Many international and national environmental organizations and various charities as well as NGOs and non-profit organizations see responsible tourism as a useful tool to integrate sustainable development policies.

According to the Italian Association of Responsible Tourism (AITR), responsible tourism is “ tourism implemented according to principles of social and economic justice and in full respect of the environment and cultures. Responsible tourism recognizes the centrality of the local host community and its right to be a protagonist in sustainable and socially responsible tourism development of its territory and operates by favoring the positive interaction between the tourism industry, local communities and travelers ".

Let's find out more about responsible tourism.

When was responsible tourism born?

Responsible tourism was born at the end of the 1980s, characterized by a double concern: respect for the environment and nature on the one hand and for the peoples and the different cultures that inhabit it on the other.

It is a tourism that does not invade the territory, but that passes through it in a conscious and shared way, paying attention to where the revenues that are produced by the movement of tourists end up.

Ecotourism, sustainable tourism, solidarity tourism, are all companions of responsible tourism and share their ethics and fundamental points.

What doesn't the responsible tourist choose?

Since the Second World War, tourism has begun to grow. From those years onwards, people did not move only because of need or the search for better living and working conditions, but traveling also began to be synonymous with economic well-being.

In essence, wealthy people have begun to seek ever more distant and exotic destinations of escape, perhaps also due to a need to escape from the system in which we were already beginning to find, a system that was already pushing ever more in search of paradises natural unspoiled . In some cases, however, these natural paradises have not long remained such.

The western infrastructures, hotels, hotels, resort chains and tourist villages have begun to bring massive doses of cement to certain distant places, adapting everything from the morphology of the landscape to the management of work, to the western system.

The result, over the years, was that, as people moved around, they were in fact fictitious, no longer authentic. The exploitation that has suffered certain localities has been both environmental (water, energy, natural) and human (child labor, low-paid work, exploitation).

It really took a long time to understand that the direction was not exactly the best, but the awareness has matured, yielding good results especially in recent times: the responsible tourist was born, a traveler who has increasingly identified with the one who has stopped to choose the old methods of management of the tourist resources and the reconstructed places as destination of his travel.

What does the responsible tourist choose?

Here are the main points of responsible tourism:

• The responsible tourist seeks to try first to limit the number of air travel, given that the latter is the most polluting of all, or choose airlines that donate capital for recovery and environmental protection.

• Enter protected or fragile areas on tiptoes, with a light impact, choosing in turn structures that, in areas such as natural parks or marine reserves, adopt a philosophy of low environmental impact.

• Those who choose responsible tourism are respectful of local cultures, curious about what is different but never intrusive, discreet and intelligent discoverer of the traditions of the place.

• The responsible tourist encourages the socio-economic development of the territory, that is, chooses operators, services, accommodations and products that constitute a real local resource for the area in which he goes on vacation, avoiding to take advantage of all that is external and foreign to it.

• Responsible tourism promotes the rational and sustainable use of environmental resources, minimizing the production of waste and its impact in terms of disposal.

• The responsible tourist is a well-informed tourist : he uses accommodation and housing facilities that are not the result of building speculation, but rather promotes knowledge of conservation activities carried out by the communities. For example, if there is the possibility, he will choose to stay in the villages, in contact with the locals, in their homes, in exchange for a contribution that can bring good directly to them.

Here are some research ideas for responsible tourism: if you look for hotels, just see who is part of the Ecoworldhotel; if you are looking for a lot of news, here is the ITACA Responsible Tourism Festival in Bologna. And here is Macrolibrarsi presenting interesting titles, such as the book The Responsible Traveler .

There are also travel agencies that offer goals of knowledge and respect all over the world.

Like the site on responsible tourism in Peru and, to keep up to date, you can consult the travel section of Bio Eco Geo.