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Tourism without prejudice
ITB striving to eliminate prejudice through tourism
I’ve been coming to ITB Berlin pretty much each year for over 40 years, and every time I’m here my admiration for Berliners and German people is greater. In the 70’s I stayed with my German-speaking secretary Charlie in a very strange mansion run by larger than life Red Haired Rosa, before the wall came down I’d pop through Checkpoint Charlie to stock up on strange things.
And when the wall came down we brought thousands of tourists here and brought back tons of wall to give away as souvenirs of history.
This year Angela Merkel, born in East Germany in the now top tourism state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern said "Tourism takes away prejudice" The way that Germany has survived and integrated shows these words in practice.
No more so than at ITB which has, over the years created the world’s biggest and most colourfully diverse travel trade gathering.
The fact is that ITB is about people and their needs – not a set of anybody else’s acquired prejudices that is why I assume they back:
Refugees, with dozens of opportunities discussed for the industry to welcome refugees. It’s also big and getting bigger each year on LBGTQ with a great colourful hall for gay tourism offers. This year it had also revved up its focus on Women – championing womens’ achievements in travel and tourism with IIPT (the International Institute for Peace through Tourism) and that leads us to peace for the people too.
Every year we see ITB championing children through ECPAT and young entrepreneurs through the enormous Responsible Tourism Networking Event. And Hall 4.1 is a magnet for everything that’s new and a bit wild in tourism.
And ITB is big on Pioneers too – so it supported a number of big new events not in a back room somewhere but on their big new stage where the ToDo awards celebrated human rights in tourism and the Top100 Sustainable Destinations spotlighted great destination communities and the real passion behind tourism.
ITB may be sprawling and far too far from one end to another, there may be just too many people, the food and drink prices may be sky-high and my feet take at least a week to recover – but nowhere else in the world do you experience such big-hearted tolerance than in Berlin and at ITB!
Valere Tjolle.
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