Ok, in this class we are going to look at tourism
as a global and multifaceted phenomenon,
and at how important this is for the sustainable transformation of tourism.
Let's see some numbers.
Before the pandemic, global tourism made up
approximately 10.4% of global GDP
and provided over 300 million jobs.
These numbers are important,
but we also have to take into account what we'll see next.
Here we have a graph form the World Tourism Organization
in which we see pre-pandemic projections.
We can see that the sector's growth outlook was broad.
And as we see here the forecast was set for 2030,
and this forecast was calculated
by measuring the arrivals of international tourists,
tourist arrivals.
As we can see, from this viewpoint there has been no impact from the pandemic.
Therefore, we can deduce that the sector expected,
and still expects after the effects of the pandemic,
broad and significant growth.
But this isn't the only important thing.
We'll see other questions that are also important.
Because tourism is more than just numbers.
It is important to know numbers such as GDP impact or percentage
and other economic statistics, such as jobs created and others.
But it's also important to look at other facets,
and that is why in today's lesson we're talking about different facets.
And to that end I propose an exercise.
We're going to do a kind of brainstorming, I'll also start doing it with you,
in which we are going to think of concepts and activities related to tourism.
And I'll start with, for example, as we can see, with excitement.
Excitement is an activity which is related to tourism.
When we a are going on a trip, going with family or with friends,
we feel excitement and it is one of the most important aspects.
OK, let's continue thinking of random words.
We could also say the senses,
everything we experience at a destination comes from the senses.
The environment, society, administration,
understood as government and civil service.
Also, health and safety, investments,
education, cuisine.
There is science and research,
but we can also think about art, events, communication,
businesses, infrastructure or innovation.
I can think of many more concepts and activities
that are related to tourism.
But as we are seeing right now there are many things.
We always said that tourism is very multidisciplinary sector,
it is sector with a very horizontal reach,
that encompasses many subsectors and activities within one sector.
That is why what we are trying to do here is to look at that.
We want to see within these activities and facets
how we can act or how we can act to put forwards
sustainable projects, projects for real sustainable change.
Here we can see the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals.
Ok, as we can see there are also facets here.
The Sustainable Development Goals are a multifaceted representation.
Among other things we will later analyze the success
of the Sustainable Development Goals and why they're talked about.
But notice that it covers multiple facets.
We are talking about things that, in most cases, are related to tourism.
If we think about these Sustainable Development Goals,
the 17 we are seeing right now, we see that most of them
have something to do with tourism and are related to tourism.
Sure enough, working on sustainable tourism projects
can help us reduce poverty and hunger, it can help us improve heath,
it can help us impact education and training.
If we connect this to what we were talking about before,
we can see that even just brainstorming we are touching on the SDGs.
Simply developing a series of ideas we can see they coincide with the SDGs.
And in the end, all of the other ones, the ones dealing with industry, energy,
water and water management, etc... are all related in one way or another,
as we were saying, and practically the majority can be seen
from the point of view of a company in the tourism sector or of a destination.
Ok, as I asked before,
why are the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals successful?
Well, it's really because of what we're seeing in this lesson,
it's because they add facets,
but they do it in a specific way that makes them easy to understand.
We can see in occasions
when we talk about comprehending things easily,
that we need to think about how society does not absorb in the same way
approaches only centered on calculation and technology.
What does this mean?
That when we want to do a sustainable development tourism project
it is great to try calculating the carbon footprint or water footprint,
or to try using terms such as monitoring, etc.
But if we really want to impact society as a whole,
for example with schools,
kids, students of all ages and developments,
we have to be aware that we have to take that language
and make it understandable, in a way, we can't get too technical.
And we also have to think that when we talk carbon footprint,
when we talk about water footprint, when we talk about energy,
about energy calculation,
we have to be aware that we are only talking about very specific facets,
and that sustainability is much broader and covers the rest of things we've seen,
from biodiversity to natural areas and society.
We are going to return for a moment to this image of the SDGs,
to the SDG image in which we can see all the colors.
As we say, part of their success and part of why they are talked about
in businesses, governments, and destinations,
and even that, for example, hotel chains are implementing it right now
within their methodology and their Corporate Social Responsibility Reports,
evaluating them one by one,
is because, if we look, they are easy to interpret.
They have the goal's title,
they have a color, they have a shape, and they are organized.
This, even though it sometimes seems unimportant, really isn't.
We'll have to try to make our sustainability projects
simple and minimalistic,
but also have them touch on facets that can stimulate thought in society.
