Overview of the assumptions underpinning Conscious Travel and brief introduction to the Principles (Stepping Stones) delivered to the International Conference on Contemporary Perspectives in Tourism & Hospitality Research, University of Brighton, May 12th, 2015

1. Anna Pollock, Founder, Conscious Travel
Eastbourne, July 12th, 2015
Flourishing Beyond Growth

2. Background
Strategist, thinker, “sense maker”
Social Entrepreneur
www.tipse.org
Conscious.Travel Tourism Changemakers Forum

3. What is “Conscious” Travel about?

4. Wake Up to the nature of change
Sustainable Tourism Certification Alliance Africa
http://www.slideshare.net/AnnaP/beyond-csr-sustainability
Victoria Tourism industry Council
http://www.slideshare.net/AnnaP/vtic5-game-changing-long

5. 1. Mass tourism is based on a production-consumption model hooked on growth
2. Not paying full cost (externalities); nor protecting the resource on which it is based
(insufficient de-coupling)
3. High leakage (where all inclusive resorts are concerned, only 5% of every $ spent
stays in host community); wealth increasingly concentrated
4. Heavy resource users (land, water) and waste producers (emissions, trash)
5. Diminishing returns – “Cheap Travel” homogenization, commodification,
6. Limited local ownership – property and development rights closely aligned with
sources of capital
7. Poor labour-relations record; low pay; seasonal, temporary work, poor conditions
8. Boom & bust – resilience?
9. Social cost: trafficking, displacement, child abuse, disempowerment,
10. Market splitting (bifurcating!): Price-Experience
Wake Up and Own Up – Radical Re-think
Needed

6. Wake Up

7. Grow Up

8. Step Up

9. How do we Manage The Tourism
Tsunami?
Targets or forecasts?
Desirable or Inevitable
Growth?

10. The UNWTO Position
The core of our mandate as a UN-specialized agency is to promote
sustainable tourism, but you can’t promote sustainability if you don’t
promote tourism, so that’s why we said competition and growth on
one hand and sustainability on the other.
We stand for a belief that the growth of this industry on one hand and
the preservation, protection, responsibility and sustainability on the
other hand are not a zero-sum game. We believe that we can continue
to grow, we have to embrace growth and never be afraid of it. UNWTO
Source: UNWTO Interview reported in SKIFT

11. Assessing tourism’s global impact 1990-2010
Stefan Gossling and Paul Peters
Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 2015
Vol23, No 5, 639-659

12. The Conscious Travel Position
Success and Growth need to be re-defined from volume and more to greater positive
net impact (quality, yield) and better for more.
Places are not real estate, landscapes and habitats to be exploited but sacred places
in which all – and especially the inhabitants - must be enabled to flourish.
Tourism can play a major role in helping humanity restore and repair its relationship
to Nature provided that its hosts change the way they perceive their world and act in
it. A major mindset shift is imperative.

14. Conscious Travel Approach

15. 1. Business as usual is impossible and unsustainable
2. We must shift our focus from symptoms to root cause –
i.e., the way we think & perceive
3. We must learn to think like nature does and understand
how systems work
4. Contribute to the shift from an Extractive to a Regenerative
Economy
5. Change Our Purpose – from bigger to better; from more to
flourishing
6. Empower People in Communities – change from bottom up
Perspective: Six Assumptions

16. Business As Usual Not Sustainable
“Population growth, exploitation
of natural resources, climate
change and other factors are
putting the world on a
development trajectory that is
not sustainable…
If we fail to alter our patterns of
production and consumption,
things will begin to go badly
wrong”

17. Sustainable Economy, Renewing
Capitalism, Conscious Capitalism,
Corporation 2020, Sustainable Capitalism,
Responsible Capitalism, Clean Capitalism,
The Responsible Economy, Capitalism as if
the Planet Matters, Creative Capitalism,
Compassionate Capitalism, Just
Capitalism, Regenerative Capitalism
Spiritual Capital, Tomorrow’s Company,
Breakthrough Capitalism, Sir Richard
Branson’s B Team and WEFs New Social
Contract.
CAPITALISM Re-thinking itself

18. INTRINSIC Systemic Flaws

19. • Systemic breakdowns are breakdowns
that occur in an entire system, as opposed
to breakdowns in individual parts and
components. Systemic risks are
characterised by:
• Modest tipping points combining indirectly to
produce large failures
• Risk sharing or contagion, as one loss triggers
the chain of others
• Hysteresis or systems being unable to recover
after a shock.
EMERGING: Everything and everyone
is connected

20. Systemic Change

21. The real problem is how we view or see
things

22. Where are we on these curves?
Dr. Butler’s TALC Model
Is anything sustainable for ever?

23. What do we know for certain about the
future?
It hasn’t happened yet!

24. What do we know for certain about the
present?
It’s the sum total of past imagination,
aspirations, actions and interactions

25. Imaginings in
1950

26. Imaginings in
1950

29. What’s missing from
those images?
Isn’t it time to imagine
something different?

30. It IS time to restore our
relationship with Nature

31. But that means asking harder, deeper
questions
Who are we?
Why are we here?
How did we get here?
What does it mean to be
human?

