Harold attended the Travalyst AGM via a video link a few days ago, unleashing his frustrations in what seemed to be a bit of a rant. The video clip released makes for uncomfortable viewing as Harold is clearly struggling to read a script and to stay on script, and doesn’t appear to really know what he is saying.
Travel and tourism relies on destinations, held together by communities, without which we have nowhere to travel to.
Communities are the beating heart of travel, and we must do better by the people who are the custodians of the places we visit.
There has been little coverage of this because no one can really pin point the purpose of Travalyst even though they say it is a hub for information on sustainable travel. While there are issues for workers in tourist destinations being priced out of local accommodation and poor working conditions, as a tourist you have little say in the governance of such issues. The recent protests in the Canary Islands show that it is up to the governments in such areas to try and control tourism as they have done in Machu Picchu in order to preserve the historical site.
The problem is that tourist areas rely on tourism for money—businesses such as restaurants and hotels, and to cut numbers might mean less business. Then there is the perennial problem of Harold being a hypocrite by calling on people to cut down on their carbon footprint while he opts to fly around on private jets. While he says it’s due to security issues, the fact is that he and TW have flown commercial without issue when no private jet was made available to them.
While no one really takes Harold’s views on sustainable travel seriously because of the blatant hypocrisy, one wonders whether there is an alternative purpose to Travalyst operating as a non-profit where Harold is the major (perhaps only) shareholder of the company?
