Slide deck of presentation to World Indigenous Tourism Alliance Forum in Lucerne, October 2012 outlining why the time has come for indigenous tourism.

1. Why Indigenous Travel Matters Now
Presentation to WINTA, Luzern, October 12th, 2012
Anna Pollock, Founder of Conscious Travel
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2. Scope
1. Anna:
What does Indigenous Mean?
Why the time has come for Indigenous
Tourism
2. Ben:
Indigenous Values – the Contribution
3. Anna:
The Role of Indigenous Tourism Going
Forward

3. Definition

4. Why The Time For Indigenous
Tourism Has Come
1.The state we’re in
2.Why we’re in this state
3.Who Will Fix the Problem?
4.How is the Customer Changing?
5.The Keys to Success

5. Accelerated Consumption
THE PERFECT STORM Climate Change
Energy & Fuel
Material Resource Scarcity
Food scarcity
Water Scarcity
Ecosystem Decline
Disparate Prosperity
Government Debt
Lack of Global Governance
Political Instability
Pandemics

6. The State We’re In

7. The State We’re In
Tourism now supports 1 billion
international trips a year
It can produce income, economic
growth, jobs, foreign exchange,
conserve wildlife, preserve cultures..but
it doesn’t always
Are we at a tipping point?
Metaphorically speaking, we’re about to
experience a tourism tsunami +
galeforce winds + earthquake
Will the tourism capsule hold out?

8. Mass Industrial Tourism Hangs on the Edge
This graph shows the fate of
individual destinations - could it
apply to industrial tourism as a
whole?
Are we at the inflection point?
Industrial tourism is producing
diminishing returns for nearly
everybody
If yields decline industrial tourism
can only succeed by growing in
volume
More volume = more congestion If
margins don’t grow, mergers &
consolidation are inevitable and lead
to concentration of wealth.

9. Can we handle another 400 million tourists in just 8 years?
How will we handle congestion?
How will we handle waste?
How will we handle emissions?
How will we manage our thirst for water Protest Sign Erected by Young Balinese
The Queue to Climb Everest
Source: ABC They Paved Paradise
Source: Guardian
and land?
How will avoid residents’ backlash?
How will we protect vulnerable people and
cultures?
The Island Where Tourist Garbage is Stored in the Maldives
Source: China Daily
Source: Daily Mail
• see: Can Tourism Change its Operating Model?

10. WHY are we in the state we’re in?
Industrial Tourism Grew Up In the Age of the Automobile &
Mass Everything
It borrowed its operating model from manufacturing

11. Based on Assembly Lines, Specialisation & Hierarchies
Focus: efficiency & productivity - producing more for less

12. Standardisation, Order, Planning
Economies of Scale - consolidation, vertical integration

13. Mass Industrial Tourism Started with
Great Promise

14. But Is Now Producing a Different Reality

15. Based on a mindset of boxes and lines

16. The Hotel Box

17. In summary, this is a box that....
Productizes
Standardizes
Homogenizes
Commoditizes

18. Who Might Come to help?

19. Who has to Fix the Problem?

20. Who has to Fix the Problem?
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens
can change the world.
Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has
Margaret Mead

21. What’s Needed to Solve The Challenges

22. Tourism is Human System
Embedded in a
Biological-Physical System
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23. A worldview or mindset acts like a lens
These lenses are made up of the values beliefs and assumptions that we use to
make sense of our world
We’re often not aware of our lenses - live in a trance
They are very powerful
When the lenses change, everything else changes
Many are changing their lenses & waking up - becoming conscious

24. when our values and beliefs change
so does everything else
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25. What values and beliefs filter your
perception and guide your actions?
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26. Tourism Through an Industrial Lens
Guests are segments to be targeted and the prize is share of wallet
Both parties (consumer and provider) attempt to win at the cost of
the other. Adversarial
Guests seek to get the best or cheapest deal; producers try to maintain their margin
Rugged independence + materialism creates a mindset of exploitation - animals,
landscapes, plants are resources, then products that can be used to produce profit
The Industry is fragmented - each provider looks after his piece of the guest experience
and larger agencies are divided into functional silos.
Disconnect from nature - it’s the economy, stupid! Lack of appreciation of limits or
consequences.
The tourism industry resists paying for the ecosystem services it has enjoyed for free in
the past
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27. Mindsets Are Already Shifting
•many customers are thinking
differently
•emergence of the conscience
consumer
•On average just under 50% of
consumers prefer to buy from
responsible companies
•In South America that average is
75%
•In Australia - 35%

28. Mindsets Are Already Shifting
•other businesses are thinking
differently”
•growth in “conscious business”
and “conscious leadership”
•“Business as Usual” is over
•Huge opportunities for those who
adapt

29. surely there has to be
a better way?
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30. Why Indigenous Travel Matters Now
Part 2
Anna Pollock, Founder of Conscious Travel
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31. Desired Outcomes
Higher margins for hosts
higher net benefit from tourism to their communities,
while increasing resilience and stability
and.....
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33. Welcome Signs of Change

34. something new is emerging
?

35. The two Keys to Success
mindset place
Becoming conscious of the way we filter our Valuing each place as unique and sacred and
perception based on unexamined assumptions refusing to discount it like a commodity

36. How?
Practical
• Celebrate uniqueness of place – the only antidote to commodification
• Slow down & Savour – increase length of stay; sense of value
• Integrate adventure with culture, conservation, revitalisation and
knowledge/expertise exchange
• Create ambassadors, viral marketing, reputation
For the Greater Good – self interest (protecting your future)
• Wake up your customers – help them change their lenses
• Create opportunities for wonder & awe – as Jacques and Alexander Cousteau
said “we protect what we love; we love what we know”
• Stop being passive and become active community change agents.
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38. We travel, initially, to lose ourselves;
we travel next, to find ourselves.
We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn
more than our newspapers will accommodate....
And we travel, in essence, to become young fools
again---to slow time down and get taken in, and fall
in love once more
Pico Ayer
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