The Ethics of Traveling
10,744 views |
Christoph Winter |
TEDxPrincetonU
• November 2017
Tourism contributes to 9% of the global GDP and accounts for one in eleven jobs worldwide. It affects the people living in the regions we explore as backpackers, more conventional tourists or exchange students. Travelling also has a significant impact on us as we are facing issues and opportunities we wouldn’t experience at home. Yet, while the United Nations World Tourism Organization is already pushing for a “universal right to tourism”, we rarely engage in the ethics of traveling. We may ask ourselves, whether we should stay in some local guesthouse rather than in a Western hotel chain and whether we should really be celebrating when our bargaining skills finally get us the 50% discount. However, a much more important question seems to be entirely neglected: where we ought to travel to in the first place?