In the promotion of intercultural dialogue in today’s globalized world, tourism can be a powerful strategy for fostering mutual acquaintance and respect if it is based on values rather than on consumer-driven services alone.
So WE ARE INAUGURATING THIS FORUM AND THE BLOG TO DEBATE THAT VERY ISSUE, STARTING WITH THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF BUSINNESS MANAGEMENT STYLE.
IL MANIFESTO – INTERNATIONAL PAPERS - INTERNATIONAL DEBATE
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IDENTITY OF PLACE-BUSINESS-CULTURE-INTERCULTURAL DIALOGUE A CHANCE FOR MASS TOURISM TO CHANGE DIRECTION with LIFE BEYOND TOURISM®
BUSINESS, PLACE, IDENTITY
- A business is always rooted in the area in which it conducts its affairs;
- A business can only work in harmony and consistency with the area in which it is located;
- The area’s history, culture and traditional knowledge are a valuable part of a business’s identity;
- That valuable identity must be safeguarded even as it develops and changes over time;
- Sensitizing tourists to respect the identity of their destination means safeguarding the values of that identity as they evolve in a framework of consistency; and this, at a moment in history when the development of international relations tends to prompt the standardization of conduct and practice, thus impoverishing mankind’s overall heritage.
INTERCULTURAL DIALOGUE – COMMITMENT AND INTANGIBLE HERITAGE
Intercultural dialogue in a context of respect for individual identity is a primary requisite for every culture if it is to contribute to shared, peaceful growth with its own typical features and prospects as they develop over time.
- Intercultural dialogue is based also:
. on acquaintence with cultural diversity;
. on the appreciation and enhancement of traditional knowledge;
thus on respect for a place’s identity and traditions.
- Man’s commitment to fostering opportunities for intercultural dialogue is considered by the Centro Sudi e Ricerche – Fondazione RDB to be part and parcel of our Intangible World Heritage.
LIFE BEYOND TOURISM ® A STRATEGY FOR INTERCULTURAL DIALOGUE
- The Life Beyond Tourism Theory devised by the Fondazione Romualdo Del Bianco is designed to contribute to intercultural dialogue;
- This theory considers that tourism, now so widely praticed throughout the world, can become an important strategy for promoting familiarity with ‘knowledge’, and thus with intercultural dialogue;
this, because tourism is a widespread and underutilized asset:
. it is an asset because
. its raw material is the time of those who have opted to invest their time and money in traveling;
. it creates opportunities for meeting people, makes people more amenable to communicating and
fosters the will to listen, to pay attention and to learn, thus fueling a better apprection of a
destination’s identity as it has evolved and continues to evolve over time;
. it is widespread because, at this juncture, tourism is a global consumer phenomenon;
. it is underutilized because it is seen as a purely economic factor, rather than as an economic activity which
also provides an opportunity for genuine mutual acquaintance and familiarity with the customs and practices
of others.
THE VALUE OF THE ACTIVITIES CONDUCTED BY THOSE OPERATING IN THE TOURIST BUSINESS AND BY TOURISTS THEMSELVES IN THE INTERCULTURAL DIALOGUE PROCESS
- Intercultural dialogue can offer a new investment and new business opportunity to the tourist industry functioning in peacetime;
- On their travels, tourists have an enormous heritage available to them yet one which is not used to best advantage: that heritage is their time, the time they have invested in their travels, thus time for listening, for seeing, for learning and for reflecting;
- The traveler’s new role allows him or her to be something more than just a person on the receiving end of consumer services; he or she can become active players using their travels to spread awareness of the importance of dialogue and commitment, thus creating opportunities for dialogue to promote familiarity with, and respect for, the values of others;
- Those working in the tourist business (tour operators, hoteliers, restauranteurs and providers of general tourist-related services) take on a distinctly noble role in their new guise as players who can help to dissseminate true knowledge of place, thus forging the tourist’s attention and respect for his or her destination while fostering dialogue among tourists hailing from different cultural backgrounds;
- Everyone working in the business, at whatever level and with whatever function or task, must feel involved in this development of the industry in the crucial context of knowledge and intercultural dialogue;
- Anyone working in the tourist industry, promoting familiarity with the tourist’s destination and intercultural dialogue, is playing a noble role in the management of cultural heritage;
- The offer of products designed to boost intercultural dialogue, such as the cultural initiatives, books and films designed for Life Beyond Tourism, becomes part and parcel of the management of cultural heritage.
Thus we are looking at the opportunity for a crucial change of course: those working in the industry and those tourists who are currently helping to standardize the world and threatening the conservation of a place’s heritage and spirit can, through the theory of Life Beyond Tourism, contribute to the safeguarding, conservation and dissemination of a destination’s heritage and spirit, becoming leading players in fostering intercultural dialogue and the appreciation of cultural diversity and traditional knowledge at the global level.
