Circular economy goes far beyond recycling. It is also fundamentally rethinking products and systems: smart design, reusability, disassembly, consumption models based on shared use ... The travel and tourism sector has a lot of work to do in this area. The sector's impact is significant and growing: tourism will double to 1.8 billion travellers a year by 2030.
With this project, Route 2030, in collaboration with Joker Tourism, Via Via Tourism Academy and Karavaan vzw, aims to explore how the travel sector can evolve from a linear to a circular economy. As circular economy often requires a chain approach, we involved as many stakeholders as possible in the study.
Specifically, we investigated where the opportunities of circular entrepreneurship lie in the tourism sector. To do so, we first learned to better understand the larger framework around circular economy, a.o. through inspiration sessions. Next, we discovered new opportunities and models for the sector and analysed how they can strengthen our current policy. Through a hackathon, we looked for concrete actions, which we developed into three experiments in the field.
Finally, we explored how to create a circular mindset among tour guides and staff at Joker, Karavaan and ViaVia Tourism Academy.
Route 2030
Partners Joker Toerisme, Via Via Tourism Academy, Karavaan vzw
Sectors
The circular principles have been well introduced and we can now build on them. We are convinced that during our group tours there will be a lot of cross-fertilisation between guides, local partners, participants, local people ...
The project itself will definitely be followed up: the travel guide will be further promoted, there will be more inspiration sessions for travel guides and developers, and the action list was added to the travel guide and used by all Karavaan guides.
Joker also foresees several circular actions in their policy and strategy. For example, all group travel participants will be actively encouraged through various channels to bring an eco-friendly toiletry bag, offset flights through Bos+, not use disposable plastic water bottles in Europe, and not use disposable plastic at the destination.