Why Conscious Travel is NOT about saving the planet

“Purpose” is currently peaking as the trend taking the tourism sector into the second decade of what will be an incredibly volatile, unpredictable, complex and ambiguous century. As trends go, it’s taken half the time that was needed for the tourism industry to understand that it sells experience and not products. Its popularity – as in usage – may not yet match that of the word “sustainability” but both share the same chameleon-like quality: they can mean whatever the user wants or thinks they mean. Our society loves these new buzz phrases - short codes that eliminate the need for explanation and encourage their proliferation. 

A prior example following the global financial recession in 2010 was “customer centricity.” As if that was a novel idea! It took some plain language from the most successful low-cost airline of its day to speak some common sense – see: “Show the luv to your employees: the real secret behind customer centricity” (2010). Another was the term “local travel” that only really made sense when Airbnb co-opted the concept but urged we “travel like a local.”

Surely the term “the purpose economy” is another meaningless, tautological short code.  Every business and every economy has a purpose. Its application to an entire economy has much to do with Adam Hurst  (book and web site of the same name); and Simon Sinek who put the question “why?” on so many lips or article titles. Hurst starts his latest article (2020: The tipping point for the purpose economy) with this statement: 

Based on PwC’s data, it appears the majority of CEOs now share the vision that purpose is the new driving force of the economy. They see that understanding the importance of purpose—for employees, clients, and customers—will soon mark the difference between competitive companies from others that fall off the map.

But, seriously, does it really take an expensive survey undertaken by one of the top five consulting firms to prove the adage – if you don’t know where you are going then you are unlikely to get there?

Fortunately, as you delve deeper, you’ll find that it is the nature of a purpose that has the capacity to attract, engage and motivate people as buyers (consumers) and producers (employee). Financial rewards and material incentives are being replaced with finding a sense of meaning and service. Those of us in the so-called developed world, who are fortunate enough to have our material needs pretty well guaranteed, now seek, as Maslow indicated some 70 years ago, richer emotional, psychological, social and spiritual forms of satisfaction and meaning.

Back in 2005, Daniel Pink, the popular and prescient trend observer identified in his book A Whole new Mind the pursuit of meaning as likely to be one of the most significant cultural developments of our time and then ten years later in Drive identified purpose as one of the three sources of personal motivation, along with autonomy and mastery. 

But if you want to label an entire economy then purpose won’t cut it. Consider instead “The Meaningful Economy” – anticipated as personal transformation by none other than authorities Pine and Gilmore in the last chapter of their text; The Experience Economy, and Mark Drewell and Bjorn Larssen in The Rise of the Meaningful Economy. The Belgian Marketing Association recently recognised the power of meaning in their Meaningful Marketing Framework and one their first ambassadors, selected by professionals and the public, was colleague, client and friend, Elke Dens, Head of International Marketing at Visit Flanders. Elke is publishing a series of essays on the subject starting here.  

Thanks to the work of positive psychologists, neuroscientists, sociologists and anthropologists we now know where we humans find meaning – in serving a purpose or cause greater than ourselves; belonging, making a positive impact; and helping others. We're also discovering different ways of realising the benefits of having a purpose above just making money - see figure titled The Purpose Economy by Proof of Impact

Business has now discovered that failure to frame a purpose higher than simply making and selling stuff simply to make a profit won’t cut it either: talent and investment will flow elsewhere.  We’ve come a long way since the time when Milton Friedman and the neoliberals dominated our thinking and moved over to let Gen X and Millennials enter the workforce, as evidenced in the two quotes below.

Further evidence that business is expanding its purpose from profit to contribution/impact manifests in the rise of BCorps and historic shift made by the US Business Roundtable’s Roundtable’s statement on the purpose of the corporation. Representing 181 CEOs from the world’s largest companies, the statement goes straight to the heart of the problem with modern capitalism – shareholder supremacy. The Roundtable statement commits these companies to deliver value for all their stakeholders and a refocusing on long term value for shareholders.

While the tourism sector has been playing catch up, now it seems hardly a day goes by without another site justifying the sale of “local,” “immersive,” “authentic,” “transformative” travel experiences by their capacity to change, or save, either the world or the planet.  I regret I may have in some small way contributed to this. I have always believed that the travel sector could become a transformative change agent (the eminent Dr. Wahl quotes my aspirational musings of 1995 here);  and back in 2012 I hoped that vast numbers of international travellers could become champions for a better world (see here). 

My regret stems from my failure to communicate how this could and should be done. Because it’s not by convincing both you and your customers that tourism is any more intrinsically benign and beneficial than any other economic activity. Voluntourism/philanthropic travel is possibly the only form of tourism where the intent is ostensibly to “do good” and the literature is now replete with stories and articles regarding the many and diverse not so good consequences. Travelocity has even trademarked the term "travel for good."

