Ecology and SUSTAINABILITY

Ecology, green technologies and achievement of SDG in the modern world have attracted a lot of interest in different areas, especially in tourism. However, the connection between technological development and achievement of the listed goals is hard to detect and, usually, is not realized by touristic community. In many cases the ambition to be in the popular trend leads to minor changes. In this scenario changes are made for the fact of making changes, which rarely results in anything meaningful. Such actions are known as “the effect of a cocktail straw”, meaning the similarity to the effect when replacement of plastic straws is overvalued and considered to be huge step towards sustainable and ecological development. 

There is another problem regarding development.  Nowadays, it became common to treat sustainable development as some innovation and digital technologies, that would operate on their own. However, the reality is not that simple. Technologies and new gadgets on their own do not bring automatic solutions to all real problems. This is why it is important to figure out how to use and implement digital technologies in order to achieve SDG. Of course, it is important to understand that sustainable development and achievement of new knowledge lead to new technological opportunities. However, professionals in the area of tourism already start asking – what could they implement in their hotel, touristic firm, visit center or DMO?

There is clearly not enough information on how digital technologies can help to achieve SDGs in the tourism industry, although such mechanisms should already exist and are likely being implemented behind closed doors. In this section we try our best to publish latest news and trends about ways to achieve SDG with the help of smart tourism. We are constantly working on adding new content.