The ethics of ourism critical and applied perspectives

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The Ethics of Tourism

There are increasingly strident calls from many sectors of society for the tourism industry,
the world’s largest industry, to adopt a more ethical approach to the way it does business.
In particular there has been an emphasis placed on the need for a more ethical approach to
the way the tourism industry interacts with consumers, the environment, with indigenous
peoples, those in poverty, and those in destinations suffering human rights abuses.
This book introduces students to the important topic of tourism ethics and illustrates
how ethical principles and theory can be applied to address contemporary tourism industry
issues. A critical role of the book is to highlight the ethical challenges in the tourism industry and to situate tourism ethics within wider contemporary discussions of ethics in general. Integrating theory and practice the book analyses a broad range of topical and
relevant tourism ethical issues from the urgent ‘big-picture’ problems facing the industry
as a whole (e.g. air travel and global warming) to more micro-scale everyday issues that
may face individual tourism operators or, indeed, individual tourists. The book applies
relevant ethical frameworks to each issue, addressing a range of ethical approaches to
provide the reader with a firm grounding of applied ethics, from first principles.
International case studies with reflective questions at the end are integrated throughout to
provide readers with valuable insight into real world ethical dilemmas, encouraging critical analysis of tourism ethical issues as well as ethically determined decisions. Discussion
questions and annotated further reading are included to aid students’ understanding.
The Ethics of Tourism: Critical and Applied Perspectives is essential reading for all
Tourism students globally.
Brent Lovelock is an Associate Professor in the Department of Tourism at the University
of Otago, New Zealand.
Kirsten M. Lovelock is a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Preventive and
Social Medicine, University of Otago, New Zealand.

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The Ethics of Tourism
Critical and applied perspectives

Brent Lovelock and
Kirsten M. Lovelock

-

Routledge
Taylor & Francis G roup

L O N D O N A N D N EW YO RK


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First published 2013
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2013 Brent Lovelock and Kirsten M. Lovelock
The right of Brent Lovelock and Kirsten M. Lovelock to be identified as authors of
this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to
infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-0-415-57557-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-57558-4 (pbk)
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This book is dedicated to our children Millie, Oscar and Levi


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Contents

List of figures
List of tables
List of case studies
List of contributors
Acknowledgements
1 Introduction

ix
xi
xii
xiii
xv
1

2 Tourism: ethical concepts and principles

17

3 Mobility, borders and security

39

4 Human rights

63

5 Medical tourism

95

6 Sex tourism

121

7 Tourism and indigenous peoples

144

8 Tourism and disability

169

9 Nature-based tourism

198

10 Animals and tourism

225

11 Climate change

253

12 Hospitality and marketing ethics

278

viii

CONTENTS

13 Labour

306

14 Codes of ethics

329

15 Conclusion: ethical futures?

353

Index

365


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Figures

1.1 Ethical tourism model
1.2 Photo: Tourists looking at rubble of a building in Christchurch,
New Zealand, from the February 2011 earthquake in which 185 people
died. Is ‘disaster tourism’ ethical?

2.1 Cartoon: Ethics within reason
2.2 Continuum of Justice Tourism
3.1 Photo: UK Border
3.2 Photo: Sign at UK border
3.3 Photo: US–Mexico border
3.4 Photo: LAX customer satisfaction survey device
4.1 Photo: Water is a human rights issue
4.2 Travel agents’ stakeholders and ethical relationships
4.3 Photo: Can tourism contribute to political change and the toppling
of totalitarian regimes?
4.4 Modelling ethical travel patterns: ‘extreme’ scenario
4.5 A conceptual framework for the interrelationship of peace, conflict
and tourism
5.1 Cartoon: Medical tourism
5.2 Photo: Kidney trade – men bearing their scars
5.3 Decision-making process of medical tourist
5.4 Photo: Dentist, border town, Mexico
6.1 Photo: Billboard advocating awareness of sexually transmitted
diseases in Africa
6.2 Photo: Sex menu in a hotel in Myanmar catering to cross-border Chinese
sex tourists
7.1 Framework for indigenous tourism
7.2 Photo: Mesa Verde, Colorado
7.3 Photo: Indigenous peoples’ band, entertaining tourists in China
7.4 Photo: Sami tent, Norway
7.5 Photo: ‘Nice Indians’ sign in Arizona
7.6 Cartoon: Slum tourism

