“Give something back”
Tourism often destroys the places that it touches – just look at Venice and the cruise ships. It overwhelms. Five per cent of the planet gets 95 per cent of tourism, which is crazy. And on the other hand, so many beautiful villages and towns aren’t visited and are just withering away. Tourism should help local communities to thrive.
At 700,000 Heures we work with the Global Heritage Fund. It doesn’t just arrive and start refurbishing monuments. It works with the local communities, creating jobs and letting them lead. In Dali, in the Guizhou province in China, for example, it’s won prizes for the work it did. It helped preserve 30 historic structures and then helped to establish a textile cooperative that adapted the local women’s indigo dye cotton into clothing and homewares, which they sell. Tourists can now visit a textile centre in the main plaza.
We have a project called DAEM, which means “Permanent” in Persian. It’s a non-profit training programme that helps local people learn about hospitality, but also how to protect the environment. In Morocco, we are working with the Global Heritage Fund to refurbish an entire village. For every euro spent in the project, I give a euro to a village association and they can decide where that money is spent.
The future of travel isn’t touristic places, it’s authentic experiences with local people. And it is also about choosing to visit hotels that have visible programmes to help the local population, or finding ways to buy things from local artisans.