourism is much wider than that!

And this is a process. A citizen one. Like most things, it is not good or bad. We are moving. We raise the question for every choice we make (almost) as part of our action, and we do our best. We just need a few keys…

Official founder principles (UNWTO)

Make optimal use of environmental resources that constitute a key element in tourism development, maintaining essential ecological processes and helping to conserve natural heritage and biodiversity.
Respect the socio-cultural authenticity of host communities, conserve their built and living cultural heritage and traditional values, and contribute to inter-cultural understanding and tolerance.
Ensure viable, long-term economic operations, providing socio-economic benefits to all stakeholders that are fairly distributed, including stable employment and income-earning opportunities and social services to host communities, and contributing to poverty alleviation.

For further official definitions, including the Global Code of Ethics for Tourism, GCET, please visit the UNWTO’s website.

Define: Responsible tourism

Responsible tourism, or sustainable tourism

Stop the preconceived ideas !

Official founder principles (UNWTO)

Other definitions:

Ecoturismo

Turismo solidario

Participative tourism

Fair tourism

La newsletter du touriste citoyen

Support Hopineo !