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6

10
18
31
43
44
46
50
71
73
77
81
83
98
111
112
113
123
127
146
147
152
154
156
163


x

FIGURES

8.1
8.2
8.3
8.4
8.5
9.1
9.2
9.3
10.1
10.2
10.3
10.4
10.5
10.6
10.7
11.1
11.2
11.3
12.1
12.2
12.3
12.4
12.5
13.1
13.2
13.3
13.4
14.1

14.2
15.1

Photo: Do airlines have a moral requirement to meet the needs of PWD?
Social and scientific formulations of disability
A continuum of impacts of disability on holidaymaking
Photo: New developments in access now allow wheelchair users to
experience heritage sites, such as the Colosseum, Rome
Photo: Large-scale motorised access to wilderness
Photo: Often the negative impacts of tourism on nature are unintentional
Spheres of moral considerability
Photo: Bailong Elevator, Wulingyuan World Heritage Area, China
Photo: Animals, both wild and in captivity, are a popular visitor attraction
Wildlife-based tourism
Human priorities and actions in recreational interactions with fish
Impacts of tourism on wildlife
Photo: Inuit man preparing skin from a polar bear shot by a tourist
Photo: Tourists riding elephants, Nepal
Photo: Bear in a zoo, Norway – education or entertainment?
Photo: Air travel brings benefits to developing world destinations
Photo: Is this a view we should feel guilty about?
Photo: Are there more ethical modes of travel, such as this
TGV in Switzerland?
Photo: A beautiful beach … but where is it?
Ethical position matrix
Antecedents, impacts and outcomes of unethical practices
General theory of marketing ethics
The ISCT decision process
Photo: Disneyland
Photo: Cruise ship – tourists and casualised workers on board

Photo: Invisible workers. Service provision in tourism:
paid reproductive labourers
Core and periphery in the tourism labour market
Photo: Tourists feeding dolphins at Tin Can Bay, Queensland, Australia
Photo: Tourist codes of conduct may help prevent unwanted intrusions
within cultural tourism settings such as this village in Myanmar
Carroll’s pyramid conception of corporate social responsibility

178
182
182
187
190
203
208
212
226
227
228
229
236
242
245
257
263
266
285
287
290
292

296
310
315
319
320
339
342
361


Tables

2.1
4.1
4.2
7.1
10.1
12.1

Schumann’s Moral Principles Framework
Calls for travel boycotts
Residents displaced by Olympic Games
Pro-poor tourism principles
Ethical issues and benefits of tourist–animal interactions
Categories of unethical practice in the Chinese inbound market

33
75
86
160

230
289


Case studies

Tourism, visas and the geopolitics of mobility: ‘We are all terror
suspects now’ – C. Michael Hall
Fiji ‘Before’ and ‘After’ the coup
Tourism Boycotts: The Case of Myanmar – Joan C. Henderson
Medical tourist flows and uneven regional healthcare capacity – John Connell
An Act of Omission, Resourcing and Will: Tourism, Disability
and Access within the Public Policy Sphere – Simon Darcy
Hospitality and access
Issues of environmental ethics and tourism’s use of wilderness
and nature – Andrew Holden
Inuit Perspectives on the Ethics of Polar Bear Conservation Hunting in
Nunavut Territory, Canada – Martha Dowsley
Climate change and tourism development – Stefan Gössling
Culture and ethics in the supply chain
Queenstown and transient workers: A match made in heaven? – Tara Duncan
Codes of tourist conduct – Ngadha, Indonesia
Fair Trade Tourism – Karla Boluk

