![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ecotourism.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/surveyties0919industrysegment.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n\nWe knew we\u2019d have many tour operators and consultants\nresponding, but we didn\u2019t anticipate as few academics as we got, seeing as they\nmake up a larger percentage of our membership than they are represented by this\nresponse. Nevertheless, we have an\nexcellent response group and we learned some very important data. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
First, we learned that our respondents almost uniformly\nagree that ecotourism is growing rapidly. \nOnly 4 responses out of 971 or less than .5%, said they saw ecotourism\nslowing. The rest saw ecotourism growing\nand growing fast. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This falls in line with other recent surveys done by other organizations, some with much larger response sets, such as that recently done by Booking.com, that show rapid growth in sustainable tourism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We also learned that respondents preferred that we, TIES,\nsupport Spanish language content in addition to English, and a majority\nbelieved that ecotourism development in Spanish speaking countries was robust\nand important. French and Mandarin\n(remarkable because we received only four responses from China) were also highly\nrecommended, and 39 other languages proposed. \nIt is a strong goal of TIES to meet this request and roll out Spanish\nlanguage support across our website and our articles. We believe this will help us implement\nsupport for other languages as well in the future. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Our respondents had a lot to say about the challenges\necotourism is facing. Many mentioned\ngreed, overdevelopment, lack of knowledge, lack of awareness, climate change,\nregulations, difficulty with permits and financing, overtourism, and especially\nlack of traveler ability to book ecotourism fairly. TIES will detail work we and others are doing\nto combat these serious challenges soon. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n The most surprising opinions, for us, came from a question\nabout what initiatives TIES should be supporting. 41% of the respondents requested that we\nfocus on education, 18% told us to focus on conservation, climate change and\nconservation partnerships, 14% told us to focus on ecodestinations, wherein we\ndescribe national ecotourism offerings by country, 11% told us to focus on\npublications, and 9% told us to focus on social media. Very few requested we work on policy, UN partnerships,\necotraveler focus, and only six respondents suggested we focus on increasing\nmembership. We have reached out to\nseveral partners in the education space, and we\u2019ll detail our plans in the\ncoming months. <\/p>\n\n\n\n All in all, our respondents were optimistic about the future of ecotourism to meet challenges and continue to provide a better way to travel and experience the world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The International Ecotourism Society 2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n http:\/\/www.ecotourism.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We received 971 viable survey responses from 91 countries in every continent. We received the largest number of responses from the USA, but we were heartened to receive responses from Sudan, Palestinian territories, Israel, Venezuela, Bhutan, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Nepal, Cote D\u2019Ivoire and Iran, along with 80 other nations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16835,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-information","category-news"],"featured_image_urls_v2":{"full":["https:\/\/ecotourism.org\/besttours\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/ecotourismlake.jpg",400,264,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/ecotourism.org\/besttours\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/ecotourismlake-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/ecotourism.org\/besttours\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/ecotourismlake-300x198.jpg",300,198,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/ecotourism.org\/besttours\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/ecotourismlake.jpg",400,264,false],"large":["https:\/\/ecotourism.org\/besttours\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/ecotourismlake.jpg",400,264,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/ecotourism.org\/besttours\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/ecotourismlake.jpg",400,264,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/ecotourism.org\/besttours\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/ecotourismlake.jpg",400,264,false],"ab-block-post-grid-landscape":["https:\/\/ecotourism.org\/besttours\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/ecotourismlake.jpg",400,264,false],"ab-block-post-grid-square":["https:\/\/ecotourism.org\/besttours\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/ecotourismlake.jpg",400,264,false],"woocommerce_thumbnail":["https:\/\/ecotourism.org\/besttours\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/ecotourismlake-300x264.jpg",300,264,true],"woocommerce_single":["https:\/\/ecotourism.org\/besttours\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/ecotourismlake.jpg",400,264,false],"woocommerce_gallery_thumbnail":["https:\/\/ecotourism.org\/besttours\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/ecotourismlake-100x100.jpg",100,100,true]},"post_excerpt_stackable_v2":" We received 971 viable survey responses from 91 countries in every continent. We received the largest number of responses from the USA, but we were heartened to receive responses from Sudan, Palestinian territories, Israel, Venezuela, Bhutan, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Nepal, Cote D\u2019Ivoire and Iran, along with 80 other nations.<\/p>\n","category_list_v2":"Information<\/a>, News<\/a>","author_info_v2":{"name":"Ecotourism","url":"https:\/\/ecotourism.org\/besttours\/author\/ecotourism\/"},"comments_num_v2":"0 comments","featured_image_src":"https:\/\/ecotourism.org\/besttours\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/ecotourismlake.jpg","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/ecotourism.org\/besttours\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/ecotourismlake.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"Ecotourism","author_link":"https:\/\/ecotourism.org\/besttours\/author\/ecotourism\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ecotourism.org\/besttours\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ecotourism.org\/besttours\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ecotourism.org\/besttours\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ecotourism.org\/besttours\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ecotourism.org\/besttours\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16834"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/ecotourism.org\/besttours\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16849,"href":"https:\/\/ecotourism.org\/besttours\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16834\/revisions\/16849"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ecotourism.org\/besttours\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ecotourism.org\/besttours\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ecotourism.org\/besttours\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ecotourism.org\/besttours\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ecotourism.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/ecotourismgrowthbyrespodents.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n