Responsible tourism, can also be defined as a sustainable tourism practice, an approach to travel and exploration that seeks to minimize negative impacts on the environment, culture, and local communities, while maximizing the benefits for all involved. It involves making ethical choices as a traveler to ensure that your presence contributes positively to the destinations you visit.
Travel has been evolving over time, once upon a time, a beach vacation was considered to be a perfect holiday. Over time experiential travel emerged as a way of travel where travelers gave importance to the local experiences each destination has to offer. They used to travel to more and more places during a single holiday trip.
How can you describe Responsible tourism
Responsible tourism can be described as a way of travel where you contribute to the place you are visiting in multiple ways, including socio, economic, cultural exchanges. Travelers would literally want to become responsible travelers, who would want to become a part of the socio economic development of the local communities, people and the multiple other tourism stakeholders, leading to a sustainable tourism process.
How Kumarakom adopted Responsbile Tourism
Kumarakom in Kerala, was the first destination in India to embrace this tourism practice. Kumarakom was an agrarian backwater village on the banks of the Vembanad backwaters of Kerala. In the initial years when tourism was budding in Kumarakom, large investments were on the way to build tourism infrastructure in the region. Most of the these investments might have benefited the local population indirectly, however in the longer run, they were not part of the tourism process. The local community might not have had the experience or skill to be a part of the tourism process.
It was the initiaitive of multiple tourism stakeholders and the Governement of Kerala who took it to a larger canvas ensuring the involvement of the local community directly and indirectly.
Harold Goodwin is an evangalist of responsible tourism, he states responsibe tourism as "Better places for people to visit and better places for people to live"
The responsible tourism concept was evolved first during the World summit of sustainable development that was held at Cape Town, South Africa in the year 2002. Over the years it has been widely adopted and accepted by various tourism bodies.
The farmers at Kumarakom now have a better market for their produce. Local men organise village walks around their backwater village for tourists who would like to see the raw form of village life. The women make multiple things including artifacts that tourists could buy. All of this has happend by building awareness and holding hands together by all tourism stake holders.
The outcome of this is about a sustainable tourism scenaio that will last for a longer period of time. More people are involved and the local community becomes a direct beneficiary of the entire tourism activity.
Visit Kerala tourism Responsible tourim page - You can find more interesting content about how Kumarakom tourism has evolved over time and the different programs organised here.