A thought leadership event exploring the significant untapped potential of retail tourism took place at La Roca Village, part of The Bicester Collection, in Barcelona, concluding with a resounding call for attention to the importance of retail tourism. The event featured the launch of a ground-breaking report, “Global Retail Tourism: Trends and Insights”, a collaborative effort between the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC), The Bicester Collection and Hong Kong Polytechnic University. With a strong focus on data and insights, the report seeks to define the future of retail tourism, highlighting the key trends, challenges, and opportunities shaping the sector.
Tackling Tourism's Living Wage Issue
25.08.2023 - 13:26 / skift.com / James Thornton / Selene Brophy
Intrepid Travel CEO James Thornton says he doesn’t just want to pay a so-called living wage – he wants to exceed it. That goes for the company’s own employees as well as all the workers involved with its tours and services on five continents.
Wage exploitation is a concern in the tourism industry and Intrepid has been publishing a Modern Slavery statement since 2018 for all countries where it employs staff. It’s a requirement for certification as a Benefit Corporation or B Corp, which means companies will commit to using business as a “force for good” by implementing social and environmental standards.
Intrepid’s next Modern Slavery statement will be released at the end of June. Together with wage exploitation, the statement looks at goals and outcomes the company has set towards a zero-tolerance approach to forced labor, human trafficking, and child labor.
Thornton said he wants the company to “extend above living wage standards across the world.” He said Intrepid had made “living wage adjustments in Egypt, Kenya, Cambodia, Nepal, Mexico, and Peru to meet this pledge.”
In Peru, for example, work conditions for porters who carry the camping equipment and baggage for the hikers of the popular Inca Trail was only recently regulated in 2022, including mandates of how much porters must be paid.
Under the law, porters and cooks can work approximately 12 days per month. Intrepid says porters and cooks who work that amount earn above the living wage for Peru of PEN1,647 (about $447.28) per month.
In Nepal, leader and porter wages are defined by Travel and Trekking Agency Regulations, which stipulate NPR 1,500 (about $11.35) per day for porters and NPR 2,000 ($15.14) per day for leaders. Intrepid said it meets or exceeds these baselines in both countries.
Destinations worldwide have been touting tourism’s potential to alleviate poverty, with few success stories.
Intrepid said it is purchasing a global dataset of living wages to ensure it can demonstrate compliance with living and family wages. “The challenge with a living wage is that it is difficult to get publicly available country-level data in all the locations we operate,” said Thornton.
There is a major disconnect when it comes to money, especially in developing tourism markets, according to Sustainable Travel International CEO Paloma Zapata, who estimates that for every $100 spent on a vacation tour to a developing country, as little as $5 can end up in the local economy.
Zapata said the solution was to ensure trips involved locals as much as possible, from those doing the tour guiding, operating the restaurants, to the ones selling the souvenirs. Sustainable Travel international developed the Ripple Score in conjunction with small-group tour
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