Responsible tourism
'Responsible tourism' is a term used to express the idea that tourism should aim to have a positive impact upon the inhabitants and the environment of the countries that tourists visit.
These go hand in hand. It is impossible to conserve the environment without sustainable rural development. For if people cannot make a living this puts great pressure on the environment, as they may be forced to harvest nature’s bounty in order to survive.
Tourism can be a powerful tool for economic and social development. It is a labour-intensive industry, which can bring benefits to cash-starved communities through job creation and small business opportunities. But at the same time, it is important to support community empowerment so that the community is not destroyed by internal and external pressures.
If would like to read more about the responsible tourism debate in the press, see the Tourism Press section.
At Rainbow Tours, we aim to turn the rhetoric of ‘ecotourism’ into reality through our code of practice.
Rainbow Tours seeks to:
In the majority of cases our overseas partners are very active in supporting community tourism. The most common successful model is when an established operator works with a local community to build a lodge on their land, and there is some community input into management of the project and a degree of profit-sharing. Creation of jobs is also an important part of this. We have been adding a ‘community’ section as part of the accommodation listing on the website and it is our ultimate aim to put down something here for all the places we feature.
There is a growing number of lodges which are wholly owned and largely managed by the local community, for example Buffalo Ridge Safari Camp, South Africa, Then there are small entrepreneurs who operate tourism business, such as Faizal Gangat and Cape Capers in Cape Town. Some that we have worked with for a number of years have become well established.
We support these initiatives in a number of ways: with advice on how to best reach the international market; with marketing assistance - using our own contacts in the UK to obtain coverage for them in newspapers and magazines, by helping to train their staff, and, most importantly, by sending clients.
We support the Fair Trade in Tourism certification which has been introduced in South Africa. Some of the small owner-run establishments we have supported for many years, such as Djuma Bush Lodge and Hog Hollow Country Lodge, now have this certification. For this you have to show a very high level of commitment, especially to the local community, and we are very proud that they have obtained this status.
We also work closely with larger organisations such as Wilderness Safaris and CC Africa which have very professional and wide-ranging community development programmes.
For more than a decade we have been promoting areas such as the Eastern Cape and Maputaland in South Africa which are only today becoming established destinations; we took on Madagascar when it was unfashionable, in fact, almost unheard of, and have built up a sizable traffic there through extensive media coverage; we have been doing the same over the last five years with Rwanda, and in both countries we offer the most comprehensive programme.
We like to recommend locally-owned hotels, lodges and guest houses, always favouring those that are owner-managed, and have built up good relations with many of these owners. In some countries, such as Mauritius, and the Seychelles, this policy is not relevant, and we do not exclude accommodation establishments which have something to offer on the grounds that they are not locally owned.
We worked with The Travel Foundation to produce an excellent Insider Guide entitled ‘Make A Difference When You Travel’. We give this to every one of our clients in their document packs.
None of our scheduled tour groups have more than 12 people. Special groups rarely go above this, but on rare occasions there may be up to 20 people.
We create and reinforce a desire to see habitats and wildlife in their natural state, and support projects where the focus is upon restoring the natural habitat; we flag up places where biodiversity is not being respected; recently we have been co-operating with the International Fund for Animal Welfare on their campaign against wildlife souvenirs.
The public interface of Rainbow Tours is it employees. We have a happy stable workforce, several of whom have been with us for three or more years.
We do this by using sustainable and fair trade office supplies, recycling what we can, and being energy conscious. Please also see our policy on air travel in relation to climate change.
Although we have personally checked the establishments we use, things change and we do not always see the whole picture. We rely upon reports from our clients and value your comments about how far you feel this code of practice is being implemented on the ground.