Volume #7
Community Tourism Activities | Debunking booking.com’s Travel Sustainable Badge (Part 4: Destination & Community)**
This week’s read time: 6 minutes
In this volume, we’ll explore:
How community tourism activities can enrich your travel experience.
Debunking booking.com’s Travel Sustainable Badge (Part 4: Destination & Community)**.
If you missed previous newsletters, you can look them up here.
👉🏼 Look out for Community Tourism Activities
These initiatives is where the local community takes an active role in planning, managing, and hosting tourists. This could include homestays, guided village tours, local craft workshops, and cultural performances organised by and for the local community.
What’s in it for travellers?
Unique and Personalised Experiences: Unlike mainstream tourist attractions, community tourism often offers unique and personalised experiences tailored to your interests and preferences.
Building Connections: You will mostly likely have the chance to build personal connections with local residents, creating memorable relationships and friendships, leading to a deeper appreciation for the destination and its people.
Feel-Good Experience: Knowing that your travel choices contribute positively to the well-being of a local community adds a meaningful dimension to your adventure, making it beyond mere sightseeing.
What’s in it for Planet, People & Economy?
🌏 Reduced Environmental Impact: Community tourism activities often have smaller supply chains and produce goods and services on a smaller scale, resulting in lower carbon footprints and reduced environmental impact.
👥 Community Well-being: Supporting these activities contributes to the overall well-being of the local community. This directly improves living standards, provides better infrastructure, and enhances social services funded by these economic activities.
💼 Wealth Redistribution: Supporting such activities helps redistribute wealth within a local community. Profits stay within the community, circulating through the local economy and benefiting a broader spectrum of residents who may not be directly involved in tourism.
**Disclaimer: On March 25, 2024, Booking.com decided to remove their Travel Sustainable Badge programme altogether. You can read about their explanation here.
Although the programme is no longer in place, and we considered creating new content for this week's newsletter, we ultimately decided against it as we believe the content below still holds educational value for travellers and tourism businesses.
👉🏼 Debunking booking.com’s Travel Sustainable Badge (Part 4: Destination & Community)
In 2021, Booking.com rolled out a Travel Sustainable filter and badge to help travellers identify accommodations that are taking extra steps to make their guests' stays more sustainable.
We're here to unravel the mysteries behind every badge and icon, revealing how each one adds its unique brushstroke to the bigger sustainability picture.
🥰 Wondering why you should care? Read our past edition.
We are not here to make you feel guilty about your choices; we are simply providing you with the facts to enable you to make your own decisions about the way you want to explore the world.
Booking.com categorised them into 5 categories: Waste, Water, Energy & Greenhouse Gas, Destination & Community and Nature.
In case you have missed our debunk about Waste 🗑️, Water🚰 and Energy & Greenhouse Gas! 🔋💨
Today we’ll look into the meanings behind Destination & Community 🌏👯
We're delving into one of our absolute favorite topics – placing the local community right at the heart of tourism! ❤️
It not only shapes a more well-rounded experience for you, providing authenticity, but also serves as a meaningful interaction for the local community, helping them preserve their cultural heritage.
Now, when people consider a more responsible and sustainable way to explore the world, they often overlook the social aspects. Many see responsible travel as simply being eco-friendly.
However, being a responsible traveller goes beyond just bringing your own water bottle on holiday. It's about the positive impact you can make on the local community, and for us at TRAppe, that's what truly matters.
Now, back to Booking.com, under Destination & Community 🌏👯, you have the following categories:
Local artists are offered a platform to display their talents
Guests are offered tours and activities organised by local guides and businesses
The accommodation invests at least 1% of its revenue back into the community or in local sustainability projects
The accommodation provides guests with information regarding local ecosystems, heritage and culture, as well as visitor etiquette
1. Local artists are offered a platform to display their talents
Think about it - would you want to stay at an accommodation that looks exactly like the place you can find back home with no local influences? How is that different from just going on a staycation in your hometown?
