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Human Rights and Human Travel? Modeling Global Travel Patterns Under an Ethical Tourism Regime

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In response to calls for a more ethical approach to tourism, this article investigates how travel patterns would appear in the world if travel sanctions were applied to destinations that have well-documented serious human rights abuses. A discussion of travel boycotts and travel sanctions builds the case for considering the potential of travel sanctions as a tool to address human rights issues. Two scenarios of ethical travel are developed, based upon UNWtO international arrival data, together with human rights indices (using the World Freedom Survey) for over 200 destinations. Both scenarios see substantial numbers of visitors being 'redirected' from destinations with human rights abuses to those destinations classified as "Free." The article discusses the significance of this in terms of the moralization and politicization of outbound tourism.

Keywords: ETHICAL TOURISM; ETHICAL TRAVEL; HUMAN RIGHTS; POLITICS; SCENARIO MODELING; TRAVEL BOYCOTTS; TRAVEL SANCTIONS

Document Type: Research Article

Publication date: September 1, 2012

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  • Tourism Review International is a peer-reviewed journal that advances excellence in all fields of tourism research, promotes high-level tourism knowledge, and nourishes cultural awareness in all sectors of the tourism industry by integrating industry and academic perspectives. Its international and interdisciplinary nature ensures that the needs of those interested in tourism are served by documenting industry practices, discussing tourism management and planning issues, providing a forum for primary research and critical examinations of previous research, and by chronicling changing tourism patterns and trends at the local, regional and global scale.
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