Covid-19 and Tourism - A moment of change and transformation

We are in the midst of a number of global crises including the pandemic COVID-19 and our growing climate crisis. Disturbingly necessary shift to a sustainable and resilient path in tourism has not yet happened. At the same time, we feel that a clear orientation like the 2030 Agenda is needed now more than ever before. The pandemic and the following economic crises is an important wake-up call as well as an opportunity to make the essential transformation possible. Covid-19 has accentuated and deepened the twin challenges facing us all – firstly, our climate and environmental crisis and secondly, growing social and economic inequality, which is often linked to exclusion, within and between countries. Tourism can and must be part of responding to these challenges by contributing to climate justice and just transitions as well as just, equal and inclusive social and economic relations within and between countries.

While the most urgent measures to contain the Covid-19 virus and its impacts are the highest priority, we need to also think of and initiate long-term measures to help to respond to our climate emergency and to build resilience among the host communities and very importantly for the tourism industry as a whole. The tourism industry claims that the sector is resilient. After each and every crisis it promotes tourism more aggressively. A careful analysis shows that these post disaster promotions, often in the guise of both rehabilitation plans and recovery projects, are actually creating more unsustainable tourism and facilitating more vulnerability in future crises. They are making the situation worse not better.

The need of the hour is to use this rare moment to transform tourism and to promote tourism that is fair, future-oriented, responsible and accountable. Tourism that distributes incomes in an equitable manner, protects children and entire communities, preserves natural resources, inspires tourists and employers and employees to act sustainably. Such a tourism must not be a niche product, but the foundation of any tourism development.

In order to strenghen and broaden the network and to increase the visibility of civil Society perspectives on current tourism developments, the Transforming Tourism Initiative organizes a series of online Seminars.

Below you will find a brief Roadmap. More information and the documentation of each Seminar unit will be / is linked below.

16th July 2020: Online Seminar for Practitioners: Community Resilience and Change in Tourism

8th September 2020: Online Seminar on Labour and Decent Jobs in Tourism

September 2020: Joint Statement to World Tourism Day - Letter to the UNWTO

4th December 2020: Online Seminar on Climate Crisis, man-made Disasters and Tourism

19th March 2021: Online Seminar on Child Protection in a new tourism era: Challenges and ways forward post COVID-19

18th May 2021: Addressing Land Rights and Corporate Accountability in the ‘Re-start’ of Tourism - Open Space Session at AEPF

17th June 2021: Precarious futures for gender equality in the post-COVID tourism world

22th May 2022: Online Seminar on Informal Work in Tourism (series of two seminars)