It is no news that I do not like Cancun, and every time I see its lagoon and that amazing long stretch of Caribbean beach ruined by the concrete jungle of the Zona Hotelera I feel sooooooooo irritated.
I landed at Cancun airport a few days ago after quite a long trip and I did not have the energy to escape as far away as possible, as I usually do every time I visit the Yucatan peninsula.

After all, I am not in a hurry; I have decided that this trip to Mexico will be longer than my usual visits…
Furthermore, I have been receiving many requests by gloCal travellers asking me to recommend a convenient place to stay when they have a late arrival or early departure to and from Cancun airport.

Since staying in the Zona hotelera was out of question, I decided to check Cancun town, as I did not know it that well.
I heard there were a couple of places that were not bad, and I have indeed found a decent place to stay a couple of blocks from the Central bus station and just 5 minutes by taxi to Gran Puerto, where you can catch the ferry to Isla Mujeres.
The place is called El Rey del Caribe, and it is recommended by many travel guides, now also by me
The rooms are facing an inner garden with a lot of green, a nice fountain and a small swimming pool. It was nice to see many different garbage bins for collecting and recycling paper, glass, and plastic. The hotel also had a few leaflets about eco-policies and a very interesting one about the many ’swim with the dolphin programs’ which are advertised everywhere along the Mayan Riviera.

Thumbs up for El Rey del Caribe then, although I still would not recommend anyone to stay in Cancun. Once out of the hotel you will have to slalom amongst cars and taxis trying to get to the main road, the Avenida Tulum, which is noisy, polluted and does not offers much more than a few places to eat at quite high prices, some shops, and the inevitable local Burger King… or was it McDonalds?

Unless your flight leaves or lands at a ridiculous time, get out of there and go to Puerto Morelos instead (you can catch any bus to Playa del Carmen, there is one every 10 minutes and the journey to Puerto Morelos is only 35 mins from the airport).

Last month I found myself in need of a ‘small airport book’ and decided to go for the ‘No-Nonsense Guides to Tourism’ by Pamela Nowicka, published by New Internationalist

If you are a responsible traveller and already realise that lying on a beach with a margarita is not going to alleviate world poverty, this book will not tell you anything new, despite one of those ‘sensational one line reviews’ on the cover saying Find out how the world really works!

On the other hand, if you have never thought about the negative impact of tourism on the host countries and on the local people, like the exploitation of natural and human resources in the developing countries, after you have finished reading this book you will probably feel a miserable and guilty tourist (yes, you got it; you do not even deserve to be called a traveller).

But do not despair, this feeling will not last long, as eventually no one is willing to forgo a well deserved holiday. After all, travelling has been a privilege of the jet set for the past couple of centuries and only recently it has become affordable to the masses; why should we not consider it as one of our democratic rights?

The author is trying to open our eyes about the fact that the ‘positive impact of tourism on the world development’ is a myth, and that we should change our attitude in our role as vacationers and show more consideration towards our hosts, from whom we expect polite manners and smiling faces even when we behave like new colonialists giving them absolutely no reasons to smile. I absolutely agree with her on this and in more than one occasion she made me think about my own attitude as a traveller.

She goes on saying people should think about travelling less, and about being more discerning when they travel. Again, I agree 100%. This bad habit of flying from London to Paris for a proper croissant must really stop and low cost airlines do not help. But then she keeps on highlighting all the negative aspects of tourism, saying that even responsible travel in the end does not help much and concluding that the ultimate remedy is just taking as few holidays as possible and stop destroying the environment jetting off around the world.

At the end of the book, I felt really disappointed. Maybe because I am optimistic by nature, but I found this guide a total waste of an occasion to inform that there are many effective ways to change our travel behaviour, and that ethical travel is growing and can bring some fresh air to tourism. By not focusing on what can be changed and not presenting sound alternative options after having explored in depth the faults of the industry, the only response she can get from the reader is a shoulder shrug, either of indifference or resignation.

People who work in the tourism industry and most of the travellers who are used to surf the Internet for booking their holidays are now aware of specialty travel operators promoting sustainable, low impact, responsible, eco-tourism… but what do all these terms mean exactly? What is the difference between one and another?

Sometimes when I say I run an eco-travel agency, I get some puzzled looks, and I am asked what I mean exactly. I am not at all surprised about these reactions, as I imagine that people who book their holidays at their local high street travel agency have never heard about ecotourism at all.

I would say the above listed types of tourism have all in common the opposition to the mass tourism, and a revaluation of the authenticity of the travel experience, considered as a discovery of a new natural and cultural environment.
I will now try to write down some definitions; comments and objections are very welcome.

• Sustainable tourism

An uncontrolled growth of the tourist industry (especially in the developing countries) can lead to wild construction plans, abuse of the natural resources and pollution, and eventually to the destruction of that pristine natural and cultural environment tourists were attracted to in the first place. Governments need to set up some strict regulations to the tourist development, involving carefully planned projects focused on the preservation of the environment. This way the local economic system – frail and precarious in poor countries - will be able to sustain the development of tourism and enjoy the benefits without being overwhelmed by it.
I would say the use of the term sustainable is mainly related to the authorities’, entrepreneurs’, and operators’ behaviours, which should make sure the tourist development has a low impact on the natural environment and on the social system.

• Responsible tourism

Every time I find the term ‘responsible’ in articles about tourism I notice this is mainly related to the travellers’ behaviour: a responsible traveller is the one who shows respect and consideration for the nature, the people, and the culture of the country he is visiting. Hence the many ‘responsible traveller codes’ published all over the Internet, which include rules about keeping the environment clean, saving water, buying local products… and so on. These dos and don’ts lists are useful, but it is most important that travellers show a responsible travel attitude also while planning their holiday, operating an accurate selection of the destinations, tour providers and places to stay.

• Ecotourism

If we consider that most of the responsible travel operators have a ‘section’ on their websites and catalogues dedicated to ecotourism (mainly listing tour and activities in close contact with nature), we should say ecotourism is just a ‘branch’ of the responsible (or sustainable) travel. But if we surf the Internet we can notice that the term ecotourism is often used to refer to sustainable, responsible, even cultural tourism. (See the Wikipedia definition)

Following the International Ecotourism Year in 2002, the term has become very popular and has been used and abused, so that if we search the various terms on Google we will find the following results:

“sustainable travel” 504,000 results
“sustainable tourism” 1,200,000
“responsible tourism” 553,000
“responsible travel” 901,000
“ecotourism” 4,600,000 (plus its spelling variation “eco-tourism” 1,310,000)

With ecotourism we now mean a type of tourism focused on the discovery and preservation of the environment as a whole, including nature, society, culture, folklore, and the term is referred to both operators and travellers.

One of my favourite definitions of ecotourism is in an article of Allan R. Rhodes Espinoza, who offers this simple explanation: eco comes from the Greek word oikos, which means home. People/travellers should consider the whole world as their home, and behave accordingly.