We are going to go one step further in what would be studying
that multifaceted character that we have mentioned tourism has.
We are going to quickly analyze a tourist destination.
Here we are only seeing two elements though we could analyze many more:
Tangible and Intangible elements.
As we can see, we can even add to the facets we have already seen,
the ones we already commented on, facets related to tourism,
administration, health, security, etc...
To those facets, if we want to, we can add these two we are seeing.
We go to a specific tourist destination
and we start to observe the tangible and intangible elements.
We all know that in a tourist destination we encounter physical, tangible elements,
such as viewpoints, infrastructure,
certain hikes, and certain things that can be physical
or they can also be non-physical, they can be intangible.
And in that way a tourist destination should have an image,
it should have design services, it can have a logo, for example,
but it can also have elements such as the culture of the destination,
its legends, holidays, traditions taken to the written word, etc.
Imagine the amount of facets we can analyze
joining what we saw before about the tourism sector,
with what we are seeing now about the tourist destination.
At the same time as we are looking at this image
of the multifaceted nature of tourism
we also have to take into account that,
at the same time, destinations compete among themselves.
But they compete slash collaborate.
It's true that tourist destinations... we can see an image here
in which we see a map of Spain where we can see a series of destinations,
in this case 20 destinations.
It is an index issued by Exceltur
and it is an index that compares cities, tourist destinations that are cities,
in their level of tourism competitivity.
Therefore, tourist destinations compete, they compete among themselves.
But also, and we want to emphasize this important lesson,
when we are thinking about how to act, how we are going to act with those facets,
we have to think about collaboration
Destinations compete, but it is also true that they collaborate with each other.
And we will so also observe this now.
As we say for collaborating, nothing is better than goal number 17,
Partnerships for The Goals.
This one, we could say, this SDG 17,
is the king of the SDGs for us,
it's the cherry on top, it's collaboration, alliances,
it means temporary joint ventures,
it means projects by governments and businesses together,
it means collaborative intelligence, it means public-private cooperation,
as we were saying, it's all of this, really.
And his is why at this point of the lesson we pause,
because after seeing all of these facets, we might feel a bit lost.
And really if I do an isolated project, if I work for a tourism organization
and I do a project isolated both in time and in the way I am doing it,
I can run the risk of losing value, the risk of not impacting other elements.
That is why collaboration is fundamental,
why its fundamental for me to be my own business,
to the one investing in tourism, to, whatever company I work in,
think about how I can collaborate with other actors in the tourist destination.
Ok, to conclude we are going to talk about a final thought.
We have been studying the different facets of tourism,
we've said that tourism is multifaceted, linking it with the SDGs,
and linking it with tourism's other facets.
But to conclude we have to see that none of these facets alone,
not technology, nor sustainable development
around any project centered on any type of measuring tool,
can be a match for people centered topics.
Meaning, people will always be at the center of tourism,
people and, specifically, their emotions.
As we know, human beings are emotional beings
who feels a series of things when traveling to a destination.
As an example, and we are all aware of this,
when we visit a destination and enjoy a series of services
we might forget the hotel we stayed in, we might forget the hike we took,
we might even forget the restaurant in which we ate,
but we will never forget how we were treated,
we will never forget how we felt.
That is why this final point is important:
After seeing all of these facet analysis work methods,
this final facet of never forgetting the focus on the person is important.
That is why it is also important
to foster soft skills and capabilities,
to try to foster empathy
so we can design sustainable transformation projects,
but also to make those projects somehow take people's emotions into account.
That experience of tourist customer, which is at the heart of that emotion,
of that tourist that lives every day throughout their trip,
who lives that experience,
is really important to keep in mind.
In a way, and alongside those soft skills,
those skills we always have to be aware of and honing,
we have to also be aware that sensoriality is attached to this,
how the destination is perceived through the senses will also be important.
We have to be aware that when the tourist is living the tourist experience
they are tasting at a restaurant, breathing out in nature,
seeing a landscape.
And we also have to take all of this into account when developing our brand.
And as a final conclusion, we also have to take into account
the excellence we want to apply to our sustainable development projects.
As we have said, people are important.
It is true that we have to be competitive, but we can't forget,
however ambitious we may be, our values and ethics.
With that in mind we can remember the three maxims of Greek culture
when developing a discourse: ethos, pathos, and logos.
That is, we can't forget ethics, our personal brand,
we can't forget pathos, which means passion,
the passion we put into and that is noticed in all our projects,
and we can't forget, lastly but importantly,
logos, which is the logic and the way in which we communicate things
and the way that we produce our project.
Thank you.