Taking off Travel blog

It’s been a while since we last looked at some of the stories making headlines in the travel industry, so here’s our first travel news roundup of 2010.

Travel Oscars - Are You In?

Are you ready to go to the Oscars? There are no films involved, but if you’re in the travel business, then the World Travel Awards are where you want to be. You can nominate yourself in one of 998 categories covering a wide range of regions. It’s a good way to strut your travel stuff and stand out from the herd or, as President and Founder Graham Cooke, says: “winning a World Travel Award is an excellent way to stand up and be counted at time when marketing budgets are tight”. Nomination forms are available here. You’ll need to get yours in by January 31. Read more »

A couple of weeks ago when I wrote a post on responsible travel, I ran into Alexia Nestora on Twitter. Alexia runs the Voluntourism Gal blog. With this type of tourism regaining popularity, I interviewed Alexia about voluntourism in general and her experiences in particular.

So what is voluntourism and how did it start?

Alexia Nestora of Voluntourism Gal

Voluntourism has been around for as long as people have been traveling, it’s nothing new but recently it’s gotten a lot of media attention and as a result is rising to the surface a lot more. The Peace Corps was one of the first organizations to formalize volunteering abroad and of course missionaries have been going abroad to serve for years.

The real voluntourism boom in the US happened after 9/11 and the tsunami. All of a sudden it seemed that people wanted to get more out of their vacations, they didn’t just want to sit on a beach anymore, they wanted to give back and get involved in the community.

What are the chief advantages of voluntourism for travelers?

As a voluntourist you will see a side of a community that is hidden away from traditional tourists. While most people will only take pictures of a sight, a voluntourist will live with the community that surrounds the sight and will truly understand what local culture is like – it’s so much more than a bus tour could ever show you.

What are the chief advantages of voluntourism for destinations?

There are many ways that, when voluntourism is done well, destinations benefit. Firstly, they get free labor. Maybe a local school needed to be rebuilt for decades but the workers in the area are spending every second they have trying to make money to support their family, and while they’d like to build a new school, they simply are too busy trying to survive.

Secondly, the communities benefit from the resources volunteers bring with them. Maybe the volunteers will bring new books for the library or maybe they’ll donate money so a group of local women can start a cooperative; this can be a slippery slope but as long as the giving is done responsibly the communities benefit greatly. Lastly, the intercultural relationships that are formed and the understanding of different nationalities greatly contributes to global cooperation. It’s easy to hate all Americans if you have never met one, it’s a bit harder to hate them if they lived with your family and diligently helped on your farm for 2 months. Read more »

When I first started traveling, we gave very little thought to the effect of travel on the places we visited. That has changed. Along with eco-friendly travel, people are talking about sustainable travel and responsible travel. But what exactly is it, and does it mean we can’t have fun any more? Not at all.

What Is Responsible Travel?

A simple way of looking at responsible travel is that we should be aware of the impact of our travel choices. The ResponsibleTravel.org site describes it this way:

With the opportunity to travel, however, comes a new responsibility to all travelers to ensure that their activities do not upset or destroy the very cultures and environments we choose to visit.

Lonely Planet has a great article on the topic which says it is ‘assessing our impact on the environment and local cultures and economies - and acting to make that impact as positive as possible.’ Read more »