In my last post on sharing your travel secrets, I promised you more news to follow from the world of responsibletravel.com.

And here it is! Hot off the press, Geographical magazine in a joint effort with responsibletravel.com has put together an insightful and thought-provoking special edition looking at the future of tourism.

As Justin Francis, managing director of responsibletravel.com says:

“I approached Geographical magazine earlier this year with the idea of producing dedicated editorial on the sustainable future of travel and tourism. I wanted to start a positive and forward thinking debate around the future of our industry. Geographical’s Publisher Graeme Gourlay and Editor Geordie Torr were inspired to dedicate their entire December 2008 issue to the topic.”

So how will we be travelling in 2020? Will we be travelling more locally, closer-to-home? Will increasing fuel prices have pushed us off the planes?

How about hotels? An eco architect expert talks about the latest innovations to create an environmentally-friendly hotel – even down to your hotel bill. “Didn’t use any heating madam? We’ll take that off your bill!”

responsibletravel.com wants to get your thoughts on where tourism is heading – do you even think it has a future? And if you do, how do you think it can be sustainable?

Read articles from this special ‘future of tourism’ edition and join in the debate about what you think the future of tourism will or should be.

Happy travelling!

Katie

It’s been a while since I shared any news from the world of responsibletravel.com so here goes…

Responsible Tourism Awards 2008

First up, we had a great time on World Responsible Tourism Day (12 Nov) celebrating the winners of our Virgin Holidays Responsible Tourism Awards 2008.

This is the 5th year of the Responsible Tourism Awards and they’ve been getting bigger and better each year – we received nearly 2000 nominations this year and around 500 people crammed into the Awards ceremony room at World Travel Market to see the winners announced.

And the Overall Winner was… drum roll please!… NEW ZEALAND!

New Zealand took away the honours for Overall Winner, as well as scooping Best Destination, as the judges felt the destination had proved to the world ‘that it is possible to develop a national strategy which uses tourism to help make better places to live and to visit.’ (Read more)

To discover all the winners in this year’s Awards, visit www.responsibletourismawards.com or browse through our wonderful magazine for the responsible traveller, r:travel which features all the winners and highly commendeds in depth.

You can even watch a short film on the Responsible Tourism Awards by BBC World News’ fast:track team.

IKnowaGreatPlace.com – new online travel community

My next nugget of news is a rather exclusive one. responsibletravel.com has started a brand new travel community that hasn’t yet launched to the general public but all Green Girls are very welcome!

They’re encouraging visitors to share their top tips and local travel secrets to make it easier for all of us to travel with respect for the local environment and culture while having a fab unique and authentic experience.

Register for the community and start to share your travel secrets, post your travel pics, create a travel diary or even look for a travel companion.

Not forgetting to add me as a friend (!) and check out my favourite place in the world!

And as for my final piece of RT news… well, I think that’s enough for now. You’ll have to come back next week for that one

Take care,

Katie