Touristic resorts are the jar of jam  of our civilization, the promised land, paradise on Earth where we long to recover and recharge after hard working months in cold weather conditions. Tourism is a source of hard currency. By attacking tourists in their holidays destinations, terrorists often blackmail governments: it is an economic sabotage, they want to affect Western influences (and possibly take over). Of course tour operators are heavily affected by these increasing violence episodes. Do surveillance and reinforcement of security measures at checkpoints make us feel safer? No. As a matter of fact we face deep-seated social and economic problems; we don't need deployments of troups, we need to fight a cutural battle: education, information, concerning and understanding. Basically, we're looking at two scenarios. The first one is tourism at any cost, which implies the militarisation of tourism, surveillance, security measures, "enduring holidays" with armed vigilantes to protect our priviledges, outside four and five stars hotels. The other one is an open, unprotected, community based tourism. You may also call it responsible, sustainable, soft, integrated tourism (with different meaning). In my book Don't shoot the Tourist I call it permeable tourism, allowing transits of information, life stories, cultural habits. Probably safer, for many reasons, than the first option.

The future of traveling: Is the tourist age coming to an end?

Overall trends and challenges accompany tourism and influence its further development in the area of tension between global, national and regional processes. In the end, all this has a considerable impact on the future of tourism and traveling. In the face of this background, the 30th “Eichstätter Tourismusgespräche” will address the central questions of whether we will continue to travel tomorrow as we do today, in what form traveling and tourism as a whole will change, and whether tourism is maybe at the crossroad.

Large meeting room of the District Office Eichstätt Residenzplatz 1, 85072 Eichstätt
An event of the Chair of Tourism / Centre for Entrepreneurship of the Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt in cooperation with the Naturpark Altmühltal.

Organization: Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Chair of Tourism / Center for Entrepreneurship
Pater-Philipp-Jeningen-Platz 2
85072 Eichstätt