what if I told you that you could change
the world by going on vacation it sound
nice
alright I’m done no no put put on your
imagination caps with me for a moment if
it helps you to close your eyes and lean
back feel free to do so I’ll let you
know when to come back to consciousness
so imagine you’re on a raft on a river
and you’re in Fiji your raft is winding
down a beautiful tropical river you’re
going through deep gorges you’re
listening to birds and wildlife and
lunchtime comes and the raft pulls over
the air is warm the smells are amazing
and you can hear the guides preparing a
delicious lunch laughing and singing and
you’re thinking this is one of the best
moments of my entire life
now keep imagining with me but we’re
going to be in the same scene but I’m
flipping it on you it’s now a scene of
complete destruction chainsaws roaring
trucks beeping the smell of exhaust
crashing timber then silence no birds no
wildlife the guides have moved back to
the city to get jobs dreams dashed the
school funds have disappeared that came
from the tourism business this almost
happened 20 years ago an international
timber company came to the land owning
clans on this river in Fiji and offered
them a sizeable chunk of money in
exchange for the timber rivers Fiji the
rafting company pled their case and said
first of all the business is going to go
no one’s gonna want a raft
everybody’s gonna lose their jobs that’s
involved and it’s going to destroy the
forests and the environment for the
foreseeable future
the elders agreed and signed a
conservation lease
they’ve been taking customers down these
rivers more than 1 million dollars has
come from the rafting business to the
Fijian community in that time period as
well so if you think about it an
adventure travel company has protected
part of the world but if you think about
it it’s the travelers the customers who
are underwriting this so I ask again
what if you could change the world by
going on vacation so today I’m gonna
talk about some bad news in tourism
some good news and tourism and how you
can make a difference but first I’ll
tell you how I got into the adventure
travel business I think it started with
my family this was a vehicle in the
1920s that my great grandfather
converted into a recreational adventure
vehicle and the stories of that that I
could tell between great-grandpa and now
are some are pretty horrifying at the
things that our family would try in the
in the name of adventure but when I was
a kid another big move was my family
moved from suburban Denver to the
mountains of Salida Colorado and my
parents released my brother Ryan and I
into the wilderness and said fly be free
go do it teenagers do in the wilderness
and it was where I fell in love with
nature and with exploration so that was
a huge part of it as well but when I was
about 17 my parents said you should join
this church group that’s gonna go be
doing service in Fiji and go and be a
part of this so with 30 other teenagers
I went to the Fiji Islands and spent
three months living in pup tents we
washed our clothes in well water buckets
and bathed in the river it was very
primitive Fiji had no internet no one
had no internet and also there was not
even international television there yet
so Fiji was its own place and it blew my
mind being a kid from Colorado who had
lived in
suburbia and then small-town to live in
another culture and I remember being
impressed with the kids were so happy
wild and free and they had no toys and
no stuff to speak of and it really
impacted me well it got a biology degree
from Seattle Pacific University and
spent a summer on the Bering Sea as a
fisheries observer for the government I
was pursuing my dream of becoming a
scientist and so I got a job at an
environmental chemistry laboratory in
Washington and I found something
interesting in the first couple of years
which was I wasn’t a scientist it might
have been the the procedure that went
sideways where I had sulfuric acid
explode all over me and I had to take
off my annihilated lab coat with my lab
gloves and quickly escaped my
disintegrating shirt in pants and my
boss being a smart guy he’s like how
about we put you on the people side of
the business and so I ended up working
all around Asia he put me on business
development and again I got to be refire
DUP with other cultures and experience
things that I hadn’t before I started
learning Chinese language I started
eating spicy food and then I spent about
six years in the outdoor recreational
business that was my path to the
adventure travel business since 2004
along with a set of rock star colleagues
with whom I work we’ve worked with
thousands of individuals professionals
and governments around the globe to
understand develop and promote good
adventure tourism so tourism has changed
a lot since I was a knuckleheaded kid in
the 80s and in fact in the 60s there
were only 22 million international trips
per year around the world last year that
blew up to 1.3 billion trips and it’s
growing despite war terrorism disease
outbreaks lots of reasons to fear it’s
still growing it’s not going away and in
fact it’s got it’s had such a solid an
over impacting experience on so many
destinations there’s a term for it
it’s called over tourism and it is
