Introduction

Traveling has becoming a vital component of people’s life due to the development of globalization. With the advancement of the tourism industry, more and more attention should be paid to the ethical side of the given industry. Ethical travel hence refers to tourism where the impacts produced are both positive and where contribution is the maximum possible. – The Future of Ethical Travel

The ethical travel is now emerging in the mainstream travel due to change in awareness level about climate change, social justice and cultural humility. In this bog post, I shall describe new trends and issues on the horizon in the context of ethical tourism.

Emerging Trends in Ethical Travel – The Future of Ethical Travel

Sustainable Tourism: A Growing Movement

Sustainable tourism is tourism which is environmentally, socio and economically friendly to the chosen tourist destination. It covers an appropriate use of resources, recognition of cultural heritage, and successful sharing of economic revenues within communities.

Advantages of Sustainable Tourism

• Environmental Protection: Ecological tourism measures maintain the area’s natural capital, minimize the generation of waste products, and prevent loss of biophysical capital.
• Cultural Preservation: in the sense that this concept of tourism enables the tourist’s understand and appreciate the cultural landscape hence protecting the traditions and heritage of the area.
• Economic Benefits: Sustainable tourism can act as a source of income and provide workplaces for populations and enhance their standards.

Tourism Sustainable Development Initiatives

• Eco-lodges: Sustainable measures like efficient use of energy, less generation of waste and including measures that cover use of water are also practiced as the these accommodations are planned to be environment friendly.
• Community-Based Tourism: This involve engagement with the local people in the development of tourism activities to cover their needs.
• Fair Trade Tourism: This positions local people to be rewarded adequate wages and working conditions in any tourism related activities.

Responsible Luxury: Ethical Luxury Travel

Responsible luxury travel is defined as the ability to gain luxury travel in a manner that is both moral, as well as sustainable. It aims at the encouragement of the support of local societies, reduction of the adverse effects on the natural environment and preservation of the cultural identities of societies and people.

Self-organizing Detention or How Responsible Luxury Travel Contributes to Local Communities

• Supporting Local Businesses: The responsible luxury travelers like to select their lodging and catering provided by the locals thus enhancing their economy.
• Preserving Cultural Heritage: In this article responsible luxury tourism can be defined as tourism that promote and support the cultural identity through ways like buying handicrafts that are indigenous to the area or participating in cultural activities that are held at the destination location.
• Providing Employment Opportunities: The responsible luxury travel should be able to generate substantial employment for people of the host nation.

Bergen, The Azores and Vancouver: three examples of responsible luxury travel destinations

• Costa Rica: One of the most environmentally conscious countries in the world together with its luxurious lodgings and activities.
• Bhutan: This beautiful and small Himalayan country is famous for the GNH or Gross National Happiness approach to the country’s development. Luxury and ethical tourism travel g options are equally available in Bhutan tourism.

Experiential Travel: Connecting with Cultures

Experiential travel is more of a concept that lets the travelers live the culture and participate in real life events. As a matter of fact, it helps to gain insights of different cultures and build goodwill.

Advantages of Experience Travel

• Cultural Understanding: Through experiential travel, people get a closer touch with different cultures to demystify them hence creating a mutual platform for them to interact.
• Personal Growth: One learns different cultures and get to actually put oneself out there and it is an opportunity to find oneself.
• Community Engagement: In experiential travel, people engage with the communities of the destination and support their welfare/prosperity.

Some examples of Experiential Travel Experiences

• Volunteering: Volunteer work still can be performed in a community to be useful to the people of the locale and to discover some of the problems of the society.
• Language Learning: The best way to understand the culture of a country is to learn the language of that country, it always pays to learn the local language when traveling.
• Cultural Festivals: Visiting events such as local festivals and celebrations are a very effective way of learning about a place’s culture.

Part II Digital Nomads and ethical Travel

Digital nomadism forms part of new ways of working, through which a person works while on a journey. Digital nomads can help with ethical traveling through buying from local stores, avoiding polluting the environment and raising awareness of the local culture.

