Webinar | Choices for Human Rights - How Tourism Businesses Can Influence & Sensitise Their Travellers

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Choices for Human Rights -
How Tourism Businesses Can Influence and Sensitise Their Travellers

Expert input and practice example
12 July 2022, 11:00 am - 12:00 pm CEST

The awareness of sustainable travel is rising - but the question remains how this will contribute to long-term, meaningful development. Tourism players often say customers would have to demand sustainable products more to create more offers. In contrast, customers state that they would request more sustainable products if offered more.
There is still a lack of necessary information and consistent action to turn "want to" into "act for".
It is often unawareness and a lack of sensitisation that lead to the demand for products incompatible with human rights and environmental due diligence. The phenomena of human rights risks and violations in tourism mostly remain invisible to travellers.

Tourism companies are understandably keen to present their products positively and attractively. At the same time, many are confronted with how to communicate supposedly "less pleasant topics" such as human rights and sustainability principles and sensitise their customers without raising a finger.

This webinar will shed light on how tourism stakeholders can influence travellers to choose more sustainable products with relatively simple means. It will help understand communication's relevance to achieving customer understanding and goodwill for one's business principles and highlight how customers can be sensitised in the destination.

Milena S. Nikolova is an expert in applying insights about human behaviour to sustainability, travel and education solutions - Matteo Bierschneider has its own tourism business and is a responsible tourism expert by heart and soul. They will share passionate and practical insights on linking psychology with responses to the travel industry's fundamental opportunities and challenges and how you can communicate and raise awareness of human rights and socially responsible travel among customers before, during and after their travel.

This webinar is targeted at tourism businesses and other stakeholders such as DMCs and is intended to

  • Understand the power of understanding when communicating "supposedly unpleasant" topics with customers.
  • Learn how to use this knowledge to nudge customers into more sustainable product choices.
  • Show concrete measures to sensitise customers to social sustainability before and during travel.

Speaker:

Milena S. Nikolova
Expert in Human Behavior & Travel

Milena’s passion is in using knowledge about human psychology to design solutions that make tourism more sustainable and more profitable. In her work she supports companies and destinations in understanding how human behavior contributes to the challenges they are facing and in employing tactics that account for the realistic ways in which people decide and act.
Milena is the author of the first book on behavioural thinking for the travel industry published by Elsevier in 2020 and the founder of a boutique consultancy supporting businesses and destinations in applying behavior-smart innovations. 

Speaker:

Matteo Bierschneider
Responsible Tourism Expert

A social entrepreneur who co-founded Wise Steps Group with the aspiration to create an integrated approach toward responsible tourism development in Indonesia. Consisting of Wise Steps Foundation (Community-focused), Wise Steps Consulting (destination-focused), and Wise Steps Travel (industry-focused), the vision is to transform the traveller's mind while positively impacting local livelihood. Further, the experience as a trained Travelife Auditor, participant of GSTC’s STTP Course, Elephant Park Auditor, and participant of the Childsafe Movement Training and a Permaculture Design Course helped to shape his understanding of sustainability in tourism.

Moderation:

Katharina Stechl
Program Manager

Katharina works for the multi-stakeholder initiative and non-profit association Roundtable Human Rights in Tourism. After her studies in Tourism Management at the University of Applied Science in Munich, among other jobs, she worked for the “Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit” (GIZ) in India in the field of urban and industrial development. She has profound experience in the areas of international development cooperation and communication/copywriting.

The Roundtable Human Rights in Tourism builds a trusted network of currently 33 tourism stakeholders from six countries. It provides access to expertise, initiates pilot projects and develops learning materials to support the implementation of human rights due diligence in accordance with the UN Guiding Principles within tourism companies, the supply chain and in destinations.