really affecting cultures environment
and economy so there’s a picture of over
tourism that’s Angkor Wat so many of the
world’s iconic cultural destinations are
being loved to death Venice for example
is known as La Serenissima the most
serene but today there are 28 million
visitors to every 55 thousand to the 55
thousand locals that’s more than five
hundred to one so that’s me plus two
others on stage as the locals and all of
you as the tourists in Venice as a ratio
but invite but the culture is not the
only victim the environment is – in 2016
Princess Cruises
owned by Carnival Cruises got caught
dumping waste illegally into the ocean
and after investigation it turns out
multiple of their ships were doing this
they felt free to dump through something
that they called the magic pipe
bypassing existing waste treatment
systems into the ocean our ocean somehow
I think the forty million dollar fine
they paid that year paled against the
2.8 billion in profit profit posted by
Carnival that year so cultures and
environment are definitely suffering
let’s talk about money – isn’t money
good for destinations don’t you want
lots of tourists to show up well what
might not be obvious is when you’re
looking at tourists coming from cruise
or all-inclusive resorts international
chains a lot of that is big
international business and studies have
shown that up to 85 percent sometimes 90
percent leaves the destination entirely
the technical term is leakage what that
really means
the locals lose and there’s very little
left for the environment the descriptor
for this term is called mass tourism for
lack of a better name and not only does
it take a lot it leaves little for
example in Cancun and Bali there
is a real problem with locals having
access the trouble getting access to
water because the mass tourism system
simply uses it up so reflecting on a
more lightly traveled era Mark Twain
said travel is fatal to prejudice
bigotry and narrow mindedness and our
people sorely needed on these accounts
Mark Twain hoped that travel would make
us better people but what mass tourism
I’m afraid has done has turned what
should be a transformative experience
into not much more than an indulgent one
mass tourism in its seeking for huge
profits has created something of a
bubble you travel you stay and you spend
in the bubble and because this bubble
shields you from connecting with local
people and shields you from immersing in
nature it’s the type of travel that’s
also those the most prone to be
destructive to those two things so sadly
today you can travel somewhere and not
be changed and not have a positive
impact but there is good news there is
good news there is a way to travel in a
way that does do good for the world and
that’s why I’m here to talk to you today
you can travel in a way that protects
wildlife you can travel in a way that
honors and supports people you can
travel in a way that furthers economic
prosperity and peace and can be a
mind-blowing experience all at the same
time now I want to be fair
adventure travel is not the only way to
travel responsibly in fact all travel
should eventually be responsible in our
view and in fact adventure travel is not
immune to bad behavior or overcrowding
either we have to be cautious as well
but adventure travel has revealed the
principles of a model that works a model
that focuses on protecting nature and
when you think adventure travel you
might be thinking bungee jumping
skydiving bear wrestling you know what
is adventure travel it sounds scary and
dangerous and sponsored by ibuprofen but
today adventure travel is defined as
travel that focuses on nature and
culture and activity the number one
activity that adventure travel companies
offer around the world is hiking you can
do that
biking Wildlife safaris all sorts of
accessible activities good adventure
travel can immunize against certain
evils I’ll tell you a story from Namibia
where a poacher recently approached a
remote village and talked to the
villagers and said you tell me where the
rhinos are and I’ll give you this money
I’ve had the story described it’s a sack
of money
well the villagers had been experiencing
the benefits of tourism people staying
in lodges hiring guides buying things
eating being there and they knew that
this was the linchpin to that tourism
economy and so they captured the guy and
turned him into police
[Applause]
yayyyy says the rare hokkaido japanese
red-crowned crane so back to money real
quick we talked about how much money
leaves the economy in mass tourism how
much is left is very little and in
adventure tourism we found that 65%
stays and it makes sense you’re booking
with somebody who works with local
companies who travels and stays at local
lodges who works with local guides
taking you to local restaurants the
money trickles out to people who really
need it and by the way who live in that
environment they have a reason to
protect it this is immunization against
tourism being a force of destruction and
it brings real jobs so how can you
travel in a way that’s not me that
the honors and takes care of humans how
do you travel in a way that is about ah
and beauty and surprise
[Music]
it’ll take a little investigative work
on your part so what you want to do is
