Transmodern Tourism Connecting the World?

UHPA CONFERENCE “Sustainability for
Competitiveness in Tourism“
Zagreb, 22-23 November, 2012.
Can transmodern tourism help
change the world?
Dr. Sc. Irena Ateljevic
Scientific Associate, Institute for Tourism, Croatia
Visiting Professor, Wageningen University, The Netherlands

Years
Available hectares of land per capita
Sustaining the
Environment
Increase of Population
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDlb
9vfgI
Source: Faostat 2006

Sustaining our Well Being & Health
Plastic Production
European Commission, DG ENV, 2010

Sustaining our
livelihoods

GLOBAL DISEASE:
CORRUPTION AND GREED

Sustaining our Well Being &
Health
Poverty and Inequalities Unhappiness Obesity
Consumerism

Sustaining our Well Being & Health
Consumption from 1991 to 2001:
- 3 times higher in UK
- 4 times higher in USA
THE OBSERVER, UK
World Health Organization,
2002

Sustaining our Well Being &
Health

FOOD AND POVERTY
The poorest 40% of the world’s
population accounts for 5% of
global income. The richest 20%
accounts for three-quarters of
world income.
1 in 5 of the world’s population
(800mn) go hungry every day
(World Development Bank)

WHAT DO WE EAT?

Sustaining our Well Being & Health
Income does not increase happiness (USA statistics)
Layard, R. (2005) Happiness: Lessons From a New Science, New York and London: Penguin

Scatter plot of happy life years
vs. GDP per capita, by country
NEF, 2009. Happy Planet Index

STRESS! BURN OUTS! RAT RACE!
• TIME POVERTY
• Professionals
having 50-60hrs
working wk
• Working
Americans:
2 wks vacation per
year

OUR YOUTH
What kind of world you are
leaving to us?
We reject the rat race of our
parents!
We want meaningful jobs
and lives!
We want to be inspired!
We travel for our education!

POSTMODERN pessimistic views
• Warning to humanity
by over 1600 scientists
(1992) – we are on the
edge
• Humanity is in danger
of a collective death
(e.g. Brown, 2006;
Rooney, Hearney and
Ninan, 2005)

Questions of SUSTAINABILITY
appearing too late and NOT really
working…..
Change can’t & won’t come from the top

The significant problems we have -
cannot be solved at the same level of
thinking with which - we have
created them.
Albert Einstein
WE HAVE TO QUESTION OUR MIND-SETS!!

18
BUT WHERE DO THEY COME
FROM?

Isaac Newton, Philosophiæ
Naturalis Principia
Mathematica (1687)
MECHANICAL VIEW OF THE
WORLD
Sir Francis Bacon,
Historia Naturalis et Experimentalis (1623)
SCIENTIFIC METHOD
Man must ‘torture nature’s secrets
from her to bring about a more
rational order’.

MODERN UNCARING ECONOMICS
AND MARKET ECONOMY
Adam Smith (1776 )and his notion of ‘INVISIBLE HAND’
and ‘SELF INTERESTED INDIVIDUALS’
‘It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or
the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to
their own interest.’.

Industrial revolution
18 th century – major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation,
and technology

Industrial Tourism Followed!!
Grew Up In the Age of the Automobile &
Mass Everything
It borrowed its operating model from manufacturing

Based on Assembly Lines,
Specialisation & Hierarchies
Focus: efficiency & productivity - producing more for less

Standardization, Order, Planning
Economies of Scale - consolidation, vertical
integration

Sameness
Airports
Resorts
Shopping malls
Fast food outlets
Wineries

Based on a mindset of boxes and lines

The Hotel Box

In summary, this is a box that....
Productizes
Homogenizes
Standardizes
Commoditizes

• The key question
here is:
Can we/you get
out of the box?

NEW SCIENCE
Psychology, evolutionary biology, geo-physiology
quantum physics….
WE ARE NOT
SELF-INTERESTED
INDIVIDUALS AFTER ALL!

The new planetary vision – THE
WEB OF LIFE
• We are all connected into one system which makes us all
interdependent, vulnerable and responsible for the Earth
as the indivisible community
• James Lovelock and his Gaia thesis:
• Earth is one single organism!

GLOBAL MIND CHANGE?
• “We are living through one of the most
fundamental shifts in history: a change in the
actual belief structure of Western Society. No
economics, political or military power can
compare with the power of a change of mind. By
deliberately changing their images of reality,
people are changing the world.”
(1998) Global Mind Change: Promise of the 21 st
century.
Willis HARMAN, Founder of the “World Business Academy”
and a key player behind Silicon Valley)

Transmodernity
• A new paradigm shift
moving us slowly out
of postmodernity?
• A genuine
breakthrough
towards
sustainability?

