“The culture of my tourism industry businesses is starting to head down. Environment is starting to get really toxic, everyone’s complaining that they are overworked, and the vibe is getting really bad. Where is all this coming from and how do I change course?”

Our Tourism’s culture can all be mapped back to one element — us.

We are the cultural North Star of our travel plans, and everything we do, and how we act, puts our ship on a course for good things, and if we allow it, really bad ones. Our challenge is that we often don’t recognize how even our simplest actions broadcast across the entire environment and poison the natural life of the planet. Our worst behaviors, even those that we think are positive, become the virus that infects everyone.

Toxic Environment in tourism? That’s Us

All of that terrible infighting and toxic environment — that’s on us. Either we encourage or we let it happen — either way, we’re responsible. We may not see it that way though, we may think that “everyone else is being shitty” but that’s not how this works. Yes, those people may in fact be acting awful, creating little cliques, and talking smack in Slack. But that behavior is a reflection of what we allow.

While the complaints and spoiling nature do in fact originate from the traveler, as the travel psychologist, it’s a foreseen responsibility to stamp it out and set the tone. By simply allowing it to create new proactive behavior in tourism, we are just encouraging the right movement for the future to withstand itself.

Conversely, if we nip it in the bud and address it head-on, either by calling out the offenders or in a more extreme case, parting company with them altogether (usually a better solution BTW), we’re setting the tone for everyone. And sometimes the human we need to be harshest with is ourselves. The moment we start acting toxic, we’ve basically given everyone else in the environment permission to follow suit.

Overworked and Burnt Out in tourism industry? Our Fault

Our life is going to pace itself at our pace, good or bad. If we’re busy slacking off and sending selfies from our world travels all the time, no one is going to work twice as hard while we’re working on our tan. On the other hand, if we’re working ourselves to death and convincing the rest of the life connections that they need to do the same in the name of lifestyle glory, their horrible health and mental not-well-being is entirely at fault.

We often fail to understand the massive impact we have on not only our own well-being but that of every person in our environment. We have the ability, and this isn’t a great one, to inflict an ungodly amount of pain on so many people simply by the tone we set in our natural lifestyle.

We also have the power to do the opposite — to enable proactive behaviors, life changing decisions, and well-being. But if we assume that’s “their responsibility” we overlook the fact that their lives are directly correlative to the environment we create. We would never choose to make everyone miserable, but we have the power to do it regardless.

Ashamed of Being Who We Are? On Us.

Can our tourism actions even be about themselves, their true selves, within the environment? Can we openly talk about the struggles of daily life or are we supposed to be a caricature of the model person that we pretend to be so that we overlook our lives altogether? Is vulnerability a pro or a con?

Whether or not our tourism business feels comfortable being vulnerable is directly reflective of our own vulnerability. If we project an image that shows we can do no wrong, our instant connections will try to mirror that image as best they can — and that’s a motto. Creating a false image prevents us from understanding who they really are, which, if we’re speaking truly as tour managers, creates bad data to respond from.

If our professional self can’t tell us that they have to watch the kids versus working, or that they are fried from being overworked, or that they simply made a mistake, we’re going to try to solve the wrong problems. If we want to foster a culture that truly allows people to open up and share completely, we have to do that ourselves. We have to show that it’s OK to make a mistake because we make them too. We have to show that yes, life happens, and our lives happen too.

What we can’t do is expect our tourism culture to flourish without our guiding hand. We can’t expect the culture to develop in one direction while we’re personally heading in another. We are the amplifiers, and we need to be as deliberate in our actions to drive our internal culture as we are to build our entire future based on the United Nations World Tourism Organization “UNWTO” global movement Tourism based 17 Sustainable Development Goals. This is the way.

In Case You have thoughts, share to tourism industry based travel psychologist

As days and years progress the global development has been hampering the planet’s health in return harming all life forms on this planet. As we understand the psychology of travel towards tourism culture it stands as the biggest solution to move towards this solution oriented proactive behavior standards for tourists aka travelers and the tourism businesses overall.

What If The Traveler’s Personality Is A Cultural Liability?

In case you missed it, as travel psychologists we capitalize by collaborating and working alongside travel and hospitality companies on your overall goals and departmental goals by enhancing the process as human oriented as possible. We know with Human, Travel and Environment sustaining seems to be a difficult task hence humans are core to this industry and its important to understand those gimmicks.

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