THE CITY AS A WORKSHOP FOR PROMOTING INTERCULTURAL DIALOGUE
- Cities, particularly cities on the UNESCO World Heritage list, can become “workshops of knowledge”, thus workshops for developing a sense of respect and, consequently, workshops for promoting intercultural dialogue: a new and noble mission for World Heritage cities, indeed for every city that proves capable of seizing on the importance of intercultural dialogue as a crucial resource for our contemporary and future world, to consolidate the formation of the individual in the development of his or her culture and of his or her preparation for intercultural relations.
THE WORLD OF CULTURE CAN HELP TOURISTS UPGRADE TO THE RANK OF TRUE TRAVELERS
- It is necessary to bring the world of culture closer to that of tourism, including mass tourism, in fact including even “hit-and-run” tourism, in order to upgrade the tourist to the rank of a disseminator of knowledge and to sensitize him or her to the value of respect, also using new technologies and local events targeting a broader audience.
(UpdatEd to 28 January 2009)
forumlifebeyondtourism
Life Beyond Tourism® is an innovative and thoroughly relevant movement in today’s highly globalized environment. In a world where technology, the markets and people’s individual horizons have transcended geographic barriers, not every area of the economy is embracing and developing the globalization trend as an opportunity to expand knowledge and dialogue in an attempt to foster mutual respect and understanding. On the contrary, we are looking at a standardization of products and styles, abject consumerism, the loss of local identity and a wilting of relations between countries, cultures and individuals.
Currently the most widespread kind of tourism, so-called mass tourism, has become part and parcel, indeed one of the primary causes, of this cultural and intellectual impoverishment. Life Beyond Tourism, on the other hand, is tourism seen as a journey, as travel, as a unique source of personal enrichment and as a major opportunity for cultural dialogue.
In today’s world, intercultural dialogue, encounters, communication, awareness of cultural diversity, understanding and respect are all crucial requirements if each culture is to be make its contribution to our shared cultural and economic growth in a framework of peace.
In this context, Life Beyond Tourism® – devised and promoted by the Fondazione Romualdo Del Bianco® – considers every traveler to be not just someone who uses consumer services but first and foremost a guest, with his or her own unique cultural heritage: a future disseminator of the spirit of the destination visited and a full fledged player in worldwide intercultural dialogue. In other words, Life Beyond Tourism® seeks to promote a tourism based on values, not just on consumer-driven services.
Local cultural heritage in this context becomes part and parcel of the cultural heritage of mankind.
Thus Life Beyond Tourism® offers businesses, institutions and individuals the chance to contribute to intercultural dialogue by fostering awareness of cultural diversity and traditional knowledge, which means respect, and by promoting a new way of imagining and practicing tourism. The trademark is a flower with five petals designed to promote the spread of values and experience “beyond tourism“: encounters, communication, knowledge, conservation and the economy.
VIVAHOTELS®: AN INITIAL, EXPERIMENTAL APPLICATION OF THE THEORY IN FLORENCE, WHICH BEGAN ON 15 MARCH 2008
The Florence VivaHotels company’s VivaFirenze project is the first concrete, positive response to Life Beyond Tourism® to date.
As Dr. Maurizio Bossi, director of the Florence-based Center for Romantic Studies in the Gabinetto Scientifico Letterario G.P. Vieusseux, put it, Florence “is unquestionably a city that is an incomparable symbol of Western civilization and of cultural synthesis”, but for a long time now it has also been “a city that is in a daze, that finds it difficult to come up with common initiatives capable of expressing the wealth of talent, energy and prospects which it undoubtedly does have, and in considerable quantities at that”.
So Florence can claim to be something of an international model relevant to today’s world.
“The solution – continues Bossi – doesn’t lie in sterile buck-passing between the city government and the man in the street; it lies in the ability to forge new opportunities for boosting the area’s culture, traditions, activities and potential.”
Indeed it is no mere coincidence that tourist-related businesses and organizations are important channels for the dissemination and implementation of Life Beyond Tourism® , because they are the first crucial, welcoming link between the traveler and his or her destination. This, because a business’s activities and strategy are played out in close association with the area hosting it, and that same area is also responsible for the business’s birth and for its development over time.
A company such as VIVAHOTELS®, which has been working in the spirit of Life Beyond Tourism® for years, is therefore pledged to working in a manner that is both consistent and harmonious with its local area, helping to disseminate and to enhance the identity both of the area and of its people, and making every effort to create opportunities for intercultural dialogue not only between visitors and citizens, but also among visitors hailing from different countries.
The year that has just begun is international creativity year; and because worldwide stagnation and the global economic downturn must prompt us to firmly face the challenge that this year — 2009, the year of creativity and of innovation — offers us, and to help foster a change in the trend at the international level, making an active contribution with Life Beyond Tourism® to fostering intercultural dialogue and knowledge.
Comment by MB — January 28, 2009 @ 12:12 pm