But to state that your travel to a remote destination where locals do not necessarily enjoy all the privileges we take for granted in the west or where the environment has been degraded due to poverty, over-population,  lack of opportunity or downright exploitation is “doing good” strikes me as pure self-indulgence bordering on nascent colonialism and arrogance mixed with a patronising stance. Yes, travel can “do good” by providing income and employment, foreign exchange, improving facilities and amenities, preventing deforestation, conserving wildlife etc. But until we have reliable data to prove otherwise, I am confident that a). travel still benefits the traveller and the companies that support this activity far more than the host community and b). tourism doesn’t do any more good than farming, manufacturing, transportation or even banking. We’re all participants in a globalised, consumer, cash economy in which we have to eat, use machines, be transported, and pay for money to circulate. When have you heard (apart from vegans) “eat to save the planet?” or “borrow money to save the planet?” although, it’s true, we did once hear a past President suggest we shop to save the economy!

So why won’t tourism (let alone in a conscious form) save the planet and how can travel become a force for good? 

First of all – it isn’t the planet that needs saving. It’s us. The root cause of all our so-called wicked problems lies within – in our heads, hearts and souls that shape the way we “see,” “be,” and “do.”  In other words - in seeing ourselves as separate from nature and superior to its other life forms; in seeing “the environment” as another, an “it,” a problem to be solved or re-engineered and even merely a set of ecosystem services that need to be paid for. 

In this context, I was so pleased the other day to read Ed Gillepsie, founder of Futerra, an effective change agency, in The End of Saving the World. He quotes Dr Martin Shaw and echoes the words of writers like Thich Nhat Han and Charles Eisenstein among others by calling for:

“a love entanglement with the Earth” - a complex relationship of reciprocity and reverence that truly sustained us for millennia. Every time we treat our home in a utilitarian fashion, as complex resources to be exploited for our benefit, and as if we could just strike the right ‘carbon neutrality’ or ‘balance’ of natural capital, craft a zero waste or circular economy, and protect a bit of nature here and there for our titillation and natural history pornography, we demean both this wild and wondrous world and ourselves.?

Then he declares: 

The planet does not want to be saved. Or rescued. Or even changed. Our planet wants to be loved. Love is not a game of numbers and spreadsheets, checks and balances, debts and contracts. It is an exalted dance of joy, respect and gleeful, mutual appreciation and true partnership. We should all be dancing. But right now the music’s stopped. And I sense it won’t authentically restart until we properly reconnect with what really matters, our deeper selves, each other and our home."

When I started writing under the banner of Conscious.Travel, I also tried to be really clear, stating here back in 2010: 

The real task at hand is one of “waking up”.  It’s as if we’re in a trance. Like addicts or patients with a terminal illness many of us refuse to accept that our old ways of thinking and perceiving are ceasing to make effective sense of the world we live in.  Hence our choice of the word “conscious” which, according to the dictionary, means to:

• be aware of one’s own existence, sensations, thoughts, surroundings, etc.
• be fully aware of or sensitive to something;
• to have one’s mental faculties and senses fully active;
• know oneself and be aware of what one is doing; thinking and feeling as in to be self-conscious;
• act with deliberate intent; and
• be acutely aware of, or concerned about, something specific such as being health conscious or diet-conscious.

All of these definitions imply a state of alertness; of being awake; or acting deliberately, and to borrow from the Buddhist tradition – to be mindful – all states of being that are the essential pre-conditions for acting responsibly. For how can one assume responsibility for one’s actions, if one is sleep walking or in a trance?

These “waking up” times are associated with enormous turmoil, bewilderment, hesitancy and confusion as conventional beliefs and assumptions prove to be less effective at making sense of the world

To become “conscious” in business is to become aware of:

• what you value
• the hidden assumptions that underpin what you value and how your respond to events
• how your business affects others
• how your business is affected by external factors, events, change drivers etc.
• your sense of purpose; what motivates you and provides fulfilment
• the mindsets of others
• your strengths and weaknesses as a leader.

So let me re-affirm my conviction. Travel is critically important for our personal development as humans and now the economy on which we depend. But unless we design a form of travel that stewards / gardens rather than extracts or mines the abundance that is Nature’s gift to us all, we’ll wreck our home and life support system. Unless we build a new model that re-defines, re-frames growth in qualitative terms, and delivers real net benefit, then we are robbing from our children.  The responsibility for changing the operating model rests with the host and guest. Unless these two parties take real and meaningful responsibility for the health and vitality of the people and places that welcome guests, progress will be limited. Waking up means letting go of the delusion that business as usual is sustainable and that we travel for anyone’s good but our own. Only having woken up on this way, will we have a fighting chance of saving our civilisation.