I spoke with Dr. Norhayati’s business class at the University of Wollongong in Dubai (UOWD) last about destination management and sustainable tourism. Dr. Norhayati designed a series of guest lectures for her capstone business courses where experts in different industries talk about how they’re integrating sustainability in their work. From social entrepreneur, sustainable finance/accounting and fashion, I joined as the sustainable tourism guest lecturer.

(video password: 4xHW32DB)

I love how she’s captured the intersecting and all-encompassing nature of sustainability across the different industries for her students, as that’s something I wish I was exposed to more as a bachelors student.

Because Dr. Norhayati gave me a generous time slot to go over the subject matter (and because her students were already familiar with many of the concepts of sustainability), I had fun organizing the talk to move from the current state of affairs into what I’m trying to do at the GDS-Movement.

I tried to drive home the message that tourism doesn’t have to be this awful thing that happens to beautiful fragile places that displace and exploits locals and their land, but that tourism could be a source of equity and good stewardship if properly managed and monitored.

This is a topic that’s been researched and discussed extensively and exhaustively, but I still approach the idea with awe that instead of feeling guilty or forcefully turning a blind eye on your impact during your travels, perhaps your trips could actually leave a place better than you found it. I love the idea of travellers being welcomed and made to feel at home, and mutual respect and dignity are shown between both locals and visitors. This does happen on occasion, of course, but in my experience, the sad reality tends to skew more towards disrespectful and unaware tourists littering and disturbing disenfranchised locals. It’s an awful feeling to see (particularly in Bali or Thailand) waiters or bus drivers swallow their discontent as they see their jobs through in serving a boisterous group of unaware travellers. Seeing the inequity in Asian destinations and the negative impacts of tourism in my home country of Malaysia is what put me on the path of sustainable tourism in the first place (I may write more about this in another post).

You can watch the talk here. Password 4xHW32DB