53
73
77
103
172
188

204
236
258
288
321
342
359


Contributors

Karla Boluk is a Lecturer in the Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management at
the University of Ulster, Northern Ireland. Karla’s current research interests include tourism as a potential vehicle to eradicate poverty, Fair Trade Tourism, rural development,
community development/empowerment and social entrepreneurship.
John Connell is Professor of Geography at the University of Sydney. He works mainly
on migration and development in the Pacific and has published various books on the
migration of health workers.
Simon Darcy is an Associate Professor at the UTS Business School and Director of the
Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Research Centre at the University of Technology, Sydney.
He is an interdisciplinary researcher with expertise in developing inclusive organisational
approaches to diversity groups. Since incurring a spinal injury in 1983 Simon is a power
wheelchair user and passionately believes in the rights of all people to fully participate in
all aspects of community life.
Martha Dowsley is an Associate Professor at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay,
Ontario, Canada. She is cross-appointed in the departments of Anthropology and
Geography. Her research focuses on cultural understandings of natural resources.
Tara Duncan is a Lecturer in the Department of Tourism at the University of Otago,
New Zealand. Her background in social and cultural geography informs her current
research interests in lifestyle mobilities, young budget travel (backpacking, gap years and
the Overseas Experience (OE)) and everyday spaces and practices of tourism, hospitality

and leisure.
Stefan Gössling is a Professor at the Department of Service Management, Lund University,
and the School of Business and Economics at Linnaeus University, Kalmar, both Sweden.
He is also the research co-ordinator at the Research Centre for Sustainable Tourism,
Sogndal, Norway.
C. Michael Hall is a Professor in the Department of Management, University of
Canterbury, New Zealand; Docent, Department of Geography, University of Oulu,
Finland, and a Visiting Professor at the University of Eastern Finland, Savonlinna, and
Linneaus University, Kalmar, Sweden.


xiv

CONTRIBUTORS

Joan C. Henderson is an Associate Professor at Nanyang Business School in Singapore.
Prior to this, she lectured in tourism in the United Kingdom after periods of employment
in the public and private tourism sectors.
Andrew Holden is Professor of Environment and Tourism and also the Director for the
Centre for Research into the Environment and Sustainable Tourism Development
(CREST) at the University of Bedfordshire, England. His research focuses on the interaction between human behaviour and the natural environment within the context of tourism.
Specific areas of research interest include environmental ethics, poverty and sustainable
development.


Acknowledgements

A number of friends, colleagues and family members have provided support and have
contributed to this book. We would like to thank all of our case study contributors for their
case studies and enthusiastic support throughout the preparation of the manuscript. Thank

you to: C. Michael Hall, Joan Henderson, John Connell, Simon Darcy, Andrew Holden,
Martha Dowsley, Stefan Gössling, Tara Duncan and Karla Boluk. A big thanks to the
commissioning editor Emma Travis for her patience and forbearance and to Carol Barber
for her understanding and support throughout the process. Thank you also to Adam
Doering for stirling assistance with the literature early on in the project, and to Diana Evans
for dealing with our formatting woes and working so quickly to rectify them. Thank you
also to Jo O’Brien for help in the initial set-up stages. Helen Dunn for final checks, and
Trudie Walters for indexing. Brent would also like to thank his students for wittingly and
at times unwittingly directing him toward this pathway. Thanks also to the various publishers who have allowed us to reproduce tables and figures and to draw on pivotal work
in this field. Figure 8.2 reprinted with permission of the Publisher from Critical Disability
Theory, by Dianne Pothier and Richard Devlin ©University of British Columbia Press
2005. All rights reserved by the Publisher. Figure 12.5 reprinted with permission from
Journal of Marketing, published by the American Marketing Association, Thomas
W. Dunfee, N. Craig Smith and William T. Ross, Jr., Social Contracts and Marketing
Ethics Vol. 63, No. 3 (Jul., 1999), pp. 14–32. For photographs we would like to thank: Pin
Ng, Martha Dowsley, Simon Darcy, C. Michael Hall, Andrea Farminer, Asim Tanveer and
permissions from various unknown photographers. Thank you to David Fennell,
C. Michael Hall, Alan Lew, Mick Smith and Rosaleen Duffy, Stroma Cole and Nigel
Morgan, and Andrew Holden for inspiration and the wide range of scholars who have
provided the invaluable research which informs and makes a book like this possible.
Thanks also to colleagues at the University of Otago – in the Department of Tourism,
David McBride in the Department of Preventive and Social Medicine, and the librarians
at the Central Library. For musical inspiration: Astro Children, Lucinda Williams, David
Kilgour, The Clean, Gillian Welch, Gomez and The Civil Wars. A number of friends and
family have provided encouragement and fun evenings that allowed us to forget the book:
thank you to Tina McKay, Bronwen McNoe, Hazel Tucker, Anna and Andy Thompson,


