In bahasa

Ethical tourism menjadi perdebatan dalam penerimaan keuangan negara. Di Indonesia, banyak hal yang menjadi pertimbangan dalam penerimaan turis luar negeri dengan berbagai budaya dan etika yang dibawa. Satu sisi, turis mendatangkan banyak uang yang meningkatkan pemasukan negara, sisi lainnya terdapat beberapa daerah yang mengedepankan agama sebagai tameng dalam mempertahankan eksistensi kepribadian bangsa, bahkan ada daerah, terutama yang menerapkan perda syariah, yang menolak para turis yang tidak menutup aurat selama melancong di daerah mereka.

Etis tidaknya para turis yang datang menjadi sebuah perdebatan baru bila ditimbang dengan peraturan daerah syariah, atau daerah-daerah yang mengutamakan adat dibandingkan dengan uang yang masuk ke kas negara. Covid 19 tidak menjadikan para turis lebih santun dan beretika, namun dapat dipastikan para turis akan lebih menjalankan protokol kesehatan dengan kesadaran bersama.

Etika kesehatan dalam berwisata dibangun atas kesadaran bahwa kesehatan adalah hal utama dalam menikmati wisata itu sendiri. Namun selain wisata alam dan perbedaan suasana negeri asal, tidak bisa ditutupi bahwa wisata seksual juga menjadi tujuan dari sebagian besar para wisatawan. Etika wisata ini tidak ada kaitannya dengan covid 19, karena HIV dan AIDS sudah lama muncul.

Etika menjadi perdebatan karena setiap negara memiliki takaran etika yang berbeda dan tentu setiap daerah berubah, baik lambat maupun cepat, dalam merespon para turis yang mulai berdatangan ke daerah tertentu. Dan yang menarik untuk dibahas lebih detail lagi nanti, bahwa Kuliah Kerja Nyata Tematik yang diadakan oleh sebagian besar perguruan tinggi adalah membuat desa-desa wisata baru dengan berbagai macam keunggulan yang dimiliki oleh desa.

in english

Ethical Tourism became an argument in the financial admissions of the state. In Indonesia, many things are considered in foreign tourists acceptance with various cultures and ethics brought. One side, tourists bring a lot of money that enhances the country's income, other side are there are some areas that lead to the existence of the nation's personality, even there are areas, especially those who refuse to seal the audience during their perimeter.

The ethics are not the ethics that come into a new argument when weighed with the rules of the Sharia regulations, or the regions that are prioritized to the state's cash. Covid 19 doesn't make tourists more courteous and more polite, but it can be certain that tourists will be more health protocol with consciousness.

The health ethics in the traveling are built on consciousness that health is the main thing in enjoying the tourism itself. But other than nature's tourists and the difference of the native atmosphere, it cannot be covered that sexual tourists are also the purpose of most of the tourists. This tour ethic has nothing to do with Covid 19, because HIV and AIDS have long appeared.

Ethics became an argument because every country has a different ethics measure and certainly every area changes, both slowly and fast, in responding to tourists who start coming to certain areas. And what's interesting to discuss more details later, that the real work college held by most of the college in Indonesia is making new tourism villages with various different kinds of excellence owned by the village.

I don't think Ethical Tourism will be totally influenced. On the contrary, it will even serve as an eye-opener to tourists to become more responsible in terms of sanitation and proper care of one's self and the environment.

Dear Alexander, I think it is important to start by looking at the bigger picture. How is the pandemic influencing the Tourism industry overall?

Well the answer is quite badly!

In Europe, countries have established a travel ban to some destinations while other touristic areas were placed on a quarantine list which means that if you were to visit that destination then upon your return you will have to self-isolate for14 days regardless of a test result. In the UK this has been enforced with the threat of £10000 fines per person.

The effect of these measures has been to completely destroy the businesses at these destinations which rely on European tourists as no visitors were coming in.

The case of Australia and New Zealand is even more compelling as they closed their border fully quite early on in the year.

For the destinations that relies more on the American tourists (North and South), the business has been better because there were no such bans, but still they were affected because less people travelled there. The cruise industry is a good example has it has stopped operating completely.

So bearing this in mind, what about the Ethical tourism sector?

Well, it did suffer the same way as the rest of the Tourism industry but this unique moment in our history could be an opportunity to further itself and become more mainstream.

When the reality of the pandemic started to hit hard our societies, the comments from professionals, journalist and psychologist was that this pandemic was a game changer in the attitude and behaviour of people, if possible, towards a more responsible behaviour which then could be the catalyst for the Tourism industry to lean towards a more Ethical approach, hence developing the Ethical Tourism sector.

My take on that is that while the pandemic will serve as an eye opener for some people, convincing them to act more responsibly, so wanting to experience Ethical holidays, they could be the minority. These people who will side with a more ethical approach are the one that were already on the verge of doing so but needed to be convinced.

I believe that the vast majority of people will actually revert to a pre-1990 mentality where individualism was predominant and ethical behaviour not so important.

The reason for this train of thoughts is the behaviour I have observed in every day life. There has been three kind of reactions to the pandemic:

- The people who went out of their way to help others when they did not necessarily used to, these are the one who got transformed and wil probably required a more Ethical approach to tourism.

- The people that did nothing different and got by. These are the people who will not change their way of life.

