Historically, western sources have dominated the information tourists get when they (prepare for a) visit to destinations abroad, whether it be through travel guides, travel writers, travellers sections of magazines and newspapers or the travel brochures and fairs of the tourism industry. Nevertheless, there have been attempts to break this dominance, and one of them was initiated by the Retour Foundation, 25 years ago, when it developed the Vakantiespiegel 2000 (Holiday Mirror 2000), one of the first fully web-based information system for travellers.
Until then, most tourist information initiatives that claimed to promote respect for local people, made their own assumptions on what this respect should look like, but failed to check with the local people concerned. Retour’s information system used the opportunities of the internet (then still in its infancy) to create a direct link between local stakeholders and travellers, offering information on tourism, provided directly by local stakeholders.
Supported by donors who believed in the importance of localization, the Vakantiespiegel 2000 was started as a pilot, based on the following core elements:
- Identification of the relevant stakeholders affected by tourism, in destinations at the regional level, and collection of their expectations of tourism in their region and how they would like tourists to behave.
- Collection of information done by local interpreters, not by travelling outsiders. Local NGOs would be capacitated to collect the information following a standardized research methodology. Standardization of the methodology would allow for comparison between regions.
- Direct links between tourists and local stakeholders using the opportunities of the upcoming Internet and information available for everyone, from everywhere, provided there was an internet connection. To allow for more connectivity, accessibility for telephones was integrated into the system.
- Inventory of local tourism enterprises. In that era, quality brands for sustainable tourism mainly promoted niche companies with capacities to connect to international target groups. Small local (informal) companies, owned by local families, without knowledge of western debates on sustainability, often working for local markets, were mostly excluded from these brands. The Holiday Mirror offered those local companies a platform to present themselves.
In January 2000, the Vakantiespiegel 2000 website was launched (in Dutch) at the Dutch Holiday Fair. It presented the stories of communities in 21 destinations across 13 countries. Those stories were collected locally through locally trained intermediaries and presented the opinions and expectations of local stakeholders, varying from local teachers, through environmentalists, women, youth, doctors and municipalities, to entrepreneurs and covering tourism destinations in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ghana, Jordan, India, Indonesia, Laos, Nepal, Vietnam, Peru, Ecuador, the Dutch Carribean, the Netherlands and Czechia. They were later translated in English as the Tourism Voices Originals
The Vakantiespiegel 2000 was received very well and steps to continue and expand the project were prepared. However, the main donors required that the project would be integrated with Natourdata, an IUCN run touristic database with information on nature in a number of tourism destinations. Unfortunately, IUCN did not continue Natourdata, and the cooperation was never realized. As a result, the Holiday Mirror ran out of funding and eventually stopped.
TourismVoices not only picks up where the Tourism Voices Originals (Vakantiespiegel 2000) left off 25 years ago, but aims to use the stories and voices collected in 2000 as a baseline against which we can assess the progress or lack thereof, in the development of sustainable tourism.