xvi

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Romola McKay, Shaun Scott and Rae Hickey, Teresa La Rooy and TEU colleagues,
Nicky Page and Tex Houston, Diana Saxton and James Ballard (for Naseby retreats),
James Windle, Joel and Trudy Tyndall, Kathy Ferguson, Jo Preston and Marj Wright
for sustenance. Finally, thanks to our children Millie, Oscar and Levi. And also, to
our extended family: Fergie, Binky (for computer company), Oaky, Pecky, Betty and
Hetty.


1

Introduction

‘On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.’
George Orwella
‘A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world.’
Albert Camusb
‘To educate a person in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace in society.’
Theodore Rooseveltc
‘Ethics is a skill.’
Marianne Jenningsd

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After reading this chapter you will be able to:
• Understand the rationale for an ‘ethics’ focus on tourism.
• Define the term ‘ethical tourism’.
• Understand the relationship between ethical tourism and sustainable
tourism.
• Discuss the role of ethical consumption in ethical tourism.

1.1 INTRODUCTION
As recently as five years ago, one would seldom have heard the words ‘ethics’ and ‘tourism’ used together in a sentence. As recently as 10 years ago, one would seldom have
heard the words ‘business’ and ‘ethics’ together – at least outside of the specific world of
moral philosophy and the field of business ethics research. The Enron, WorldCom and
other corporate scandals of the first decade of the twenty-first century have changed all
this. The issues raised and lessons learned from these and numerous other business outrages have permeated into many aspects of our lives – to influence not only our financial
concerns but also our leisure activities.


2

INTRODUCTION

Now, some researchers and industry practitioners are starting to think, talk and write
about the ethics of tourism, or, rather, about the ‘ethical deficit’ (Moufakkir 2012)
or ‘immense void’ in ethics in the tourism field (Fennell 2006). Why this recent interest
in ethics? What has changed about tourism? Well, of course tourism as an industry
has grown, but this growth has been steady, to the point now where total global arrivals
are estimated to be in the vicinity of 5 billion, with about 1 billion of these being international arrivals.1 We acknowledge that tourism is a large industry and perhaps even the
world’s largest, but it is not on these grounds alone that there is a need for a text on tourism
ethics. Billions of people participate in comparable leisure activities: they go to the
movies, play sport, go shopping – yet there is no equivalent call for these to be placed
under the same ‘ethics-scope’. So what is it about tourism that would demand such consideration?
Tourism is a social practice or phenomenon that reaches into many people’s lives, into communities, economies, and takes place across an incredibly diverse range of settings. It is
almost ubiquitous. Despite early and optimistic hopes that tourism would be the ‘smokeless’ industry that could benefit communities around the world, contributing to social and
economic wellbeing, it is clearly acknowledged now that tourism is linked to a range of
social, economic and environmental impacts or ‘tourism-related changes’ as Hall and Lew
(2009) describe them. These have been clearly debated and discussed in the tourism literature and by the industry for four or more decades (for a detailed coverage of tourism
impacts we recommend Hall and Lew (2009) Understanding and Managing Tourism

Impacts). Indeed, managing the impacts of tourism continues to remain a strong focus
for researchers, planners and practitioners in the field today. Broadly, tourism impacts may
be categorised as social–cultural, economic or environmental; however, there may be
considerable overlap between these categories.
Economic impacts encompass the monetary benefits and costs that result from the development
and use of tourism facilities and services. Environmental impacts include alterations to the natural
environment, including air, water, soils, vegetation and wildlife, as well as changes to the built
environment.
(Wall and Wright 1977 in Wall and Mathieson 2006: 38)

