Last week, I was watching the amazing business conference GoingGreenEast on live streaming Ustream.tv video, which if you have not yet viewed, I would highly recommend keeping on top of. The compression, bandwidth, quality of this live streaming video channel available on DSL Internet is amazing.
I was amazed and inspired by David de Rothschild, who has founded an amazing company called Adventure Ecology. You are going to get lots of ideas from this site. But, I really want to direct you to his talk. Take a cup of coffee, or tea or a glass of wine and sit back for a few minutes….you’ll want to have your notepad or a laptop open with notes page. We need a dose of this kind of inspiration every once in a while, to help us really focus on what’s important. I was having a conversation with my colleague Nancy Arsenault today, and after I finished, I realized that I needed to share what I have learned from this video with the tourism industry.
You will want to go to this talk – Equation of Curiosity.
What I will not forget are the following words. Think about them in your own business enterprise and then do what you need to do to…
Every change begins with a question.
Curiosity is a great driver of change.
The equation for curiosity is
D + A/S = I
The equation can be translated loosely as follows: Dreams are the breeding grounds for adventures (and everyone has dreams). Those dreams create adventures. Those adventures create stories. Those stories inspire more dreams. If we follow this model, the equation for curiosity becomes more compelling…
“My dream or question was …could we build a boat built entirely out of plastic water bottles (the Plastiki Expedition) ? To try to showcase a smart way of thinking – that waste is a resource.” This has exploded into an exciting opportunity to change an entire industry. - David de Rothschild (Adventure Ecology)
You see, we have a problem today in the world’s oceans. The ratio of plastic bits (disposed plastic) to phytoplankton (uni-cellular plants) is 6:1 (plastic to phytoplankton). Waste is fundamentally a design flaw. Plastic bottles are not smart design. We need to re-think waste as a “resource stream”.
In experiential tourism, we have the opportunity to share stories, which are what travelers connect to. (Dreams lead to adventures which lead to stories). These stories are fulfillment of the dreams of those who created the story in the first place (the experience provider), but offer fulfillment for the traveler as well.
What are you doing to create adventuress, share stories, and most important of all, to create stories that are about being sustainable in your business? Reducing waste, making the planet a better place, and doing this makes good business sense and good ecological sense.
The first step is the first step:
The first thing that we can all do as an action is to ban plastic bottles from our businesses, how we serve visitors, and from all of our supply chains. Ban them completely from our businesses, our communities, our grocery stores, our gas stations, our convenience stores. Yes, this will take leadership. But, that’s the stage our planet is at. Tourism can lead the way in doing this.
