Sustainable Tourism

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Comment by Claire Wilson on December 16, 2009 at 4:15pm

Hello,
I am an MA student in Geography studying in California. I'm originally from New Zealand so was keen to see what's happening around sustainability dialogue back home. My thesis research is a comparative study of the sustainability public policy techniques of Whistler, BC and Queenstown, NZ hence joining this discussion group. I'm looking forward to participating in any dialogue while procrastinating from actually writing the thing! No seriously, I'm keen to hear the opinions of people interested in the subject of sustainable tourism and hopefully join in where I can.
Cheers,
Claire

Comment by Tom Bennion on December 7, 2009 at 10:32pm

"Tomorrow 56 newspapers in 45 countries (including the Guardian) take the perhaps unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. Many if not most will publish it on the front page, warning of a "profound emergency." "

This is unprecedented. This phrase in particular jumps out for me:

"Many of us, particularly in the developed world, will have to change our lifestyles. The era of flights that cost less than the taxi ride to the airport is drawing to a close. We will have to shop, eat and travel more intelligently. "

See more at http://bit.ly/6HtzcZ

Tom

Comment by Tom Bennion on December 7, 2009 at 1:24am

Checking out the latest in large luxury sailing ships for tourists, its clear onboard living standards have improved since the nineteenth century - see http://www.seacloud.com/en/the-ships/sea-cloud-hussar.html.

But I think that, given the rapid innovation in boat design which we see in America's Cup challenges, as soon as someone asks the question "lets design a very fast, but reasonably comfortable sailing ship for Auckland to Sydney, probably fixed carbon sails, probably multihull" some pretty interesting designs will come forward. Lets have an X Prize for it!

On the other side of the ledger, aerospace is cutting edge, and the best they have (biofuels, winglets etc) is nowhere near what is needed to get to zero in 50 years.

Tom

Comment by Sam Judd on August 27, 2009 at 7:49pm

Talking about slow travel- I have just returned from a sailing trip to Tonga, where we were planning for a huge coastal cleanup event in October. Tourism is intrinsically related to waste management and much of we do at Sustainable Coastlines is about tourism for people who want to give something back to the environment they enjoy- I am always keen to hear about sustainable tourism ideas. Email me: sustainablecoastlines@hotmail.com

Comment by Nick Potter on August 4, 2009 at 7:21pm

I've added some of my pondering on flying and slower travel in this post on the Intersect blog. It's also good to see that two senior managers of Air NZ joined the Intersect network today and they're openly engaging with people in this conversation. It would be interesting to explore what a business model could look like for "long-distance mobility providers" (the service that airlines are providing) to make a viable transition to a slower world!

Comment by Johanna Knox on August 6, 2008 at 12:37pm

Hi - I've just joined the sustainable tourism group here. I'm a writer and do a lot of work in the museum sector. It was a shock to me earlier this year when it dawned on me that (the way things stand at the moment) my work involves - at its heart - encouraging people to fly more.

I'm very interested in the concept of slow travel, and how I can reconcile green ethics with continuing to work in tourism.

It's not just the flying that the tourists do that is an issue. So much flying goes on when museum exhibitions are being put together as well, since those of us creating the exhibition rarely live in the same city (or even the same country sometimes) as the exhibition venue.

Anyway, looking fwd to joining discussions here when I'm able to.

Comment by Tim Grubb on July 22, 2008 at 2:04pm

Hi, I should say hi too. I am Tim and I work for a small firm called Angus & Associates. We do some sustainability planning work and I am particularly interested in this and am slowly 'greening' my work too. I started this group and will be starting some sort of discussion soon. But obviously anyone can feel free to do that...perhaps by starting with an explanation of Nordic Walking (!).

Comment by Andras Szucs on July 21, 2008 at 2:12pm

Hi guys, i am Andras from Nordic Academy New Zealand. We are starting Nordic Academy to promote Nordic Walking. If anyone is interedted in to try this awesome sport/activity send me an email. First class is for FREE!!
We are looking for to introduce Nordic Walking to tourists/visitors in Wellington in this upcoming summer!