when you find a lodge or a tour operator
with whom you want to work ask some
simple questions don’t ask are you
responsible ask these questions what
investments have you made to be
environmentally responsible what
programs do you have in place to benefit
and involve local people and what
professional certifications does your
company have and if somebody says well
we’re certified by the Galactic cowboy
rainbow unicorn Alliance of the green
north look into that make sure it’s
legitimate and finally beware the
cheapest option because that implies
shortcuts so you’re just looking to see
do they involve do they invest in nature
and culture adventure travel has changed
what I think about environment do you
know what this is this is plastic in the
stomach of a sea turtle that killed it
when I saw this in Brazil a good tour
operator took us to this rehab
rehabilitation facility and this changed
not only my thinking but my behavior and
I am careful now about how I use plastic
but the most important thing about
travels that connects us with people
last year I toured Kurdistan which is
the northern part of Iraq it’s
surrounded by Syria Turkey in Iran and
the rest of Iraq and it has a scary
reputation I went with a couple of
friends and my son Ashton who was 16 at
the time and we went to markets and
villages and we hiked and we walked and
we saw monasteries and we saw museums
some things made us cry some things made
us laugh but the most amazing part was
meeting the people and who were deeply
curious and interested we swapped
stories we gave gifts to each other and
they were undelete aynd and I’d never
been offered tea so much in my entire
on the flight out I sat next to a
Kurdish man named Kars ax Karsa was in
his 30s and it was his first flight I
didn’t speak Kurdish he didn’t speak
English but we managed some level of
communication
I helped him figure out how to pop his
ears when the pressure rose and he
looked alarmed he put his air his hands
in the air and prayed fervently and
loudly as we took off his friends
offered sweets homemade sweets in a
black bag
we took selfies and he got shut down by
the flight attendant for trying to smoke
to calm his nerves so after 90 minutes I
started to get sleepy I put my head back
on my seat and as I started to drift off
I felt tapping on my shoulder and Kars
who looked at me and gestured I gave him
a thumbs up and a smile and he put his
head on my shoulder and he fell fast
asleep adventure travel has forever
changed my assumptions about other
people and about the world we really can
change ourselves and the world by going
on vacation thank you very much
[Applause] you
the world by going on vacation it sound
nice
alright I’m done no no put put on your
imagination caps with me for a moment if
it helps you to close your eyes and lean
back feel free to do so I’ll let you
know when to come back to consciousness
so imagine you’re on a raft on a river
and you’re in Fiji your raft is winding
down a beautiful tropical river you’re
going through deep gorges you’re
listening to birds and wildlife and
lunchtime comes and the raft pulls over
the air is warm the smells are amazing
and you can hear the guides preparing a
delicious lunch laughing and singing and
you’re thinking this is one of the best
moments of my entire life
now keep imagining with me but we’re
going to be in the same scene but I’m
flipping it on you it’s now a scene of
complete destruction chainsaws roaring
trucks beeping the smell of exhaust
crashing timber then silence no birds no
wildlife the guides have moved back to
the city to get jobs dreams dashed the
school funds have disappeared that came
from the tourism business this almost
happened 20 years ago an international
timber company came to the land owning
clans on this river in Fiji and offered
them a sizeable chunk of money in
exchange for the timber rivers Fiji the
rafting company pled their case and said
first of all the business is going to go
no one’s gonna want a raft
everybody’s gonna lose their jobs that’s
involved and it’s going to destroy the
forests and the environment for the
foreseeable future
the elders agreed and signed a
conservation lease
they’ve been taking customers down these
rivers more than 1 million dollars has
come from the rafting business to the
Fijian community in that time period as
well so if you think about it an
adventure travel company has protected
part of the world but if you think about
it it’s the travelers the customers who
are underwriting this so I ask again
what if you could change the world by
going on vacation so today I’m gonna
talk about some bad news in tourism
some good news and tourism and how you
can make a difference but first I’ll
tell you how I got into the adventure
travel business I think it started with
my family this was a vehicle in the
1920s that my great grandfather
converted into a recreational adventure
vehicle and the stories of that that I
could tell between great-grandpa and now
are some are pretty horrifying at the
things that our family would try in the
in the name of adventure but when I was
a kid another big move was my family
moved from suburban Denver to the
mountains of Salida Colorado and my
parents released my brother Ryan and I
into the wilderness and said fly be free
go do it teenagers do in the wilderness
and it was where I fell in love with
nature and with exploration so that was
a huge part of it as well but when I was
about 17 my parents said you should join
this church group that’s gonna go be
doing service in Fiji and go and be a
part of this so with 30 other teenagers
I went to the Fiji Islands and spent
three months living in pup tents we
washed our clothes in well water buckets
and bathed in the river it was very
primitive Fiji had no internet no one
had no internet and also there was not
even international television there yet
so Fiji was its own place and it blew my
mind being a kid from Colorado who had
lived in
suburbia and then small-town to live in
another culture and I remember being
impressed with the kids were so happy
wild and free and they had no toys and
no stuff to speak of and it really
impacted me well it got a biology degree
from Seattle Pacific University and
spent a summer on the Bering Sea as a
fisheries observer for the government I
was pursuing my dream of becoming a
scientist and so I got a job at an
environmental chemistry laboratory in
Washington and I found something
interesting in the first couple of years
which was I wasn’t a scientist it might
have been the the procedure that went
sideways where I had sulfuric acid
explode all over me and I had to take
off my annihilated lab coat with my lab
gloves and quickly escaped my
disintegrating shirt in pants and my
boss being a smart guy he’s like how
about we put you on the people side of
the business and so I ended up working
all around Asia he put me on business
development and again I got to be refire
DUP with other cultures and experience
things that I hadn’t before I started
learning Chinese language I started
eating spicy food and then I spent about
six years in the outdoor recreational
business that was my path to the
adventure travel business since 2004
along with a set of rock star colleagues
with whom I work we’ve worked with
thousands of individuals professionals
and governments around the globe to
understand develop and promote good
adventure tourism so tourism has changed
a lot since I was a knuckleheaded kid in
the 80s and in fact in the 60s there
were only 22 million international trips
per year around the world last year that
blew up to 1.3 billion trips and it’s
growing despite war terrorism disease
outbreaks lots of reasons to fear it’s
still growing it’s not going away and in
fact it’s got it’s had such a solid an
over impacting experience on so many
destinations there’s a term for it
it’s called over tourism and it is
really affecting cultures environment
and economy so there’s a picture of over
tourism that’s Angkor Wat so many of the
world’s iconic cultural destinations are
being loved to death Venice for example
is known as La Serenissima the most
serene but today there are 28 million
visitors to every 55 thousand to the 55
thousand locals that’s more than five
hundred to one so that’s me plus two
others on stage as the locals and all of
you as the tourists in Venice as a ratio
but invite but the culture is not the
only victim the environment is – in 2016
Princess Cruises
owned by Carnival Cruises got caught
dumping waste illegally into the ocean
and after investigation it turns out
multiple of their ships were doing this
they felt free to dump through something
that they called the magic pipe
bypassing existing waste treatment
systems into the ocean our ocean somehow
I think the forty million dollar fine
they paid that year paled against the
2.8 billion in profit profit posted by
Carnival that year so cultures and
environment are definitely suffering
let’s talk about money – isn’t money
good for destinations don’t you want
lots of tourists to show up well what
might not be obvious is when you’re
looking at tourists coming from cruise
or all-inclusive resorts international
chains a lot of that is big
international business and studies have
shown that up to 85 percent sometimes 90
percent leaves the destination entirely
the technical term is leakage what that
really means
the locals lose and there’s very little
left for the environment the descriptor
for this term is called mass tourism for
lack of a better name and not only does
it take a lot it leaves little for
example in Cancun and Bali there
is a real problem with locals having
access the trouble getting access to
water because the mass tourism system
simply uses it up so reflecting on a
more lightly traveled era Mark Twain
said travel is fatal to prejudice
bigotry and narrow mindedness and our
people sorely needed on these accounts
Mark Twain hoped that travel would make
us better people but what mass tourism
I’m afraid has done has turned what
should be a transformative experience
into not much more than an indulgent one
mass tourism in its seeking for huge
profits has created something of a
bubble you travel you stay and you spend
in the bubble and because this bubble
shields you from connecting with local
people and shields you from immersing in
nature it’s the type of travel that’s
also those the most prone to be
destructive to those two things so sadly
today you can travel somewhere and not
be changed and not have a positive
impact but there is good news there is
good news there is a way to travel in a