In what Ways the Digital Nomads can be useful for Ethical Travel

• Supporting Local Businesses: Digital nomads can do their job in co-working spaces, use services of the country and patronize local business.
• Minimizing Environmental Impact: A few measures; nomads can take to lessen the damage include: lodging in eco friendly establishments; traveling by public transport; and avoiding wastage.
• Promoting Cultural Understanding: Digital nomads can introduce cultural awareness by making friends with the locals and embracing their cultural practices as well as sharing it with other people too.

Ethical Issues That Digital Nomads Experience During Their Travels

• Visa Restrictions: Unfortunately, most of them have policies that do not allow for long-term residence by digital nomads, hence they cannot travel sustainably.
• Language Barriers: Language could also be a problem when the digital nomad is going to mingle with the locals or even to know when is appropriate to do something.
• Internet Connectivity: Internet connection is very crucial for the remote workers, although not always it is available in many destinations.

Voluntourism: A Controversial Trend

Voluntourism can be best described as volunteer tourism where traveling and volunteering of a specific cause are closely intertwined. Nonetheless, voluntourism should be entered carefully and its impact on the community receiving volunteers should be carefully thought through.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Volunteering Tourism

• Benefits: Voluntourism can offer a possibility to participate in local development, to receive students’ training, and embrace intercultural concept.
• Drawbacks: Voluntourism has been such a probed means where volunteers are charged fee for services that might otherwise complete voluntarily. There are some risks that should be avoided: only selecting reliable organizations, and making sure volunteered work is required and helpful for locals.

Volunteer Tourism and Volunteer Voyages Ethical Concerns

• Choose Reputable Organizations: Choose research organizations that are renowned and have Awakened positive social impacts on the society.
• Avoid Volunteer Tourism: Shun programs that require one to pay fees for volunteers. Volunteerism should be an exchange of all parties; the recipient and the giver of services.
• Be Mindful of Cultural Sensitivity: Local people and their beliefs should always be respected, and behaviors and actions evident in the local community should not be judged by the culture of the home country.
• Consider Long-Term Impact: Assess the potential effects of volunteers’ presence and conformity to the local community and guarantee the prolonged, positive outcomes and economical relevance of volunteers’ service.

Challenges Facing Ethical Travel

Overtourism: A Growing Problem

Overtourism refers to a situation whereby the volume of tourists visiting a specific location outdoes the ability of that area to handle the flow. That has a potential to be harmful to the environment, cultural belt and Patients’ quality of life in particular region chosen for investment.

Corporate image damage, social costs, financial deterioration, cultural degradation, customer erosion, natural destruction, loss of quality, and local degradation.

•                  Environmental Degradation: Overtourism is a huge problem since it often results in larger amounts of pollution, reduction in resources, and more habitat loss.

•                  Cultural Erosion: The tourists can influence the community negatively and assimilate the culture of the new industry to fathom the needs of the tourists.

•                  Increased Costs of Living: This form of tourism compromises the standard of living for the ordinary residents, because the cost of living increases sharply.

Measures applied to Control Over for Tourism

•                  Diversify Tourism: Promoting a diversified tourist distribution to provide the undesired has considerable positive impacts on decreasing the number of tourists in very specific places.

•                  Promote Responsible Tourism: Pledge for the use of sustainable tourism products and encourage tourists on the concept of responsible tourism.

•                  Implement Visitor Management Plans: It is important to determine the strategy for the regulation of the amount of people visiting frequently visited sites and minimizing adverse effects of tourism.

Cultural Appropriation: A Sensitive Issue

The act of borrowing components from one cultural practice, but not having appropriate regard for their application or meaning is known as cultural appropriation. It is always considered a taboo especially when such cultures are that of minority and suffer from It is sometimes quite delicate especially when it relates to cultures of vulnerable groups such as exploited cultures of people.

Examples of Cultural Appropriation in Traveling

•                  Wearing Traditional Clothing: It became a case of culturally appropriate dressing, whereby one will wear traditional attire from another culture, but has no idea of the cultural bearing it has.

•                  Using Sacred Symbols: It is wrong to use sacred symbols or objects of different culture for the commercial purposes.

