This week has seen the launch of LocalTravelMovement.com. It’s aim is to bring together supporters of local travel and it will act as a platform for the debate that is already going on around the web. I was involved in some of the early discussions and it got me thinking about trying to define ‘local travel’.
Some months ago, I received an email from PR rep for a hotel in Buenos Aires. I can’t remember the exact wording but it was along the lines of – “I’ve seen your blog and I have the perfect ‘going local’ hotel for you”.
“Uh oh, here we go,” I couldn’t help thinking. Did this mean ‘local travel’ was now a buzz phrase? Were all hotels going to be jumping on bandwagon, just like every hotel that recycles now calls itself an eco lodge?
Continue reading this article on the Going Local blog
Interesting post Vicky, and thank you for letting us share it here! I hope via this movement we can all help define “Local Travel” a bit more.
Posted by Bart van Poll | March 13, 2010, 4:34 amSadly the term “eco” is now a bad word, just like “organic” began to be 10 years ago. As the Exec Dir of a Panamanian NGO that promotes sustainable tourism, we are working to develop and implement highly in-depth, internationally recognized standards by which our hotels will be evaluated before stamping them with “certified eco.” Perhaps this way we can avoid the false marketing problem of the “local-eco-organic-mega lodge.” “Lodge” – ha ha – that’s another good one!
Posted by Micaela | March 17, 2010, 3:28 pmPerhaps, a local traveller can be best described as someone who travels with the purpose of meeting locals and a genuine interest to get to know them. Defining local travel by the type of accommodation is to shallow, in my opinion. After all, you are always staying somewhere – locally. Apart from that, even in couchsurfing networks guests (especially if they travel in pairs or groups) tend to stick together and don’t necessarily learn from the local community. Leaving alone the fact that many – if not the majority – of couchsurfing members actually are no locals at all but people drawn to the place they live in for purposes of study or work. In Barcelona, for example, the most active couchsurfers use to be from Argentina and other South American countries.
Posted by Florian | April 7, 2010, 11:22 am@Florian That is a very valid point indeed. I’m in Kuala Lumpur at the moment, and as a Couchsurfer I find it difficult to find native Malaysian locals to hang out with.
On the other hand, I think people from abroad who have lived in a place for a long time are also “local”. But in a place with a strong divide between expat and local as in Kuala Lumpur, it’s frustrating.
Posted by Bart van Poll | April 8, 2010, 3:31 am