The beginning of November witnesses the travel industry from all over the world descend to ExCeL London for the world’s biggest travel fair - The World Travel Market. During the dates of the 5th - 8th of November, WTM surely means business. I have been coming to this event every year for the last 9 years and this year it was special. I was presenting at the Responsible Tourism Networking session on Wildlife Tourism as a speaker on the 6th of November. This session was sponsored by BBC World News and Wild Navigator was an official supporter of WTM Responsible Tourism Day.

The Wildlife Tourism Session

(6th November | 12:30 - 13:30, South Gallery Room 19)

An overview:

The trend of millions of travellers who like to watch animals in their natural habitat is growing every year and has become a significant source of employment and income for developing countries. But rapid development also brings numerous environmental concerns that could endanger wildlife.

Chairperson:

• Brian Wood (Wildlife Worldwide)

Speakers:

• Abhishek Behl (Wild Navigator)
• Joss Kent (CEO &Beyond)
• Caroline Warburton (Wild Scotland)
• Dickson Ole Kaelo (Conservationist, Maasai Mara) 

The session studied how the industry can positively contribute, educating visitors, helping to fund conservation, creating wildlife dependent livelihoods for local people. My presentation looked at how the Wildlife Tourism supply chain can use education as a tool to make visitors watch wilderness responsibly. In this, I focused my presentation on the recent interim ban on tourism in India’s core areas of tiger reserves and what new systems are in place through policies and guidelines that the industry needs to focus on from now on. What went wrong ? and the ways in which the Wildlife tourism supply chain can change its behaviour on educating visitors to India’s protected areas.

World Travel Market - World Responsible Tourism Day (7th of November 2012)  sponsored by UNWTO

As Wild Navigator engages with basic beliefs and criteria’s set aside on Responsible Tourism, we are proud to be official supporters of WTM Responsible Tourism Day (7th November 2012) and will carry on supporting the cause and beliefs in our business for years to come. To mark this day at WTM - we were invited to a grand lunch evening hosted by BBC World News followed by a Responsible Tourism Networking session in the evening where the best people in the travel industry on responsible tourism were present.

This year, the World Travel Market for me & Wild Navigator was a success. Along with the events mentioned on this post - We were present at Travel Tweet Ups with fellow Travel Bloggers at London events, engaged with Individual Tourism Board and their evening gathering and participated at the Fringe Responsible Tourism Event. Met many old and new businesses colleagues exhibiting who we tend to take new ventures forward for the coming year. I look forward in welcoming them on Wild Navigator.

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We would like to give our special thanks to Wimdu for arranging our accommodations at London and near the World Travel Market. A true sense of ”Travel like a Local” and highly recommend people to use them while traveling.  

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