Social and cultural impacts of tourism include the way that tourism may ‘effect changes
in collective and individual value systems, behaviour patterns, community structures, lifestyle and the quality of life’ (Hall and Lew 2009: 57). As Higgins-Desbiolles (2006) notes,
tourism is ‘more than an industry’, it is a social force.
There are a number of defining characteristics of tourism as a social and physical phenomenon that, together with the sheer scale and scope of the tourism industry, require us to
consider alternative approaches to ‘the tourism question’:
• Tourism involves (often complex) social, cultural, economic and ecological interactions.
• These interactions take place en route to and in a ‘destination’ which is also someone’s
‘place’ (house, village, town, city, nation, mountain, jungle, beach, backyard).
• The visitor (and industry providers) may value this ‘place’ and their ‘host’ less than
they do their own place and community.


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INTRODUCTION

• These interactions often involve power differentials – often with the visitor and tourism
industry expressing power in a number of ways over the host.
• These interactions may result in harms or benefits – to the host (and possibly the visitor
too), to their communities, their economies and their ecologies.
• Tourists (and other stakeholders in the tourism ‘exchange’) are inherently selfish – each

seeking to maximise their personal (or group or corporate) value.
Increasingly since the 1970s, the degree of concern about the scope and scale of tourism
impacts has led to the development and promotion of approaches through which we
can minimise tourism’s negative impacts while still allowing the benefits of tourism
to flow to communities. At the forefront of such approaches has been sustainable tourism
development. But can sustainable approaches address ethical concerns and ensure ethical
practice? Modelled on sustainable development, which emerged from the work of
the World Commission for the Environment and Development (1987) (the ‘Brundtland
Report’ (see United Nations 2012)), sustainable tourism development involves taking
‘full account of its current and future economic, social and environmental impacts,
addressing the needs of visitors, the industry, the environment and host communities’
(UNWTO 2012a). Sustainable tourism has been the guiding principle of the tourism industry since the late 1980s. However, critics point to the ongoing impacts of tourism, and
argue that sustainable tourism is simply rhetoric, adopted by destination planners and
industry practitioners to appease the travelling public, host communities and environmentalists. Referred to variously as a ‘significant policy problem’, a ‘policy failure’ (Hall
2011) and a ‘myth’ (Sharpley 2010), sustainable tourism is decried as being both meaningless and meaning everything – to the extent that its operationalisation is near impossible
(see Chapter 9 for a full discussion of sustainable tourism development in relation to
nature).
On a more profound level, sustainable tourism emerged from a neoliberal discourse on
meeting pressing global problems.2 Subsequently, sustainable development (at least in
its current forms) is largely predicated upon economic growth, and thus faces challenges
not only in credibility, but in creating truly (in a holistic sense) sustainable outcomes
(e.g. Duffy 2008; Higgins-Desbiolles 2008; Fletcher 2011). Sustainable tourism, then,
could be seen as a neoliberal sop to the real problems faced by tourism. Within the existing
political frameworks and ideologies of many destinations, it is difficult to see ‘true’ sustainability becoming the dominant paradigm. In summary, a broader, ethics approach to
tourism would go beyond the ‘three pillars’ (environmental, economic, social–cultural) of
sustainability (Weeden 2002).
As the full range of externalities and opportunities from tourism has become more apparent over recent years, a number of other approaches to tourism have emerged – arguably
most (if not all) emerging from the ‘mother-ship’ of sustainable tourism. Notably ecotourism, a form of tourism that encompasses respect for nature, learning and the positive
involvement of local communities, has become widely established. Initially ecotourism
was seen predominantly as a niche form of tourism, characterised by small-scale, environmentally sensitive tourism activities. Detractors, however, raise concern about the

co-option of the concept by mass tourism, corporate interests, resulting in the dilution and

