What’s responsible tourism and why is it important to the mangroves? This lesson is to help you understand what resonsible tourism is.

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First, we need to understand what Responsible tourism is.

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Responsible tourism tries to minimize and reverse negative effects caused by tourism. The mentioned negative results include overtourism, deterioration to historical sites & environment, globalization, detrimental social changes and many other problems. In other words, responsible tourism is using tourism to make better places to live in and better tourist places.

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So, is responsible tourism different from ecotourism or sustainable tourism?

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The answer is YES!

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Sustainable tourism, like responsible tourism, includes 3 important pillars of environment, economy and society. However, responsible tourism requires more transparent actions while sustainable tourism falls to abstract state.

In the concept of sustainable tourism, tourists are just spectators and not linked to responsiblility. Responsible tourism  requires such three pillars on the same page and both tourism operators & tourists are responsible for their actions. Overtourism is opposite to responsible tourism. If overtourism appears, all related parties & life quality at those places have been seriously affected, requiring immediate actions.

 

For responsible tourism, the tourists will plan responsibly so that after their trips:

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a) a positive impact may be left

b) they will be enriched by understanding more about these places and experiencing more local cultural activities.

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In order to make goal a) come true, the tourists will minimize one single – use stuffs, take the green living style, obey local laws and culture, and use locally run services. In other words, he or she will bring their portable thumlers, tote bags to minimize the plastic bags & cups. He or she also respects local culture by following the local rules, customs rules in public places, or cultural heritage, etc… By this way, he or she will not deteriorate the original culture.

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In order to carry out goal b), these kinds of tourists will buy the locally run homestays or hotels instead of international chains of hotels, will eat local food instead of McDonald breads, join local social activities such as mangrove reforestation to contribute to enviromental protection.

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So how does responsible tourism help mangroves?

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Actually, this is a big help and long term support to mangrove forests.

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If tourists visit these mangrove forests with a concept of responsible tourism in mind, overtourism will not occur.

If touris operators, local government apply responsible tourism to consider plans, develop measures to prioritize environmental protection, and divide to implement inspecific durations, the tourism activities will go in a direct way.

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And finally, if responsible tourism is applied to the community to raise the awareness, the local community’s income will be increased towards life quality improvement and harmony to nature. This will help stop generating wild income and then fall to pollution and deterioration.

 

As a result, mangrove will be protected effectively.

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Thank you for taking this course! The online course is sponsored by APLL.