Responsible tourism

Photo by Flickr user Alain Bechellier. Creative Commons licence.

As soon as I saw this photo, I knew I had to write this post. It is apparently a seaside railway station in Morbihan in Brittany, SNCF (Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Français) being the French railway company.

Last year SNCF awarded the first trophies for responsible tourism to promote respect for man and the environment. The categories were for

• humanitarian travel (winners: humanitarian trips to Vietnam and to Argentina)
  
• fair and equitable tourism (winners: Atalante and La Route des Sens)
  
• information and awareness (winner: Francois-Tourism-Ecorismo)
• local development (winner: MIT International Salon)
  
• travel and disability (winner: Voyagez Aussi)
  
• nature and the environment (winner: Cap France)
  
• business responsibility (winners: Orangeries, Hotel de Lussac, Huttopia)
  
• culture and heritage (winner: Villages Creoles)

They also gave a special mention to Nouvelles Frontières, a tour operator, for their information and policies.

They are now asking for nominations for the 2008 awards.

Source Les trophées du tourisme responsable (in French). However all the links to the winners are to Google translations of the relevant pages. Automated translation seems to be improving: they are for the most part perfectly comprehensible unlike the old days of BabelFish.

Some of the awards are for the holidays themselves, others for the way holiday companies conduct themselves.

I confess I have never been on anything that could be described as an eco-holiday, though we have been on some very simple holidays. Has anyone any experience of any? My concern would be to feel it's a holiday, not hard work! I'm too old for that :)