Transmodernity – a new
renaissance?
• Critical economics, management, cultural studies,
sociology, social anthropology and psychology,
political science, ethnic and racial studies; subaltern
studies…
• GLOBAL CONSCIOUSNESS CHANGE - no single
unifying name yet
• saturation with excessive materialism and the
search for the meaning of life and the need for a
new paradigm (new worldview and values)

Caring Economics

Can meet needs at all levels
• Individual: need for material sustenance and
meaningful work and lives
• Organizational: need for competent and creative
people
• Social: need for caring values and policies
• Environmental: need for natural resources
protection and restoration (Eisler, 2007)

‘Silent revolution’
• Research in late 1990s on the “cultural creatives” - 25%
of the US citizens are already in another paradigm, in
another set of values (Ray and Anderson 2000) .
• 66% in this group are women
• EC invited Paul Ray in Brussels to do the same kind of
research in Europe
• quarter of EU citizens are also in the same values
transformation, with the same ratio of women (Ghisi,
2006)
• the rise and fall of 23 civilisations of the world history,
claiming that when a culture shift occurs, usually 5% of
‘creative marginals’ are preparing the shift in silence
(Arnold Toynbee).

Blessed unrest and wiser
earth
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1fiub
mOqH4 -

Popular books evidence
• Deep economy (McKibben,2003)
• Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in
the World Came into Being and Why No One
Saw it Coming (Hawken, 2007)
• Getting a Grip: Clarity, Creativity, and Courage
in a World Gone Mad (Lappe 2007)
• The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth
Community, (Korten 2006)
• The economy from the heart (Tiderman, 2010)

RECESSION AS PUNCTUATION POINT
Don Tapscott
RECESSION AS CHANGE ACCELERATOR

1950s – 1990s 1990s - 2007 After 2008
Source: The Darwinian Gale, The Futures Company 2010
42

New Consumers still want MORE, but they are defining that
differently. Not more shiny trifles and mountains of consumer goods
but, rather, more meaning, more deeply felt connections, more
substance and a greater sense of purpose.
•72% say they are trying to improve the way they
live
•71% are trying to improve who they are as
individuals
•59% worry that society has grown too disconnected
from the natural world
•51% would like to be part of some important cause
•67% believe most people would be better off if they lived
more simply
•69% claim to be smarter shoppers than they were a
few years ago
•64% say that making environmentally friendly
choices makes them feel good about themselves.

Ogilvy and Mather study (2011) 75% of those surveyed
saying they would rather get out of the rat race than climb
the corporate ladder – and instead, 76% said they would
rather spend more time with family than make more money

Conscious

DOING GOOD IS GOOD FOR BUSINESS
•66% of consumers
would prefer to buy
products from companies
that give back to society
•62% would prefer to
work for such companies
•59% would prefer to
invest in such companies
•46% would be willing to
pay extra for products
and services from these
companies
48

SUPPORT VARIES REGIONALLY
Australia
31%
50

Conscious Travellers are
Wired to CARE
“Purpose is the new passion
Participation in the new consumption”
BBMG

• AND WHAT DO WE DO IN TOURISM
RESEARCH AND TOURISM INDUSTRY?
• HOW DO WE SEE ALL THIS?

• We keep following MARKET philosophy and
describing tourism as an INDUSTRY!!
• The concepts of ‘ ‘Special interest’ markets:
• ‘New age’ tourists
• Wine tourists
• Wellness tourists
• Adventure tourists
• Volunteer tourists......

INSTEAD:
OF SEEING THE TRUE POWER OF TRAVEL AND
TOURISM AND LIFT OUR VIEW TO ANOTHER
LEVEL.

• 1) Conscious travellers
indicate the new step in
development of human
global consciousness
• 2) If we all begin to
recognise deeper meanings
of tourism potential,
tourism can become a
leader in the emerging
caring and conscious global
economy (Ateljevic, 2009)

Conscious Travel
• CONSCIOUS TRAVEL – to bring hope,
justice and peace
• Anne Pollock and her DestiCorp
• ‘Visionary of the Year’ in Canada (1999)
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mk168
cmo9ZQ

61
Ecuador: The first
Conscious Travel Destination

CROATIA A WORLD LEADER IN
CONSCIOUS LIVING AND
TRANSMODERN TOURISM OF THE
FUTURE?

Change Can’t and Won’t Come from the Top
Real Change Will Come From Below
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed
citizens can change the world.
Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has
Margaret Mead

NOT REALISTIC!!?? ‘Look at what realists have done
for us. They have led us to war and climate change,
poverty on an unimaginable scale, and wholesale
ecological destruction. Half of humanity goes to bed
hungry because of all the realistic leaders in the
world. I tell people who call me "unrealistic" to show
me what their realism has done. Realism is an
outdated, overplayed and wholly exaggerated
concept’ (Satish Kumar, deep ecology leader)

Contradiction of human beings
• ‘We are in such a hurry to grow up, and
then we long for our lost childhood. We
make ourselves ill earning money, and
then spend all our money on getting well
again. We think so much about future that
we neglect the present, and thus
experience neither the present nor the
future. We live as if we were never going
to die, and die as if we had never lived’
Paulo Coelho, 2005: 185