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3


4

INTRODUCTION

betrayal of the initial goals of ecotourism (e.g. Wight 1993; Honey 1999), and potentially
just another example of so-called ‘green-washing’ in the tourism industry.
But it is not only the environmental impacts of tourism that have attracted attention. The
social and cultural outcomes of tourism have also led to the promulgation of community
and culture-friendly forms of tourism. Among these is ‘responsible tourism’, which is
defined in the Cape Town Declaration on Responsible Tourism as having the following
characteristics:
• Minimises negative economic, environmental, and social impacts;
• Generates greater economic benefits for local people and enhances the well-being of
host communities, improves working conditions and access to the industry;
• Involves local people in decisions that affect their lives and life chances;
• Makes positive contributions to the conservation of natural and cultural heritage, to the
maintenance of the world’s diversity;
• Provides more enjoyable experiences for tourists through more meaningful connections
with local people, and a greater understanding of local cultural, social and environmental issues;
• Provides access for physically challenged people; and
• Is culturally sensitive, engenders respect between tourists and hosts, and builds local
pride and confidence (International Centre for Responsible Tourism 2012; see also
Goodwin 2011).

Responsible tourism is strongly linked to sustainable tourism (with a similar threefold focus
on environmental, economic and social outcomes). However, responsible tourism is said to
have broader outcomes, importantly, to assign responsibility for action to various stakeholders. For example, responsible tourism has also shaped Corporate Social Responsibility
which emphasises the importance of corporate citizenship and corporate sustainability.
Broadly, it is a company’s commitment to operating in an ethical way that takes into account
society and the environment. Fair Trade Tourism is also another example, which emerged
in response to the problems evident with sustainable tourism – here principles of fair
trade are introduced to address the social inequity and sustainability issues within the
industry. Some countries have adopted responsible tourism rather than sustainable tourism in
their tourism planning processes (e.g. South Africa), and there is now a ‘World Responsible
Tourism Day’, while mega-travel agent Virgin Holidays sponsors annual Responsible
Tourism Awards. Yet the sad fact is that only 2 per cent of tourism businesses globally are
participating in responsible tourism or related initiatives (Frey and George 2010).
Ecotourism and responsible tourism are just two of a broad array of alternative tourism
approaches that have proliferated in response to a growing awareness of the fragility of
our planetary environment, and tourism’s contribution to damaging (or preserving) our
world. Other driving forces have been a growing awareness of social justice issues
(arguably brought about through a combination of greater global connectivity and media
pervasiveness, an enhanced sense of global citizenship, and (optimistically) incremental
moral development). As a consequence, we now know a lot more about how tourism either
exacerbates or ameliorates social problems. Such problems range from those of local
wellbeing where tourism competes with host communities for access to critical resources


INTRODUCTION

5

such as land or water, to broader political issues, for example human rights repression, or
dispossession of indigenous peoples.

Collectively the range of ‘alternative tourisms’ that offers solutions to the problems of
unmitigated mass tourism now includes:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

sustainable tourism
ecotourism
green tourism
soft tourism
responsible tourism
just tourism
justice tourism
pro-poor tourism
new tourism
voluntourism
fair trade tourism.

1.2 DEFINING ETHICAL TOURISM
So how exactly does ‘ethical tourism’ fit in with the range of alternative tourisms and how
do we define it? Strangely, writers in the field have tended to avoid defining ethical tourism,
and perhaps this gives us an inkling of the difficulties of providing a useful description.

Ethical tourism is not so different from the alternatives listed above, and in simple terms
could be considered as an amalgam of the ‘best features’ of these alternative tourisms.
Industry and non-governmental organisations (NGOs), however, have not been deterred
from describing the term:
Ethical tourism has evolved as a term when one considers travelling to, or developing tourism in
a destination where ethical issues are the key driver, e.g. social injustice, human rights, animal
welfare or the environment. Ethical tourism is geared towards encouraging both the consumer and
industry to avoid participation in activities that contribute or support negative ethical issues.
(Travel Matters 2012)

Academics have been more cautious. Some have drawn links between ethical issues and
ecotourism, and others to such types of tourism as sustainable, responsible, just, or propoor (Holden 2003; Hultsman 1995). Lea (1993) in an early discussion of ethical tourism
development in the ‘Third World’ wrote that ethical tourism links the environmental concerns of ecotourism with the social consciousness of aid organisations. Ethical tourism has
been referred to as a ‘theme’ that has emerged in the global North in response to concerns
about the impact of mass tourism (Weeden 2005). It is an attempt to manage tourism for
the benefit of all stakeholders, and to contribute (in a similar manner to sustainable tourism) to environmental, social and economic goals (Weeden 2005).
It is generally considered that ethical tourists will be concerned with a broader range of
issues than the ‘green’ tourist: ‘For example, they may be interested in human resource
policies in the tourism industry, such as pay levels and the employment of local labour,


