Although we currently seem to be facing a prosperous scenario for tourism in Peru after the hardest effects of the pandemic, with a high percentage of the population vaccinated and an upward trend worldwide, we are still dealing with an unstable situation reinforced by news and information from various channels that continue to remind us of the danger we are in. Alongside this, research shows that we are facing a catastrophic collapse of the ecological system, and despite the dissemination of these studies for decades, they have not been addressed either by the population or by the educational sphere (Edelheim, 2021).
Internationally, and in response to the Covid crisis, the tourism and hospitality industry has been making efforts to move towards Responsible Tourism. For example, in July of this year, the World Travel Market London (WTM) launched a platform through which it invites companies and organizations to share sustainable practices and ethical methods to promote Responsible Tourism. The WTM program focuses on the efforts of travel industry players to use this activity to build better places, in the words of Harold Goodwin, as producers and consumers to achieve sustainability.
Experts point out that by 2050, 6.5 billion people will live in cities, and it is no longer a surprise that technology is changing everything from the way we relate to each other, to how we hail a taxi or book a room: we are evolving. Nevertheless, we continue to work on models that are not conscious of their impact on the environment. Unfortunately, we are at a point where some sectors of tourism seek to resume their activities under a model built more than twenty years ago, which could be disastrous. We know that the economic crisis has hit tourism hard, and entrepreneurs are seeking to resume their activities based on the recovery of the sector to which they belong, often without considering recommendations towards a tourism that implies certain commitments with different actors, the environment, community, territories, and ecosystems.
Finally, we must not forget that when we talk about responsible tourism, we are talking about a broad umbrella that includes the tourist and how tourism relates to the space it visits, but, above all, how tourism can educate towards a more responsible society with the environment. Therefore, let’s aim to reinforce sustainable tourism and its transformative capacity first from academia, a model that aims at sustainable development respectful of the environment, cultural heritage, both material and intangible, spaces of memory, and the links of societies with their territories and ecosystems. That is the new challenge for future professionals in the tourism and hotel sector.
