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Why Indigenous Travel Matters Now

Why Indigenous Travel Matters Now

Presentation to WINTA, Luzern, October 12th, 2012Presentation to WINTA, Luzern, October 12th, 2012

Anna Pollock, Founder of Conscious TravelAnna Pollock, Founder of Conscious Travel

Scope

1. Anna: What does Indigenous Mean? Why the time has come for Indigenous Tourism

2. Ben: Indigenous Values – the Contribution

3. Anna: The Role of Indigenous Tourism Going Forward

Definition

Why The Time For Indigenous Tourism Has Come

1.The state we’re in2.Why we’re in this state3.Who Will Fix the Problem?4.How is the Customer Changing? 5.The Keys to Success

Accelerated Consumption

Climate Change

Energy & Fuel

Material Resource Scarcity

Food scarcity

Water Scarcity

Ecosystem Decline

Disparate Prosperity

Government Debt

Lack of Global Governance

Political Instability

Pandemics

THE PERFECT STORM

The State We’re In

The State We’re InTourism now supports 1 billion international trips a year

It can produce income, economic growth, jobs, foreign exchange, conserve wildlife, preserve cultures..but it doesn’t always

Are we at a tipping point?

Metaphorically speaking, we’re about to experience a tourism tsunami + galeforce winds + earthquake

Will the tourism capsule hold out?

Mass Industrial Tourism Hangs on the Edge

Industrial tourism is producing diminishing returns for nearly everybody

This graph shows the fate of individual destinations - could it apply to industrial tourism as a whole?

If yields decline industrial tourism can only succeed by growing in volume

Are we at the inflection point?

More volume = more congestion If margins don’t grow, mergers & consolidation are inevitable and lead to concentration of wealth.

Can we handle another 400 million tourists in just 8 years?

The Island Where Tourist Garbage is Stored in the MaldivesSource: Daily Mail

The Queue to Climb EverestSource: Guardian

• see: Can Tourism Change its Operating Model?

How will we handle congestion?

How will we handle waste?

How will we handle emissions?

How will we manage our thirst for water and land?

How will avoid residents’ backlash?

Protest Sign Erected by Young BalineseSource: ABC They Paved Paradise

Source: China Daily

How will we protect vulnerable people and cultures?

Industrial Tourism Grew Up In the Age of the Automobile & Mass Everything

It borrowed its operating model from manufacturing

WHY are we in the state we’re in?

Based on Assembly Lines, Specialisation & Hierarchies

Focus: efficiency & productivity - producing more for less

Standardisation, Order, Planning

Economies of Scale - consolidation, more & bigger is better, growth

Economies of Scale - consolidation, more & bigger is better, growth

Economies of Scale - consolidation, vertical integration

Mass Industrial Tourism Started with Great Promise

But Is Now Producing a Different Reality

Based on a mindset of boxes and lines

The Hotel Box

ProductizesStandardizesHomogenize

sCommoditizes

In summary, this is a box that....

Who Might Come to help?

Who has to Fix the Problem?

Who has to Fix the Problem?

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has

Margaret Mead

What’s Needed to Solve The Challenges

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Tourism is Human System Embedded in a

Biological-Physical System

A worldview or mindset acts like a lens

These lenses are made up of the values beliefs and assumptions that we use to make sense of our world

Many are changing their lenses & waking up - becoming conscious

We’re often not aware of our lenses - live in a trance

They are very powerful

When the lenses change, everything else changes

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when our values and beliefs changeso does everything else

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What values and beliefs filter your perception and guide your actions?

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Tourism Through an Industrial Lens

Guests are segments to be targeted and the prize is share of wallet

Both parties (consumer and provider) attempt to win at the cost of the other. Adversarial

Guests seek to get the best or cheapest deal; producers try to maintain their marginRugged independence + materialism creates a mindset of exploitation - animals, landscapes, plants are resources, then products that can be used to produce profitThe Industry is fragmented - each provider looks after his piece of the guest experience and larger agencies are divided into functional silos.

Disconnect from nature - it’s the economy, stupid! Lack of appreciation of limits or consequences.

The tourism industry resists paying for the ecosystem services it has enjoyed for free in the past

•many customers are thinking differently

•emergence of the conscience consumer

•On average just under 50% of consumers prefer to buy from responsible companies

•In South America that average is 75%

•In Australia - 35%

Mindsets Are Already Shifting

•other businesses are thinking differently”

•growth in “conscious business” and “conscious leadership”

•“Business as Usual” is over

•Huge opportunities for those who adapt

Mindsets Are Already Shifting

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surely there has to be a better way?

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Why Indigenous Travel Matters Now

Anna Pollock, Founder of Conscious TravelAnna Pollock, Founder of Conscious Travel

Part 2

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Higher margins for hostshigher net benefit from tourism to their communities,

while increasing resilience and stability

and.....

Desired OutcomesDesired Outcomes

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Welcome Signs of Change

something new is emerging

?

The two Keys to Success

mindset place

Becoming conscious of the way we filter our perception based on

unexamined assumptions

Valuing each place as unique and sacred and refusing to discount it

like a commodity

How?

Practical • Celebrate uniqueness of place – the only antidote to commodification• Slow down & Savour – increase length of stay; sense of value• Integrate adventure with culture, conservation, revitalisation and

knowledge/expertise exchange• Create ambassadors, viral marketing, reputation

For the Greater Good – self interest (protecting your future)• Wake up your customers – help them change their lenses• Create opportunities for wonder & awe – as Jacques and Alexander Cousteau

said “we protect what we love; we love what we know”

• Stop being passive and become active community change agents.

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We travel, initially, to lose ourselves;

we travel next, to find ourselves.

We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more than our newspapers will

accommodate....

And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again---to slow time down and

get taken in, and fall in love once more

Pico Ayer

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