6

INTRODUCTION

Social
responsibility in
decision making
with tourism
stakeholders

Social
Tourism
Appropriate Tourism
Intelligent
Tourism

Cultural Tourism
Community
Tourism

Eco-Tourism
Low impact
Tourism
Green
Tourism

Ethical
Tourism

Environmental
Tourism
Environmentally
Friendly Tourism

Responsible
Tourism

Fair Trade
Tourism

Economic
Tourism
Nature
Tourism

Sustainable
Tourism
Development

Figure 1.1 Ethical tourism model (Speed 2008).

as well as the way in which the economic benefits of tourism are distributed throughout
the economy’ (Swarbrooke and Horner 2007: 148). In a discussion of the ethicality of
backpackers, Speed (2008: 61) believes that ethical backpackers would:
respect their hosts: by treading softly on the environment; by being educated about the culture;
by ensuring their stay returns fair, economic benefits, and by ensuring all decision making with
all tourism’s stakeholders is socially responsible.

Speed concurs with our perspective that ethical tourism is characteristic of many ‘alternative’ types of tourism. However, she makes the point that ‘only by adopting the different
values of such tourism types and ensuring that all decision making with all stakeholders,
regarding environmental, social and economic issues is socially responsible, is it ethical
tourism’ (2008: 60). She conceptualises the relationship between ethical tourism and other
forms of tourism (Figure 1.1).
The working definition in this book of ethical tourism acknowledges previous understandings of ethical tourism, and its links with sustainable tourism and other alternative
tourisms:
Ethical tourism is tourism in which all stakeholders involved apply principles of good behaviour
(justice, fairness and equality), to their interactions with one another, with society, with the environment and other life forms.

1.3 THE NEED FOR AN ETHICAL APPROACH

Two questions might arise from the discussion so far: first, do we need another tourism
framework? Second, what is to prevent ethical tourism becoming ‘just another alternative


INTRODUCTION

tourism’? Will ethical tourism suffer from the credibility and implementation problems
cited for some of the ‘alternatives’ above?
The ‘failings’ of sustainable tourism and concerns about some of the other alternative
frameworks above are a clear indication that there is a need to reconceptualise some
tourism-related problems – and indeed, tourism-related solutions. Some have pointed out
that the failure of sustainable tourism lies in its disconnection from processes of governance, legislation and policy (e.g. Hall 2011; Lovelock 2011). Others argue that its multidimensionality and inherent contradictions have prevented sustainable tourism from
reaching its full potential. Yet others attribute the blame to dominant ideologies within the
political systems of destinations, arguing that while neoliberalism is the dominant discourse within globalised systems of tourism production, sustainable tourism in a holistic
sense will never be realised.
Another possibility for the failing of sustainable tourism and related approaches is that
they do not form a strong connection with human behaviour. They are not based upon
fundamental human tenets. To illustrate: imagine that you are the owner of a company that
runs tours to a remote indigenous community in the Amazon jungle. Sustainable tourism
principles may tell you that you need to optimise the outcomes of your tours, in terms of
the social and cultural aspects, economic benefits, and environmental impacts. In practice,
‘balancing’ these needs, for your current operation, for a broad range of stakeholders,
while considering how your tours may also affect future generations, is difficult if not
impossible. You are being asked to balance a broad range of actual and potential outcomes
(or impacts). An ethical tourism approach on the other hand, while also potentially considering outcomes (consequences), may ask you to consider how to behave: it will ask you
about your fundamental duties towards the indigenous people, towards your clients and
towards yourself. In this sense, an ethics approach to tourism is more humanistic than current approaches and that is because ethics is fundamental to being human. And that is not
to say that ethics approaches to tourism do not consider the non-human. In the example
above, using an ethics approach, you as a tourism operator would have to consider your
essential relationships and responsibilities towards non-human beings, including ‘sentient’

and ‘non-sentient’ components of the natural system (see Chapter 9).
The focus of sustainable tourism and related frameworks on the impacts of tourism as the
traditional root of ethical issues in tourism is a fundamental failing:
we have not yet made the leap from recognising impacts and attempting to ameliorate them
beyond that which is deemed acceptable to the industry. This is very much akin to setting standards for the industry on the basis of what is deemed ‘right’ or ‘good’, without fully understanding the meaning of right or good.
(Fennell 2006: 7)

