This year’s theme for World Tourism Day is ‘Building Peace! Fostering Knowledge!’ and it’s particularly appropriate for 2020.
This year brought its fair share of ups and downs which have helped people around the world to realise more than ever that we have a lot more in common than we thought.
As tourism starts to open up again after months of travel bans and restrictions we’re all readier than ever to embrace the true benefits of tourism and celebrate the ways in which it builds peace and broadens our horizons.
Tourism as a Catalyst for Peace
There’s no better way to experience different cultures than by meeting them on their own turf. You can read about people in faraway lands as much as you like, but nothing beats face-to-face encounters if you want to truly know them.
No matter how unbiased media reports claim to be, they’re never a true reflection of the things you’ll discover when you visit a country yourself.
As a tourist, you get to experience the best that a country has to offer. This serves as a counter to any negatives you might have heard and gives you a more balanced perspective on how things really are.
Tourism helps dispel generalisations about particular countries and races.
What’s more, by creating a culture of openness and accessibility, tourism fosters internal peace by removing perceptions of ‘us and them’.
Tourism casts a wide net of employment opportunities within a country, thereby improving the financial stability and living conditions of its citizens and reducing crime.
In this way, tourism helps create less stressed, more peaceful communities.
Tourism to Foster Knowledge
Not only do people who travel often discover more about the world around them, they also learn more about themselves. Travel encourages resilience, tolerance, and curiosity. It also develops a heightened sense of creativity, stimulating the mind in a way that staying at home doesn’t, makes your more open-minded and can also help you to identify who you are!
At the same time, those who travel learn courage. They’re given opportunities to try the limits of their physical capabilities with arduous outdoor activities and learn coping mechanisms for dealing with unfamiliar circumstances.
Are you Ready to Do Your Bit for Peace?
Soon, things will be back to as normal a state as possible with regard to travel. Will you be leading the charge to the airport?
Start planning your southern African safari adventures right away to ensure you’re one of the first to help get tourism back on track for 2021.
Get in touch and we’ll help arrange it all for you.
