Diplomats, Environmentalists, and the Power of Travel

• 10 billion plastic bottles go into landfill every year.
• 730 billion dollars were spent on tourism last year.
• 2 billion people will board an airplane next year.
• It’s possible to spend 1000 dollars a night on a hotel room while half the world’s population is living on 4 dollars a day.

Those are just a few of the not so fun facts that flew across my data saturated radar on Tuesday morning at the Conde Nast World Saver’s Congress. My notes are a blur of numbers and pithy quotations, some of them really meaningful, others weirdly out of context, as is wont to happen when you’re trying to absorb as much information as possible as it’s being presented.

I confess, I wasn’t entirely prepared for what I’d signed up for. I’d read the back issues of the magazines about the Congress, but my unanticipated delays meant there was no dinner with Wendy Perrin the night before, no time to ask about what, exactly, the event was, what they wanted from my time there, and what I should pay attention to.

It didn’t matter, I totally got it, almost immediately. I could copy the Conde Nast statement here, verbatim, but I’d rather tell you how I understood the Congress. Tourism, travel, that industry is freakishly huge. Billions of dollars are spent so people can get away from where they are. And some of that money can go towards making an enormous difference, in mitigating the environmental costs of travel, in assisting the people we visit, in making the unstoppable force of travel also work as a force for good.

In fact, we might argue that as travelers, we have an essential responsibility to leave the places we visit better than they were when we’d arrived, to protect them culturally, environmentally, socially. And as the Congress proved, it’s possible to do that with the very smallest of actions, though it’s staggering to learn of the grand scale of the work that’s being done by organizations that I’d previously perceived of as great anonymous monoliths of tourism.

It would be absurd for me to try to recapture the day’s speeches and panels here – and besides, Conde Nast Traveler has promised transcripts and videos from the events will be available via their site. You’ll be able to see/read for yourself the kinds of things that were said about tourism, development, and the difference that travel organizations can make. I think it’s more useful for me to mention the things that really stood out for me, the things that, now that I’m home, I can’t stop thinking about.

Adam Stewart is the CEO of Sandals Resorts.I don’t know about your aesthetic, but for me, Sandals is pretty much the antithesis of what I imagine I want from travel. Stewart is a young guy – he’s only 27 – with a Jamaican accent, disarming coming from a white guy in a suit and tie. That’s not the only thing that’s surprising about him. His devotion to implementing environmentally sustainable solutions for powering the Sandals properties is well beyond asking guests to reuse their towels. They’re Green Globe Certified – but they don’t really tell you enough about what they’re doing to earn that. I am probably misremembering the detials, but I’m sure Stewart said something about making one of the island resorts 80% solar powered and that they’re refining their own biodeisel for onsite service vehicles from their kitchens. This is in addition to the community work they do. I’ve previously thought of Sandals as the place for skinny white people on luxury package vacations and maybe that’s what they are, but as a corporate entity, they’re a lot more than that. Stewart seemed nonplussed about the upfront expenses, admitting that they  were huge. He was optimistic about the payoff for the company, but more committed to the pay off environmentally.

Mounir S. Neamatalla speaks beautifully about the wonders of travel and the places it’s broken. He runs the Adere Amellal Ecolodge in the Siwa Oasis. The lodge is hand built out of local materials, there’s no electricity – it’s lit by candle light. I loved hearing Neamatalla talk about the tradition of hospitality and how we can learn from Bedouin traditions. “Siwa was stopover on the camel road to Timbuktu. You would arrive at the oasis and it was not until after three days had passed that someone would ask you where you are going, what you are doing there. Today, we ask people as soon as they arrive what their plans are.” Admittedly, he expresses a romantic vision of travel, one hard to achieve nowadays, but it sounds like he’s dedicated to keeping it alive. He talked about the iPod – “It’s a wonderful piece of technology. But I remember arriving to Siwa like Herodotus, in this place that was alive so long ago. The iPod is a fine thing, but maybe you could put it away until you are again outside Siwa.” I loved when Neamatalla talked about tourism developments. “We have to attenuate our desire for golf courses and extreme landscaping.” he said. Neamatalla is against the construction of an airport at Siwa, suggesting that it can’t help the locals to bring in more tourists. They need sustainability based on what they have, not on outside influences and resources.

There’s so much more. Ashley Judd talking about how she doesn’t focus on the numbers and facts, but does a good job expressing how development work makes her feel. “I was terrified I’d be lulled back into a first world stupor,” she says, discussing her experiences in Rwanda. The Queen of Jordan telling us that what we read in the headlines is only a tiny portion of what’s happening in the Middle East. Gerald Lawless and Lyndall De Marco‘s funny stories about their hospitality training programs in the Arab world where it’s essential to invite not just students, but their parents and uncles and aunties to spread understanding of the value of the training they offer. Sven Lindblad talking about how it doesn’t matter if tourists care about a place before they arrive, but it’s possible to engender in them a sense of stewardship before they leave.

I’m what the industry calls a consumer traveler – the person who buys the tickets, hops on the plane, tags along on the tour of the temples, whatever. This was very much an industry conference – big travel providers talking about the work they’re doing. While a lot of what was being discussed was targeted towards developing ways for travel organizations to make a difference, it’s easy to extrapolate the ideas to folks like you and me. If treading lightly on the planet is important to you, I think there’s an easy first step – ask the people you’re booking your travel with what they’re doing to keep the world a beautiful and healthy place. Want to go one step further? Ask how you can help.

You might be surprised. I certainly was.

“When people go traveling, they look for the good in destinations. People don’t go on holidays to feel unhappy. Travel can do much for peace and understanding. It’s the largest industry in the world – 12%  of the GDP – imagine it all working for peace.” – Lyndall de Marco

• World Savers Congress on The Daily Traveler
• How’d I end up there? This is how.