AFor the purpose of celebrating World Tourism Day, on September 27, the word “rethink” became fashionable, it was in the mouths, in the messages and headlines of all the institutions and organizations that celebrated this event, with valid reasons or without them.
But it was the idea, proposal and call of the World Tourism Organization (WTO), to act and develop this activity from now on with the concept of “rethinking tourism”. According to the Oxford dictionary, rethink is a transitive verb that means “to think about something again and to do it with reflection and care” or “rethink it a bit before making a final decision”. Along these lines, the Secretary General of the UNWTO, Zurab Pololikashvili, correctly paraphrased the concept: “Rethinking one of the main economic sectors is not going to be easy, but we are on the right track. The crisis has inspired us and catalyzed creativity.”
The power that tourism has to influence development is unquestionable, and the pandemic saw even its resilience capacity confronted, but it is no secret to anyone that in some realities poorly planned tourism has generated negative impacts on aspects of an environmental, social and environmental nature. and culture. In the country we should seriously self-criticize what we have done so far in the last 15 to 20 years in tourism.
In the case of sustainable tourism, one of the aspects that we must gradually understand, but seriously, is that the natural attraction, on the one hand, is not enough to mobilize visitors and, on the other, tourists no longer want to be witnesses or simple observers, they want to be active participants in the different destinations. In this sense, it is necessary to put people and the planet first in order to build a resilient and inclusive model of tourism, but with planning and management.
In this context, for Gloriana Reyes Rojas, Director of the Master’s Degree in Sustainable Tourism Management at the University for International Cooperation (UCI) of Costa Rica, “The link that is created between the visitor, the attraction and the local person has been lost; displacing the moment of personal or experiential enjoyment for an ephemeral moment, a list of things to do and even just for the “selfie” on the fashion site. It is time to rescue our ancestral heritage, local know-how, to prevent our heritage from being lost.”
On the other hand, it states that the key players in tourism have realized that “returning to normality”, that is, to pre-pandemic tourism activity or policies, is not possible and that it is necessary to go beyond good practices. environmental. To this I repeatedly add that the paradigms and/or postulates in tourism have changed, it is no longer very pertinent for now to talk about long-term plans, we must also rethink the short and medium term to obtain optimal results, which is what you need the process of reactivation of the sector.
For Reyes Rojas, it is clear that those who have been working in tourism for many years, that the sustainable development model based on the environment, economy and society is not enough and that in the face of a more holistic approach, other dimensions must also be considered, such as politics, culture and spirituality seen as pillars of regenerative development.
What Reyes also says is so true, that there is no more time for traditional tourist businesses. Companies must be redesigned from a regenerative economy approach, which allows reducing inequity and based on values such as transparency and ethics. It is essential that humanity begins to better appreciate its role in tourism, its enjoyment from an inclusive point of view is essential for the well-being of our societies.
Around here, we cannot continue deceiving ourselves, that we have rethought and we have development and promotion plans, at the national, regional and municipal levels, in addition to the indispensable addition that are the budgets or the economic resources for that task, continue to stop respecting the processes involved in the development of tourism and making leaps in the name of modernity, holding ecotourism or community tourism summits without the fundamental actors such as the community enterprises of Madidi and the Amazon, and leaving aside talk of depredation in protected areas. Like no other country, we urgently need to “rethink tourism” and, as Zurab Pololikashvili says, “in 2022 we recognize once again the opportunities that tourism has generated, and continues to generate, around the world. However, this year we also recognize that we cannot continue as before, we must rethink tourism”.