The travel industry must “reconnect with the natural world” to prevent travellers from being “brainwashed”, according to owner and director of Conscious Travel Anna Pollock.
Speaking at this year’s International Women in Travel and Tourism Forum, Pollock urged the industry to learn from indigenous people, embrace their culture, and report that back to travellers, instead of promoting holidays which ignore local communities.
Conscious Travel is a social enterprise aiming to replace mass tourism with travel that “celebrates and nurtures the uniqueness of places and people”.
Pollock said many travellers have been “brainwashed” to think that visiting countries without experiencing any of the local culture is the norm.
She warned the industry is going through a “really turbulent period of unravelling” as it moves out of the pandemic, and it must make a “fundamental” change to embrace nature and local communities.
“The biggest change we have to make is to fundamentally reconnect with the natural world and the indigenous people will be our guides”, she said.
“In travel, we have to listen to what indigenous people have to say and be amplifiers of their message.”