On World Tourism Day, CEO of Barbados Tourism, Dr. Jens Thraenhart, announced that destination Barbados is featured in Sustainable Travel: Where Next?,an all-new documentary series released today by Sustainable Travel International. The series highlights how the global travel and tourism sector is taking action to protect our planet and its treasured destinations, showcasing Barbados’ sustainability efforts as one such example. The series debuts as the international community celebrates World Tourism Day and acknowledges the important role that tourism plays in sustainable development.
Using high-end cinematography, Sustainable Travel: Where Next? takes viewers on a different kind of a journey, exploring sustainability initiatives that are transforming tourism all around the world. The series is a collection of 16 short-form documentary films produced by Zinc Communicate, a Zinc Media Group company, each spotlighting a different tourism destination or organization. From the beaches of Barbados to the urban heart of Norway, the series brings to life uplifting stories of conservation, regeneration, inclusion, empowerment, and resilience.
In recent years, awareness of tourism’s impacts reached an all-time high, with travelers becoming more cognizant of the burden that the traditional model of tourism was placing on sensitive places and overvisited communities. Sustainable Travel: Where Next? offers hope for the future and embodies this year’s World Tourism Day theme: ‘Rethinking Tourism.’ From farm-to-table culinary experiences to recycling and reuse programs, each episode showcases real-life examples of sustainable travel in action and emphasizes the local voices behind these efforts.
“This series aims to captivate and inspire viewers to take action within their own lives or professional roles to further sustainable travel,” said Paloma Zapata, CEO of Sustainable Travel International. “Over the past two years, people spent a lot of time looking back and reflecting on the harmful effects of tourism and everything that’s gone wrong. Now is the time to look forward and as we do so, it is more important than ever to be telling powerful, uplifting stories that encapsulate the positive side of tourism, and its potential to conserve our planet and create social benefit.”
The series includes an episode focused entirely on Barbados’ sustainability efforts, including how it’s working collaboratively as a community to propel the country forward through the current climate crisis.
Speaking on Barbados’ inclusion in the documentary, Thraenhart stated that “It is a major accomplishment for Barbados to be included in this important global documentary alongside other destinations including Edmonton and Victoria in Canada; Park City, Utah; Vail, Colorado; and Sonoma County, California in the USA; Oslo in Norway; Ljubljana in Slovenia; Australia, Denmark; and St. Kitts as the only other country in the Caribbean. On one hand, it allows us to favourably position ourselves in the minds of the increasing share of travelers that want to travel more sustainably, especially young people, but we will also use it as a catalyst to drive our sustainability journey to mitigate existential threats like climate change,” he said.
To mitigate the environmental footprint of the film production, Zinc Communicate is partnering with Sustainable Travel International to offset the main sources of carbon emissions: crew flights, accommodations, and ground transport.
