Tourism & Peace
Does tourism contribute to international understanding and peace?
With wars raging in Sudan, Ukraine and the Middle East it is not surprising that the UN has chosen Peace as the theme for World Tourism Day this year. I brought together Paige McClanahan, Aziz Abu Sarah & Scott Cooper to discuss whether or not tourism contributes to peace, and if it can to suggest how it could make a bigger contribution.
This is the poem Aziz reads part of to us:
Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad was first published in 1869. Roughing It, a prequel recounts Twain’s adventures on a stagecoach journey west with his brother. Twain argued that travel broadens the mind: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.”
Jost Krippendorf, in his seminal text The Holiday Makers, reminded us that “every individual tourist builds up or destroys human values while travelling”. We all make choices about how we travel, and about the tours and opportunities that we provide for our clients and guests.
Mejdi aspires to provide opportunities for travellers to act as “citizen diplomats” and challenge our industry to do more
“Over a billion people travel internationally every year. If the industry were to realize the potential for travel as an act of peace, travel could change the world. Peacemaking can’t be left to diplomats, nonprofits, and academics. It doesn’t work, and it doesn’t last. …. The world needs citizen diplomats to engage and learn, to create friendships, and then spread those stories.”
Mejdi are not alone in making the case for peace through tourism. The International Institute for Peace through Tourism, the IIPT, has been making the case since it was founded in 1986. It’s vision is for travel and tourism to become the world’s first global peace industry, founded on the belief that every traveller is potentially an “Ambassador for Peace.”
Mejdi are global leaders in socially conscious travel. Mejdi means to honour in Arabic “that is exactly what we do on every tour – We honor the people of the place.” Over 1.5 million people have viewed Aziz Abu Sarah’s Ted Talk – take 5 minutes to watch and listen, it is inspiring.
Listen to Aziz Abu Sarah’s TED Talk from March 2014, it has passed 1,600,000 views
For more tolerance, we need more ... tourism?
John Coplin, FRAE, RB211 aero-engine Chief Designer, then Director of Technology and Design at Rolls Royce John speaks with passion about why tourism matters and argues that the engineers need to be funded to make the transition to hydrogen, it needs to happen faster across the world in the next ten years.
A clip of John Coplin, FRAE, RB211 aero-engine Chief Designer, expressing his optimism for hydrogen and why aviation matters for international understanding.