Category Archives for "Responsible Travel"

It’s a thorny question but an important one. Where are the best ethical travel destinations? And what is ethical tourism? The results are in.

The question of how to save endangered animals is one that cannot wait. Yet unlike many aspects of sustainable tourism, this is a problem with a pleasant solution.

Yes, really.

It’s not the equivalent of yesterday’s soggy, soy-soaked bran, mashed into an unappealing travel package. It’s the best, if not the only, way for us to continue to enjoy travelling and living on this planet. My recent trip to the UNESCO HQ in Paris to talk about sustainable tourism left me with plenty of ideas I want to share with you.

Allow me to explain…

I’m far from the first to string those four words together. Legendary journalist Kate Adie looped them in a line to describe her autobiography; Vivien Leigh sighed them in A Streetcar Named Desire. Writing courses rail against them and editors hang their heads and demand something fresh.

I’ve even…

The Canadian Museum of Human Rights These are the two core questions that emerge through a visit to the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. They bubble up through the purpose-built pathway that coils from the charcoal basement to the glass-lit summit 100 metres above the Red and Assiniboine Rivers. This is the only museum of its kind in […]

Cork. It’s one of those words I love. Short, sweet and to the point, stirring up memories of emerald isles, springy toughness between finger and thumb and wine-flowing evenings with friends. But it’s never been a word that’s settled for long inside my mind. Flitting in and flying away like a whispery breeze on a […]

The sand I’m standing on is soft and bleached, the type that squeaks beneath your soles if you walk too fast.

The Auschwitz camps – I, II and III – starved, tortured and executed over a million people during World War II. Prison camps became concentration camps and then ultimately death camps. History lessons at school, the Red Cross Museum in Geneva, the books of Frankl, Levi & Frank and even the film Schindler’s List have provided enough images to haunt me for a lifetime. Will seeing the place with my own eyes change anything?

The incredible story of the Red Cross, the foundation of the world’s first humanitarian aid organisation and the challenges that face all those who try to make the world a better place.