While tourism has the potential to strengthen global understanding between cultural traditions, the tourism industry leaves traces of environmental damage, economic hopelessness and the degradation of human life.
The work of the Ecumenical Coalition for Tourism is dedicated to the social and environmental parameters of tourism on the long-term effects of tourism among local communities in order to better inform churches and their partner organizations about the joint responsibility for tourism issues in the context of new vocabularies. fund and paradigms.
Help the biblical light to get inspiration from the Holy Scriptures and give new hope to the people involved in tourism. The stories of Naaman (2 Sam. 5: 1-27), and the transforming role of the prophet (Luke 9: 28-43) reveal to us the need for churches to play a prophetic role in transforming tourism into a true spiritual journey. The general attitude is to affirm the true mission of the ecumenical movement and its use as part of this spiritual journey, during which we speak not “for” or “to” but “with” the churches.
Of great importance is the decision of the World Tourism Organization in September 1999 to adopt a “Global Code of Ethics for Tourism”, but it is still necessary to work together on an acceptable strategy for its implementation.
Code of Ethics for Tourists
1. Travel in a spirit of compassion and a genuine desire to learn more about the people of the host country.
2. Be sensitive to people’s feelings, avoiding behavior that could be interpreted by them as threatening. This is especially true of photography.
3. Cultivate the habit of listening and observing, not just listening and watching.
4. Make sense that often people in the country you have gone to have temporal understandings and conceptual understandings other than your own; this does not make them inferior, but only different.
5. Instead of looking for a “paradise beach”, discover the enriching encounter with the different way of life through the prism of other people’s eyes.
6. Get used to the local customs – people will be happy to help you
7. In place of Western practice to know the answers to all questions, learn to listen.
8. Remember that you are just one of the thousands of tourists visiting this country and do not expect special privileges.
9. If you really want to experience what it’s like to be “away from home”, it’s just stupid to spend your money on travel.
10. When shopping, remember that the “discount” you won was only possible due to the low wage for the manufacturer.
11. Don’t make promises to the people in the host country unless you are ready to keep them until the end.
12. Take some time each day to reflect on the experience in order to understand it in depth. This is in order to make you realize that what enriches you can enslave another.
