Category: ICRT Blog

Behind closed doors – find out what guests consume in their accommodation

Growing scientific evidence shows that the behaviour of guests staying at tourist accommodation can have a significant effect on the building’s overall energy/water use and carbon emissions. If only guests were approached and advised correctly in the first place owners/managers could achieve big savings, helping the bottom line and reducing carbon emissions. The ICRT Australia has supported …

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Values and Knowledge are the keys to ignite managers’ action for change

The UN has called for urgent transformational change so the Paris Agreement goals can be reached. Such transitions require more than simply technology advances they require in a change in mindset to spur organisational innovation,  the innovative involvement of visitors who consume tourism and the active integration of these endeavours to design innovative experiences. Our research …

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Innovation to be a key to ‘Kasane Call To Action’

A key result from the United Nations World Tourism Organisation’s Sustainable Tourism Conference in Kasane Botswana (November 2017), is the much-awaited launch of the Kasane Call to Action. The two-day conference provided many outstanding examples of responsible tourism that apply innovative approaches, like Des Elepants &  des Hommes, an NGO which seeks to manage the …

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Internal skills develop reaps far reaching rewards

The benefits of encouraging staff to progress their skills and career opportunities was strongly demonstrated at the Arabian Travel Market’s Developing Tourism Skills and Employment  Opportunities in Travel & Tourism session. “Heidi Van de Watt’s examples from South Africa showed the value of mentoring staff, “ said Christopher Warren, director of the ICRT, who moderator …

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Vocation Education Training – Staff Delivering Sustainable Tourism Experiences

Sustainability is today on the agenda of the vast majority of transnational corporations and frequently for large, medium and even small sized travel and hospitality companies. For those making the transition to involve their customers directly they will need to train their staff to persuasively engage. Directly involving staff is a new innovative direct for …

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Overtourism – Conference in Iceland

The 13th International Conference on Responsible Tourism in Destinations takes place in Iceland 29-30 September 2017. This working symposium will explore strategies to ensure sustainable tourism development where “overtourism” is occurring through local management practices and empowered communities. We envisage that this symposium will identify the research agenda on overtourism and we hope that research partnerships …

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More focused research for better tourism innovation

There is currently insufficient research to assist the transition for tourist accommodation to become a low carbon sector that also uses water sustainably, says Christopher Warren, director of the ICRT – Australia. Christopher and co-author Professor Susanne Becken have just  published an extensive review of 110 scientific papers that study resource saving at tourist accommodation …

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2017 edition of Progress in Responsible Tourism

The latest edition of Progress in Responsible Tourism is now available here. There are excellent articles which provide case examples of responsible tourism in practice (World Responsible Tourism Awards 2016 and Irish award winners), issues with child protection and volunteer tourism, how to communicate responsible tourism and guest engagement (Can the Hospitality sector ask customers …

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‘How’ should tourism play its role in meeting the Paris Agreement?

Tourism was urged to discuss ‘how’ it can get involved with governments to contribute to meeting the Paris Agreement and reducing emissions by Patricia Espinosa, UNFCCC executive secretary. Her video address, was at the UN’s COP22 side event ‘Sustainable Tourism in a Changing Climate, a symposium aimed at increasing awareness on tourism and climate change-related …

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Tourism committed to fight climate change – COP 22

The role of tourism in implementing the Paris Agreement was on the table on the occasion of the 22nd Session of the UNFCCC Conference of Parties (COP22). The International Symposium of the Sustainable Tourism Programme of the United Nations 10-Year Framework of Programmes on Sustainable Consumption and Production (10YFP), held during COP 22, discussed how …

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