The good news is, most of the bigger hotel chains have long recognised the importance of integrating local artworks into their hotel architecture to bring you a more well-rounded experience. The visual appeal and cultural significance of the local artworks used throughout the accommodation add an extra layer of authenticity to your stay.
Some accommodations even go a step further by setting up a boutique shop at their property to showcase products from local artisans. Although at times at a marked-up price, rest assured that they are specially curated, of high quality, and best represent the destination.
👉🏼 What’s in it for you as travellers? By selecting a hotel that offers a platform to showcase local artists’ artworks, not only are you providing the local artisans with a sustainable income and support for their creative endeavors, but you are also giving yourself an opportunity to engage with and appreciate the local culture, fostering a deeper connection with the local community.
2. Guests are offered tours and activities organised by local guides and businesses
This is also something that international hotel chains have been doing for a while now to further enhance and diversify their guest offerings to stay competitive.
👉Fun Fact👈
In recent years, hotels have created a new position called the Cultural Manager. This person’s job is solely to ensure that local culture is heavily integrated into the hotel offerings and guest experiences.
Accommodations typically collaborate with local tour agencies, which are often 100% locally owned. By doing so, they support local guides and businesses, directly contributing to the local economy. This ensures that the financial benefits of tourism reach the hands of those who live and work in the community, fostering economic sustainability.
These local guides also play a vital role in preserving and sharing a destination’s cultural heritage. Through storytelling and firsthand knowledge, they contribute to the preservation of traditions, history, and indigenous practices.
👉🏼 What’s in it for you as travellers? Tours led by local guides create a direct link between you and the local community. This connection fosters cultural exchange, understanding, and mutual respect. It's an opportunity for you to go beyond surface-level interactions and engage with the community on a more personal level.
Pro tip: Instead of searching the internet high and low for local tours and offerings, booking tours and activities with your accommodation saves you a lot of hassle. Typically, these tours are of better quality as they have been vetted by the accommodation. Additionally, the accommodation will not collaborate with unreliable tour operators, as that would impact their own reputation.
3. The accommodation invests at least 1% of its revenue back into the community or in local sustainability projects
The cold hard truth: the establishment of accommodation in an area can have significant impacts on the local community. While it brings economic benefits like job creation and infrastructure development, it also introduces negative effects.
Accommodation construction, for instance, may result in habitat disruption, deforestation, and increased waste generation.
A sudden influx of tourists can strain local resources such as water, energy, and waste management, posing challenges for the community in managing these resources.
Therefore, it's crucial for accommodation to consider and account for these impacts in their operational costs. Reinvesting part of their revenue back into the community, whether in education, healthcare, infrastructure, or environmental projects, helps ensure that local residents feel included in the tourism development of their area.
👉🏼 What’s in it for you as travellers? Feeling good about contributing to the betterment of the local community. Who wouldn't appreciate being part of positive change during their travels? Especially when it comes at no additional cost to you!
4. The accommodation provides guests with information regarding local ecosystems, heritage and culture, as well as visitor etiquette
The funny thing is, Airbnb owners have done a much better job in managing this than traditional accommodations. We are often blown away by some of those Airbnb welcome booklets with detailed information about the destination; the ultra-luxury accommodations don’t even come close to providing as detailed of an information as Airbnb owners. Bravo!
👉🏼 What’s in it for you as travellers? When accommodations offer insights into local culture and heritage, it helps you better understand and appreciate the customs, traditions, and history of the destination.
Information about local ecosystems creates awareness about the environment, biodiversity, and conservation efforts. When you are more well-informed, you are more likely to engage in responsible behaviors that minimise your impact on the natural surroundings.
Also, you would think paying USD$250 a night, the least the accommodation could do is inform you about appropriate behavior and etiquette in the destination to help prevent cultural misunderstandings and ensure that you are respectful and considerate once you step outside of your accommodation.
Don’t miss out on the last part of our series, where we debunk: Nature🌿
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P.S. We want to clarify that we have no affiliation with booking.com or any direct connections to the company.