Although programmes for addressing behaviour change in and around the home are well developed, there has been significantly less attention paid to tourism activities, and its implications of consumption choices for leisure and travel.
The tourism sector is one of the hardest hit sectors from Covid-19 and the global lockdown. As international travel has plummeted, tourism has suffered one of the largest downturns and resulted in significant changes in consumer behaviours and sustainable lifestyles. Has this challenge emerged as an opportunity for us to incorporate Sustainable Consumption and Production patterns to build back better the tourism sector post-COVID19, or will the industries return to business as usual?
Our current model of Tourism might not be an option in “New Normal”. Tourism needs to grow better, stronger, and balance the needs of people, planet, and lead towards prosperity. As UNWTO calls it, “Sustainability must no longer be a niche part of tourism but must be the new norm for every part of our sector.” Tourism needs to embed the concept of sustainability and sustainable pattern of consumption and production.
The webinar would elaborate on the three aspects:
1. Key COVID-19 Impacts, challenges, and opportunities for tourism
2. SCP opportunities to build back better and improve resilience of the tourism post COVID-19
3.The need to build circular models for production and consumption of food, and plastics in the tourism
All these three facets are cross-cutting and would reflect the Sustainable Lifestyles Approaches for SCP in Tourism. We aim to reflect upon the resilience and the mobilization of adaptive capabilities with the case studies and good practices.
Tourism is one of the hardest hit sectors due to COVID-19 pandemic. Huge portion of the GDP in many countries comes from the tourism sector, and tourism has multi-faceted linkages across national, and international, boundaries in lifestyles, economies, information, etc. After the pandemic, people have to change their behavior and lifestyle so the tourism sector has changed too. We are living in new normal. In this dialogue we will go down and take a look at some interesting case studies where you will learn what problems tourism industry is facing, how they are reacting, and what entrepreneurs see as opportunities to run their businesses sustainably. We will talk with experts on how Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) can be an effective tool to plan for the tourism sector. You will see why SCP is very important for now and the future of tourism growth. As we stated earlier that tourism is lifestyle. It is our experience. If we change the tourism policy, the way the tourists will experience would often change too.