Similarly tourism providers find themselves operating within legal and policy systems that
only demand the minimum. While some believe that business is under no obligation ‘to be
moral beyond what the law requires’ (Fieser 1996 in Yaman 2003: 107), from an ethical
perspective, while obeying the law is necessary, it is not sufficient requirement for good
conduct (Smith 2001). As Plato (427–347 BC), the classical Greek philosopher wrote,
‘Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find

7


8

INTRODUCTION

a way around the laws’ (in Jackson 2012: 1). Thus, for the tourism industry to become
sustainable, would require the realisation that sustainable tourism is more than a process,
more than impacts or outcomes and more than staying within laws and regulations. It is
the recognition that sustainable tourism is also an ethic (Fennell 2006).
Of course, some would argue that the tourism industry is already ethical, by pointing to
the raft of ethical codes that exist, from the United Nations World Tourism Organization
down. For many, ‘such a cookbook of guidelines is an example of the leading edge of
tourism ethics’ (Fennell 2006: 7). Fennell argues that identifying impacts and prescribing
guidelines (e.g. codes of ethics), and rectifying the impacts ‘are two very different mindsets and actions’, and believes that we have ‘largely been unsuccessful’ in achieving the

latter (2006: 7). The ethical code approach alone is akin to a doctor prescribing the standard ‘two paracetamol and bed rest’ for all patients – but without the patient or doctor really
being aware of (or caring about) the true nature of the affliction. In other words, most
codes treat the symptoms rather than the cause.
In response to the questions we raise above, ethical tourism is not just another alternative
tourism. Ethical tourism is not a form of tourism – like ecotourism, pro-poor tourism
or sustainable tourism. All of these forms of tourism have evolved in an era that has been
dominated by neoliberal philosophy and neoliberal-informed economic policy and they
have been commodified. As ‘forms’ they tend to be prescriptive in terms of what the tourist or industry can and cannot do, and this is one of the reasons why they fail – the prescriptions will never be able to address the wide range of social practices, events and interactions
that human beings provoke and seek guidance or resolution for. Ethical tourism is a way
of thinking that has applicability for all forms of tourism and for critically reflecting on
behaviours in order to inform behavioural change. It is more encompassing – it is about
being a moral-being rather than a ‘green-being’, or a ‘justice-being’, or an ‘eco-being’.
The neoliberal hegemony, as Smith and Duffy (2003) argue, has sidelined ‘ethics’. Ethics
has been set aside as if unnecessary or an alternative extra. Ethics is not a thing – it is
central to being human. All human societies attempt to address moral dilemmas; all make
judgements about what is right or wrong. What we are proposing in this book is that there
is no single answer, no single route; but we need to return ethics to its core – being human.
Ethical frameworks developed by moral philosophers provide us with a range of tools that
we can apply to complex situations. They allow us to ask a range of questions, allow us to
critically reflect on what the implications of decisions might be and, thus, allow us to make
informed critical judgements about behaviour – in this context, tourism behavior, but arguably all. If ethical tourism fails, it will be because we have failed to be human, failed to
equip ourselves to deal with moral conduct and conflict and in the process undermined our
own freedom and ultimately the freedom of others. We need to know that some ‘ethical
decisions’ are less ethical than others; but we also need to know how to apply a range of
options and then be able to weigh up and choose options that do the least harm to people
and other life forms. The most important tool that the tourism industry, its practitioners
and students, can employ is: critical reasoning. From this platform we explore a range
of ethical frameworks in Chapter 2, and then in relation to a range of contemporary practices in tourism.