Tourism consistently states that it is an industry that creates peace. Tourism leaders tell the public time and again that tourism unites people from across the world. Travel and tourism leaders argue that their industry brings people together, and by knowing each other, we begin to understand the other person.
Tourism leaders need to ask themselves if this assumption is true or if tourism needs a radical change to live up to the values it purports. In reality, we might question the truthfulness of many of these assumptions. Below is a listing of many ways that tourism and peace have either become contradictory or the tourism industry is not living up to the values it promotes.
- Lack of real and meaningful interaction between visitors and staff. It is rare that in leisure tourism locals interact seriously with their visitors. In most cases, the interaction is between the servant/employee and the one being served/customer.
- Many of these interactions are with waiters, hotel personnel, airline personnel or people working in tourism attractions.
- These interactions tend to be ones in which the customer/visitor/tourist requests service from the local service provider, who is often paid a small minimum wage with the hope of being tipped.
- Visitors can be demanding, arrogant and/or rude. How often do tourism officials wonder what these service providers really think?
- Certainly, the visitor has nothing more than a superficial and temporary relationship with these service providers, many of whom may wonder why their guests live a life of luxury while after long commutes they return to the squalor of their homes from the luxury hotels in which they work.
- Because tourism zones tend to be expensive many of tourism’s front-line personnel are often forced to live far from their place of residence, and these travel challenges can cause resentment toward the tourism industry’s clientele.
- Examples of this forced commute due to gentrification are numerous, and range from New York City to San Francisco, and across much of Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean.
- Issues of depersonalization. Due to modern technology, tourism staff have been replaced by machines. Across the world, self-check-in machines (or check-out machines) mean that one can eat at a restaurant, check-in or out of a hotel, or print an airline ticket with no human interaction.
- As the tourism industry replaces humans with robots or computer devices, even the minimum interaction between the service providers and the visitors becomes almost non-existent. Tourism has, in many cases, sacrificed customer interactions on the altar of efficiency.
- In some locales, tourism is now accused of being culturally unfriendly. Anti-tourism movements have now arisen in places such as Barcelona, Spain, and Venice, Italy.
- Locals argue that instead of bringing peace and understanding, the tourism industry has brought about high prices and additional trash, and often, locals have come to see visitors as simply rude.
- Tourism and issues of human and sex trafficking Tragically, some people in the tourism industry have also lent themselves to earning money via prostitution, human trafficking, or the sale of illegal drugs.
- These actions give the industry a black eye and hurt the many honest people who work in tourism. Locals both sell these illegal products to visitors or have become victims of visitors who engage in illegal actions.
- In both cases, tourism is not known as an industry that promotes peace.
- Does tourism bring enemy peoples together?
- Tourism industry officials argue that their industry brings people together from nations at war, but the reality is that visas between warring nations are rare to non-existent, and when someone does obtain a visa, the restrictions are such that communication is kept to a minimum.
- For tourism to bring people together, there must be fewer restricted visas and respectful dialogue between people.
If the tourism industry wants to be an industry of peace rather than resentment and frustration, it must begin addressing these challenges.
The World Tourism Network will seek meaningful dialogue regarding these challenges.
Only then can we in the tourism industry truly call ourselves an industry of peace.