ETHICAL TRAVELLER: CATHERINE MACKon responsible tourism
‘YOU’RE A BIT of a fighter,” the director of the Mexican tourist board, Manuel Díaz-Cebrián, told me at a recent conference. I had been asking too many pushy questions about responsible travel, as usual. He was quick to add, however: “We Mexicans like that. It’s good to challenge people.” If anyone was a fighter, it was him, because marketing Mexico at the moment has to be one of the toughest jobs out there.
Tourism is hugely important to Mexico, and a health crisis of the scale of H1N1 influenza takes its toll for years. Just think back to foot-and-mouth disease and its impact. Mexico wasn’t helped by confusing travel advice. The World Health Organisation was not advocating travel restrictions. The EU told member states that it was up to each country how it handled the situation. The Irish and UK governments advised against all inessential travel to Mexico. Many other countries rejected the notion of a total travel shutdown.
Díaz-Cebrián can breathe a sigh of relief, as Ireland and the UK have lifted the restrictions.
Extreme travel alerts can have a dramatically negative impact. An all-inessential-travel restriction makes it very difficult to get travel insurance, for example. Ironically, there are now more cases in the US, but we don’t read about travel restrictions there.
I am not suggesting complacency, and any responsible traveller should check out all health recommendations for travel to Mexico, or any other country affected by the virus, at the Department of Foreign Affairs website (www.dfa.ie).
Media coverage of a destination, and its travel alerts, can have an equally negative impact on tourism. It is worth researching the destination from all angles, reading local blogs and sometimes even questioning travel restrictions. Often they might focus on one city, such as Nairobi during Kenya’s pre- election violence, even though most of this vast, beautiful country was peaceful, and empty. Tourism is only starting to pick up there again, saved by their new hero, Barack Obama. Many destinations don’t have such wonderful ambassadors to put them back on the map.
Any tourist still nervous about travelling to Ireland because of terrorism – and I have met a few – might not be reassured by the British foreign office’s guidance, which says: “There is an underlying threat from terrorism. Attacks could be indiscriminate, including in places frequented by expatriates and foreign travellers.” That is not what most Irish people would tell visitors, so what would Mexicans be telling us now?
In 2003 the UK charity Tourism Concern lobbied the foreign office for a fairer, more transparent travel-advisory system. This was driven by the blanket ban on inessential travel to Indonesia after the terrorist attack in 2002. The US also suffered tragically at the hands of terrorists the year before, but the travel advice was for vigilance, and a huge US tourism campaign kicked in. Indonesia’s ban continued into 2004, and the industry was devastated as a result.
Tourism Concern’s lobbying worked, and now the foreign office has an advisory committee that meets every three months to review its decisions.
Media coverage of Mexico’s health alert will linger for a long time, so I am fighting alongside Díaz-Cebrián and encouraging tourists to keep the door open to Mexico when planning a holiday. Consider some of the responsible travel companies that take you off the beaten track, such as Explore!, Exodus and the Adventure Company. For more information, see Díaz-Cebrián’s own www.visitmexico.com.
www.ethicaltraveller.ie