Travel has the power to transform communities, lift people out of poverty and give women independence. There were among the important messages coming out of GX India: World Community Tourism Summit which wrapped up in Jaipur on Friday.
Among the special guests at the summit, which is set for Jordan in 2025, were Lonely Planet founder Tony Wheeler, the former Englishman who changed the way we travel when he published his first travel guide with wife Maureen in Melbourne in the 1970s. The couple had left England some several years before hand with just £400 in their pocket.
Wheeler once employed 500 staff and had thousands of freelancers for the ubiquitous guides usually found in the hands of the any traveller from South America to South East Asia up until the recent advent of digital media guides.
Wheeler sold the company behind the Lonely Planet Guides to the BBC in 2007, and has since established The Wheeler Institute in London and The Wheeler Centre in Melbourne,
G Adventures founder Bruce Poon Tip had invited Wheeler to address the summit, told the hundred gathered at the Jaipur Conference Centre said that he had tracked down Wheeler in Sudan.
“I never like to think of a place as dangerous,” Wheeler told Poon Tip who said the guides inspired his own life and travels.
Wheeler said if he added a couple of more weeks to his travels in India, his life’s travels to the continent would amount to a total of a year spent in India.
As for the touchy subject of overtourism, Wheeler said tourism has “huge benefits” and could positively impact communities.
Lonely Planet founder Tony Wheeler with Bruce Poon Tip on stage at Rajasthan International Centre.
G Adventures has partnered with Planeterra, a world leader in Community Tourism with a growing network of partners around the world, to ensure economic opportunities are created, places are protected, and cultures are celebrated through travel.
Among those benefitting by G Adventures India showcase are Women with Wheels, a transport service operated and driven by women in Delhi, Pink City Rickshaw, another female operated transport service out of Jaipur, Sheroes cafes which employ women who have survived acid attacks by husbands or family, and the Salaam Baalak tours run by guides who have been rescued from the streets as children.
The other speakers also included Jaideep Bansal, CEO of Global Himalayan Expedition, Aayusha Prasai, CEO of Community Homestay Network, plus US journalist and writer Elizabeth Becker.
Several hundred G Adventures’ suppliers, travellers, changemakers, creators and influencers, plus media, attended the one-day conference in Jaipur after being introduced to the community tourism offerings around India that feature on G Adventures itineraries.
The idea is to choose an operator to have a positive impact on the destination travelled.
The previous day, the audience had attended a pop-up marketplace at Anoothi, that include numerous small businesses and operators who had benefited from community tourism, particularly women.
Anoothi trains women in skills that are simple and traditional, such as textile products that is ethically made with environment consciousness.
“Tourism can be a force for good,” Poon Tip said on Friday, which also happened to be World Tourism Day.
After spending five days in India, Travel Weekly will be featuring more stories about the positive impact that travel in the coming weeks.
Feature image: G Adventures’ Bruce Poon Tip announces that Jordan will be the location for GX 2025.
The writer travelled to India as a guest of G Adventures.
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