way that does do good for the world and
that’s why I’m here to talk to you today
you can travel in a way that protects
wildlife you can travel in a way that
honors and supports people you can
travel in a way that furthers economic
prosperity and peace and can be a
mind-blowing experience all at the same
time now I want to be fair
adventure travel is not the only way to
travel responsibly in fact all travel
should eventually be responsible in our
view and in fact adventure travel is not
immune to bad behavior or overcrowding
either we have to be cautious as well
but adventure travel has revealed the
principles of a model that works a model
that focuses on protecting nature and
when you think adventure travel you
might be thinking bungee jumping
skydiving bear wrestling you know what
is adventure travel it sounds scary and
dangerous and sponsored by ibuprofen but
today adventure travel is defined as
travel that focuses on nature and
culture and activity the number one
activity that adventure travel companies
offer around the world is hiking you can
do that
biking Wildlife safaris all sorts of
accessible activities good adventure
travel can immunize against certain
evils I’ll tell you a story from Namibia
where a poacher recently approached a
remote village and talked to the
villagers and said you tell me where the
rhinos are and I’ll give you this money
I’ve had the story described it’s a sack
of money
well the villagers had been experiencing
the benefits of tourism people staying
in lodges hiring guides buying things
eating being there and they knew that
this was the linchpin to that tourism
economy and so they captured the guy and
turned him into police
[Applause]
yayyyy says the rare hokkaido japanese
red-crowned crane so back to money real
quick we talked about how much money
leaves the economy in mass tourism how
much is left is very little and in
adventure tourism we found that 65%
stays and it makes sense you’re booking
with somebody who works with local
companies who travels and stays at local
lodges who works with local guides
taking you to local restaurants the
money trickles out to people who really
need it and by the way who live in that
environment they have a reason to
protect it this is immunization against
tourism being a force of destruction and
it brings real jobs so how can you
travel in a way that’s not me that
the honors and takes care of humans how
do you travel in a way that is about ah
and beauty and surprise
[Music]
it’ll take a little investigative work
on your part so what you want to do is
when you find a lodge or a tour operator
with whom you want to work ask some
simple questions don’t ask are you
responsible ask these questions what
investments have you made to be
environmentally responsible what
programs do you have in place to benefit
and involve local people and what
professional certifications does your
company have and if somebody says well
we’re certified by the Galactic cowboy
rainbow unicorn Alliance of the green
north look into that make sure it’s
legitimate and finally beware the
cheapest option because that implies
shortcuts so you’re just looking to see
do they involve do they invest in nature
and culture adventure travel has changed
what I think about environment do you
know what this is this is plastic in the
stomach of a sea turtle that killed it
when I saw this in Brazil a good tour
operator took us to this rehab
rehabilitation facility and this changed
not only my thinking but my behavior and
I am careful now about how I use plastic
but the most important thing about
travels that connects us with people
last year I toured Kurdistan which is
the northern part of Iraq it’s
surrounded by Syria Turkey in Iran and
the rest of Iraq and it has a scary
reputation I went with a couple of
friends and my son Ashton who was 16 at
the time and we went to markets and
villages and we hiked and we walked and
we saw monasteries and we saw museums
some things made us cry some things made
us laugh but the most amazing part was
meeting the people and who were deeply
curious and interested we swapped
stories we gave gifts to each other and
they were undelete aynd and I’d never
been offered tea so much in my entire
on the flight out I sat next to a
Kurdish man named Kars ax Karsa was in
his 30s and it was his first flight I
didn’t speak Kurdish he didn’t speak
English but we managed some level of
communication
I helped him figure out how to pop his
ears when the pressure rose and he
looked alarmed he put his air his hands
in the air and prayed fervently and
loudly as we took off his friends
offered sweets homemade sweets in a
black bag
we took selfies and he got shut down by
the flight attendant for trying to smoke
to calm his nerves so after 90 minutes I
started to get sleepy I put my head back
on my seat and as I started to drift off
I felt tapping on my shoulder and Kars
who looked at me and gestured I gave him
a thumbs up and a smile and he put his
head on my shoulder and he fell fast
asleep adventure travel has forever
changed my assumptions about other
people and about the world we really can
change ourselves and the world by going
on vacation thank you very much
[Applause] you
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