Sustainability Leaders interviews Professor Harold Goodwin on responsible tourism

Sustainability Leaders is dedicated to telling the stories of leaders in sustainable tourism around the world. Last week they published an excellent interview with Professor Harold Goodwin. You should read the full interview here, but here are some highlights.

On starting out back in 1994: “I was quite shocked by how little attention was being paid to sustainability by tourism academics and the industry.”

On local targets: “What is more important is to identify what matters in particular places and address those issues and set local targets.”

On what Responsible Tourism is. It is: “about taking responsibility for using tourism for sustainable development. It is about what you do, what you take responsibility for achieving.”

On publishing the industry ‘bible’, Taking Responsibility for Tourism: “I have been teaching about tourism and encouraging people to make it better since 1998, I wanted to make the ideas accessible to more people and to offer an account of how Responsible Tourism emerged and resulted in the Cape Town Declaration.”

On the WTM Responsible Tourism awards: “Competition is much stiffer and the standard is much higher too.”

On nine years as a Professor of Responsible Tourism: Leeds Beckett University & Manchester Metropolitan University: “Knowing what is in the tourism books and journals is not enough and theory needs to be tested against experience.”

Professor Goodwin has previously contributed to Blue & Green Tomorrow here and we collaborated to produce the Responsible Tourism in Destinations report which followed the RTM8 conference in Manchester in April 2014.