How can visitor attractions help make tourism more inclusive?
How can we make tourism more inclusive? Well, your tourism attraction is part of the answer.
Tourism for Inclusive Growth is this year’s World Tourism Day theme.
“World Tourism Day, celebrated each year on 27 September, is the global observance day fostering awareness of tourism’s social, cultural, political and economic value and the contribution that the sector can make towards reaching the Sustainable Development Goals.” – UNWTO
2021’s theme is triggered by the global pandemic, which hit vulnerable and marginalised communities the hardest. As the world starts to travel again and the tourism industry reboots, we have a unique opportunity to make sure that the benefits tourism can bring are more widely felt – that nobody is left behind.
In this case, inclusive tourism isn’t just about accessibility, although that plays an important part. Rather, it’s about highlighting – and actioning – tourism’s potential to drive positive transformations for millions of people around the world. To be a force for good for all.
This year, World Tourism Day is all about the people. For visitor attractions, that means your staff, your supply chain, your visitors and your local communities.
Tourism is a powerful, global force, and your visitor attraction plays a small but vital part in that. Careful management of every part of your visitor attraction can help drive economic growth (for both your VA and the local area), reduce poverty, provide mental and physical health support and make access easier for all communities, all abilities, sizes, ages, religions, genders, ethnicities and social backgrounds.
To help your visitor attraction in the quest for inclusive growth, we’ve compiled 10 actions you can take now and in the future. This list is intended to promote awareness, thoughtfulness and the first few steps on a journey towards a more respectful and equitable tourism industry. There are many other things your visitor attraction can do, too.
10 ways your visitor attraction can encourage inclusive growth
- On 27 September, use the official World Tourism Day communications toolkit to help promote awareness of the benefits tourism can bring to the local area and the world as a whole.
But this isn’t just about one day. Rather, think of today as just the starting line on your journey to making sure your visitor attraction benefits more of your staff, visitors and local community. Here are some longer-term ways to make sure that, as your visitor attraction grows, it brings everyone along for the ride
- Build diversity and inclusion into every aspect of your visitor attraction’s business strategy, from marketing to operational management.
- Bring in diversity, equity, inclusion and sustainability consultants to help you make your attraction as welcoming and beneficial to everyone as it can possibly be – that includes visitors, staff in the workplace and the surrounding communities. There are plenty of consultants out there who specialise in these areas within tourism.
- Does your local area have a twinning scheme? Twinning towns, villages or areas in different countries is a way to promote the development of, among other things, the tourism links between the towns. Reach out to your local council and ask to be put in touch with a similarly sized or oriented visitor attraction in your town’s twin town.
- Read and adhere to VisitBritain’s Top 10 tips on inclusive tourism.
- Examine your supply chain. Are there changes you can make to ensure you’re encouraging greater inclusivity as far as your influence reaches up and down the chain?
- Directly support your local community. Do you offer discounts for local resident? Sponsor local schools, fetes and events? Host days out for vulnerable local people such as visitors with dementia?
- Do you actively recruit people from under-represented groups from the local area? The more team members (at every level) you have who represent the various perspectives of your visitors, the more you will be able to understand your visitors’ varying needs. And the more ‘faces like mine’ your visitors see on a day out at your visitor attraction, the more comfortable they will feel.
- Train your staff in areas such as unconscious bias, supporting visitors with invisible disabilities and gender neutral terms.
- Ask your visitors about how you could improve your offering to better suit their needs. When you ask for feedback, make it clear you are looking to improve inclusion at your VA.