- The people who became individualistic, the selfish ones. The scenes of panic buying and fighting in stores, the distrust in Government (their response) and the fear of strangers or even colleagues (they might infect you) are a proof that they were not ready to share nor care about their neighbours, never mind have ethical concerns. These people will never be concerned by a Responsible tourism.

I believe it will take a while for Ethical Tourism to be back on the agenda for the vast majority of the population as they deal with more pressing matter that are closer to home, unemployment, incertitude, fear of being infected, fear of dying, fear of close relationship getting infected and dying, stress, strained relationship (divorces and split up are on the rise, 40% in the UK), losing your home, etc.

Dear Fabrice, thank you for your answer. I must say I am not that sceptical about three kind of reactions to the pandemic since they consider only human psychology and not the societal regulation. In my opinion, the state as the ruling authority can intervene. If it does, it can significantly influence the future of ethical tourism.

Dear Alexander, I agree with you. It will take a state intervention to influence the future of Ethical tourism as businesses will not necessarily lean towards this path (extra costs, why do it?) as they tend to be managed in the short term rather than the long term (multiple benefits of being responsible from cost saving, increase customer loyalty, increase revenue, etc.). But let's not forget two things here:

- The lack of political will if there is no political gain. The government could ban the use of coal and oil product to produce power and turn the whole country 100% towards renewable energy if they wanted. This would come at a cost in the short term, but in the long term the benefits will outweigh this (fully independent from Russian gas and Middle East oil, becoming a world leader in the technology involved, creating thousands of jobs, etc.). The issue is that this would take years to reap a result and politicians are only elected for 5 years! They want results now and they have lobby which are against this giving them money to get re-elected.

- The market mechanism, the offer and demand mechanism. State intervention will not necessarily trigger a surge in demand and/or a recognition of its benefits from the public

Dear Fabrice,

Yes, the financial aspect is crucial. But it doesn't work always. Look at the climate change and the drowning island states that call for help. Nothing changes!

However, if we take another perspective. We talked about three kind of reactions to the pandemy of the hosts, but we forgot the tourists. Do you think that the tourists could do something when they are preparing their journey abroad (besides probably bringing a negative test of corona)?

Dear Alexander,

I think you touched a sensitive issue here. The testing should be done at every touch point if possible but again it is about political willpower. Here in the UK there is no such thing to have testing done at the point of departure and for all arrivals. There is no willpower to enforce the mask in the planes either when these measure (screenign on arrival with testing and taking temperature for example) would acutally help the tourism industry to recover. In Germany you can et a 30 minute result on test when arriving! The time it takes for your luggages to arrive. Why the difference? Why there is no functioning test and trace system in the UK when there is one in Sweden? It is all down to political learderhip and the willpower to spend the money on these systems, which the UK has not done so far.

Would it be ethical for tourist to arrive with a negative test? Yes indeed, but who will administer them? The government of the country of departure.

What could be done is that every passenger that is going to board a plane get tested before even checking in so that the result for the whole plane is known before they board it!

Dear Fabrice,

we don't have to wait long till they invent a vaccine against Covid (German authorities assume it will be available at the beginning of 2021) and then we will see the influence on ethical tourism. For example, price and testing time could be essential. Now, testing time in Germany is about 2 days.

Yes, I've seen it myself, everybody can leave the UK. For Germany where everybody leaving the country has to pass the passport control, something inconceivable. Nevertheless, I am not generally concerned about who will administer the tourists. You tell it yourself in your last sentence. The airline. For example, in Germany if you fly to Russia the airline checks valid visas of all passengers before boarding. They do it because the airline must bring passengers without a visa back to the destination. Similarly, the airline can check the Corona tests.

dear Alexander,

Here, we are in Indonesia, mostly our tourism are ethical tourism like rural tourism or tourism village, culture, heritage preserve, national park, etc. yes corona significantly change the human life, it also change the behavior of people. Are these change all positive or negative?

In my opinion I think “yes”

Before march 2020, when pandemic came to our country, our government very concern to the development of tourism in many aspect but after this situation negatively after decision of lockdown and international flight closed it become the bad news for our tourism. Many of local or small enterprises suffer because there were no tourists made the travelling. As an economic yes we are down almost all sectors. But after almost seven months, all aspect trying to get up and find the way with their own creativities. Yes the new normal with the protocols we try to follow, government always sound the CHSE (Clean, Hygiene, Sanitation and Environment). I considerate that we are sometime bad at CHSE before, but after this almost the local people try to follow. Now we are try to develop the CHSE, Safety & Security Protocols, Risk & Disaster Mitigation plan, Emergency Response Task force. It is well known that people do not all understand CHSE but all of them are still trying to work together to create a sustainable life and also maintain the health of themselves and their families first.

So back to ethical tourism in Indonesia, many creativities come from our local people such as health tourism by the value and the use of the local herbal, herb for prevent the virus, the value of sanitation rises at our people. The domestic tourism has been started with product diversity and people find the rural or village tourism or back to nature than outbound tour. Development of community base tourism dan sanitated homestay, clean environment awareness, digital literacy, nature culture are keep trying to welcome tourist

For developing country these are good or positive impact. Awareness of health, respect the nature now began to realize by the people even thought not all yet. And this consideration hopefully can protect the ethical tourism in my country .