Africa Travel Week

Enter the WTM World Responsible Tourism Awards

This year’s WTM World Responsible Tourism Awards are designed to recognise those who have addressed COVID-19. We talk you through the process.

This year’s World Responsible Tourism Awards have been adapted to recognise businesses, individuals, destinations and organisations which have taken responsibility to address the challenge of COVID-19. Find out more about the Awards and nominate online by the end of July.

Only those nominated can be recognised by the judges, you can nominate yourself and others, and you can nominate as many as you wish.

 Nominate yourself or others here

WHY THESE AWARDS MATTER

To give you a better idea of why these Awards matter, I spoke to Glynn O’Leary, CEO: Transfrontier Parks Destinations, Richard Vigne, CEO: Ol Pejeta Conservancy as well as Justin Francis, CEO: Responsible Travel.

Glynn O’Leary: “Our business model is really about starting with the basics and working with people. A key component to what we do is creating rural employment. It’s really important that we create jobs and that the majority of them are filled by the local community. Rural tourism is always a challenging part of the tourism industry. For that reason, the exposure we get through the awards is fantastic. Now people are talking more about deep tourism, wilderness and learning about different cultures. These are things we have been doing for the past 15 years. Through the awards we are able to spread our message. The marketing aspect is valuable, but the awareness it creates is much more important.”

Richard Vigne: “We started out as wildlife conservationists. We weren’t in the business of tourism to begin with, but it was a way to fund our conservation aspirations. That remains the case today. We run our tourism in a way that is completely compatible with the maintenance of conservation space. The awards send a signal to the industry that it is possible to run a responsible business that supports people and wildlife at the same time as making profit. We use it as a marketing tool, but also find it is something that is being sought after in the marketplace.”

Harold Goodwin

Harold Goodwin is WTM’s Responsible Tourism Advisor, he puts together the flagship Responsible Tourism programme at WTM London which attracts 2000 participants each year and the programmes run at WTM Africa, WTM Latin America and Arabian Travel Market. Harold has worked on 4 continents with local communities, their governments and the inbound and outbound tourism industry. He is Managing Director of the Responsible Tourism Partnership and chairs the panels of judges for the World Responsible Tourism Awards and the other Awards in the family, Africa, India and Ireland. Harold works with industry, local communities, governments, and conservationists and undertakes consultancy and evaluations for companies, NGOs, governments, and international organisations. He is also a Director of the Institute of Place Management at Manchester Metropolitan University, where he is an Emeritus Professor, and Founder Director of the International Centre for Responsible Tourism promotes the principles of the Cape Town Declaration which he drafted.