32. “We have one
generation in which
to shift human
consciousness”
Jeremy Rifkin

33. What else does this pattern represent?
“It’s all a question of story. We are in trouble now
because we do not have a good story. We’re in
between stories. The old story, the account of how
we fit into it, is no longer effective. Yet we have not
learned the new story” Thomas Berry

34. Homo Sapiens
“I think therefore I am”
Childhood
Homo economicus
“I shop therefore I am”
Adolescence
“I sustain life therefore I
can BE”
Adulthood
Homo regenesis*
* Source: Josh MacLennan,
Trimtab

35. Our epistemological error!

36. • Problem, object orientation
• “An object seen in isolation from the whole is not the real thing.”
• Misuse of language
• Sustainable what?
Our epistemological error!

38. • Myth of the steady / stable state
• “Life is constantly evolving, developing, defying entropy”
• Overshoot will continue (stuff accumulates!)
Our epistemological error!
• We’re heading in the wrong direction
• We’re not seeing the whole; we’re not seeing ourselves as part of
Nature

39. • Systemic breakdowns are breakdowns
that occur in an entire system, as opposed
to breakdowns in individual parts and
components. Systemic risks are
characterised by:
• Modest tipping points combining indirectly
to produce large failures
• Risk sharing or contagion, as one loss
triggers the chain of others
• Hysteresis or systems being unable to
recover after a shock.
EMERGING: Everything and everyone
is connected

40. Systemic Change

41. Assumptions Underpinning an Extractive
Economy• Humans are separate, superior & have dominion over other life forms
• The planet and business operate like machines that can be engineered
• Business is the best form for creating wealth; Money is the sole measure of success
that matters.
• Private ownership of resources is essential to the operation of a free market
economy
• A company’s fiduciary responsibility is to maximize returns to their shareholders
• A free market best determines how capital and resources (input) are allocated to
create wealth (from goods and services)
• Financial capital matters more than natural, social, intellectual, spiritual capital
• The purpose of capital is to manufacture further financial wealth that “trickles
down” to benefit all!
• The combined results of business activity (transactions) in a community is best
measured by the Gross Domestic Product (GDP)

42. What’s an Economy For?
You don’t start with the corporation and ask how to redesign it.
You start with life, with human life of the planet and ask…
How do we generate the conditions for life’s flourishing?
Marjorie Kelly
The only valid purpose of an economy is to serve life. To align
the human economy with this purpose, we must learn to live as
nature lives, organises as nature organises, and learn as
nature learns, guided by a reality-based, life centred,
intellectually sound economics. David Korten

43. So what is life?
• Life is a system that regenerates itself from within
• It is in a constant state of becoming, evolving
• Life emerges from the relationships of its parts
• Life is matter that chooses

44. The Visitor Economy is a system
embedded in a larger living system
• With hosts (human beings)
• Encountering and serving
• Guests (other human beings)
• In a community of other human beings
and life forms
• That takes place in a unique space
• Embedded in a larger ecosystem

45. How do you change a system?

46. Let’s Change Our Purpose:to ensure all Life
Flourishes

47. INSPIRATION

48. Human Health

49. Ecosystem Health
•Vitality, vigor, energy
•Diversity, complexity
•Balance
•Resilience
•Adaptable & Evolving
Video link

50. Society
Destination
Enterprise
Individual

51. 1. Business as usual is impossible and unsustainable
2. We must shift our focus from symptoms to root causes
3. We need to understand how systems work – especially
living systems to build a Regenerative Economy
4. Change Our Purpose – from bigger to better; from more to
flourishing
5. Empower Place-based Communities to be stewards in their
“places”
Perspective: Six Assumptions

52. How do make the transition?
From here
to here

53. 5 Ps of the Industrial Production-Consumption
Model

54. Conscious Travel Principles

55. So What’s It Going To Take?
• Just knowing won’t get us very far.
• We have to transform this knowledge
into a deep passion to change course.
• But passion does not come from the
head. It is a product of the heart. And
the heart is not aroused by bare facts
alone.
• It needs stories that weaves those facts
into a moving and meaningful narrative.
Source: Richard Schiffman

56. What’s It Going To Take?
We need a powerful new story that:
• Shows we are part of nature and not
separate from it.
• Properly situates humans in the world
– neither above it by virtue of our
superior intellect, nor dwarfed by the
universe into cosmic insignificance.
• That we are equal partners with all
that exists, co-creators with trees and
galaxies and microbes in a materially
and spiritually evolving universe
Source: Richard Schiffman

57. 5 Ps of the Industrial Production-Consumption
Model

58. Conscious Travel Principles

59. Principles as Stepping Stones

61. We will each play different roles

62. Together we can create a visitor economy
that’s
Better
And
Better for all!
Thank You!
Annapollock@me.com
www.conscious.travel
Report: www.tipse.org