•                  Stereotyping Local People: That is why stereotyping local people based on their cultural background is always dangerous and can cause increased cultural stereotyping and appropriation.

In this article, learn the basics of travelling and avoiding cultural appropriation.

•                  Learn About Local Customs: Learn as much as you can about the culture of the place before you visit it so you don’t offend anyone.

•                  Respect Local Traditions: Remember cultural practices of the receiving community and refrain from engaging in activities that are deeming inappropriate at that particular area.

•                  Support Local Businesses: More so designing and motivating the locals to create their products, such as art and jewelry, should be preferred above purchasing trinkets that are generic in nature and likely involve appropriation of indigenous cultures.

Ethical Dilemmas in Travel

Tourists come across different ethical issues for instance, it is right to buy from a local business that exploits workers or when in a cultural conflict one has to determine whether to appropriate or not.

Two ethical issues that travelers experience include .

•                  Supporting Local Businesses: Some of the local businesses might be involved in some form of exploitative labor practices or spewing of hazardous wastes. Consumers are likely to be put in a situation of choosing between patronizing these business or not.

•                  Cultural Appropriation: Ting argues that consumers may have situations with regards to cultural misrepresentation and may possibly be ambiguous on the way they should act.

•                  Animal Welfare: It is also important because tourist can be in some complicated positions connected with animal, for example elephant riding or some show. As consumers we need to prevent ourselves from supporting irresponsible operators and contracting activities that cause harm to animals.

How to Ethically Navigate the World

•                  Research and Educate Yourself: Take time to read about the next countries to visit and their culture, customs and environmental concerns.

•                  Consider the Impact of Your Choices: Always consider the outcomes associated with those actions and avoid those outcomes when taking an action, or selecting a certain solution.

•                  Support Ethical Businesses: Then shop from places that are not only focused on profit making but are also environmentally conscious.

•                  Be Mindful of Your Impact: Be more conscious of how much input you are putting into your environment and try to minimize your input.

Travelling Ethically: Some Useful stakeholders

•                  Ethical Travel Organizations: In the following, are some of the organizations that are involved or concern themselves with ethical tourism: Some are Responsible Tourism Partnership, Ethical Traveler, and the Global Sustainable Tourism Council.

•                  Online Forums and Communities: Of course there are also many online platforms such as forums where travelers can talk about ethical travel and exchange information.

Mapping the Connection between Technology and Ethical Travel

Technology can help with ethical travel and tourism in a way that it is benefiting or harming the ecosystem or the environment in some measure. For better, it can provide travelers the resources for coordinating the visits with local communities; for worse, it plays a role in the problem of overtourism and cultural misrepresentation.

Benefits and Drawbacks of Technology in Ethical Travel

• Benefits: People through the use of technology can be able to search for ethical tourism companies, engage the locals and also be able to narrate their experiences. It can also assist in the creation of solutions that may nourish sustainable tourism.
• Drawbacks: Overtourism can be enhanced by technology as it increases the ways in which people use to visit certain places. It can also give the green light to individuals to take and misuse the culture of other individuals by making it easy for them to reach and share this craft.

Practicalities of Employing Information Technology While On the Road

• Be Mindful of Privacy: Remember that Privacy settings are often low on social networks and refrain from sharing anything that might endanger your own or someone else’s life.
• Support Local Businesses: Instead of patronizing goods and services of globally celebrated companies, use technology to ascertain and promote locally owned firms.
• Avoid Over-Sharing: When it comes to posting pictures and videos online beware of what you post as it may lead to more overtourism and cultural misrepresentation.

Conclusion

It is for this reason that this paper seeks to identify the likely trends as well as the challenges that define the future of ethical travel. Strategizing through those trends and realizing the challenges will help us move towards the enhancement of the sustainable and responsible tourism business.

That is the main difference between ethical travel and low impact tourism: ethical traveling is not only about minimizing harm, but about contributing to the positive change in the destination. When people decide to be ethical while traveling they will be preserving the environment and supporting the locals as well as enhancing cultural sensitivity.

So next time you travel, remember you hold the key to part of the change process. To that end, let us decide to opt for ethical tourism to foster the making of a better tourism world.