The Tourism Voices project offers a platform to local groups, whether it be local youth, women, indigenous peoples, environmentalists, small entrepreneurs, farmers, municipalities, teachers or other stakeholders, who want to tell their story about the effects of tourism and want to present that story to tourists and the tourism sector.
Through our trainings for local storytellers we empower them to take control over the messaging about their communities and create interesting, authentic and fair information, for tourists and the tourism sector.
We started this project in 2000, by creating “baseline” stories, (the Tourism Voices Originals) in over 20 destinations worldwide. Currently, we are working with local groups to recreate these stories. By comparing stories over time, we will jointly create the inputs to assess the impact of tourism on local sustainability and inclusiveness.
How can you get involved?
* If you are a local storyteller with stories about how tourism affects groups in your community, or if you are interested in collecting these stories, please contact us and we will find a way to work with you and share the stories through our platform.
* If you are a local group in a tourism destination, and you feel affected by tourism (positively, negatively or both) and you want to get your story out, we can find a way to cooperate with you. We offer a Tourism Voices Training to assist you in collecting the relevant information and to convert this into attractive stories for our platform. If you live in a region already covered by the Tourism Voices Originals project, we would like to work with you to update the original stories and assess what has changed (or not). If you live in a region not covered yet, we would like to cooperate with you to add your region to the TourismVoices platform.
* If you are a tourist, interested in taking your responsibility for respecting local communities and creating more impact on sustainability and inclusiveness in the regions you visit, please consider the stories of local people and adapt your behaviour accordingly. If you want to go the extra mile, you can support our platform by contributing to our work through our socials.
* If you are active in the tourism sector or one of its industries, you can use the information as guidelines for your work to build more sustainable and inclusive tourism.
* If you are active in sustainable and inclusive development and you would like to join our platform and/or cooperate with us in projects, we are very open to new partners.
* If you want to support our project as a donor, you can join and contribute to our socials or contribute directly to one of our projects.
If you want to know more about the TourismVoices Project you can check the following links: