Barbados featured in new sustainable travel documentary series released on World Tourism Day 

CEO of Barbados Tourism, Dr. Jens Thraenhart, announced that destination Barbados is featured in Sustainable Travel: Where Next?

This is an all-new documentary series released today by Sustainable Travel International. The series highlights how the global travel and tourism sector is taking action to protect our planet and its treasured destinations, showcasing Barbados’ sustainability efforts as one such example. The series debuts as the international community celebrates World Tourism Day and acknowledges the important role that tourism plays in sustainable development.

Using high-end cinematography, Sustainable Travel: Where Next? takes viewers on a different kind of a journey, exploring sustainability initiatives that are transforming tourism all around the world. The series is a collection of 16 short-form documentary films produced by Zinc Communicate, a Zinc Media Group company, each spotlighting a different tourism destination or organization. From the beaches of Barbados to the urban heart of Norway, the series brings to life uplifting stories of conservation, regeneration, inclusion, empowerment, and resilience.

In recent years, awareness of tourism’s impacts reached an all-time high, with travelers becoming more cognizant of the burden that the traditional model of tourism was placing on sensitive places and overvisited communities. Sustainable Travel: Where Next? offers hope for the future and embodies this year’s World Tourism Day theme: ‘Rethinking Tourism.’ From farm-to-table culinary experiences to recycling and reuse programs, each episode showcases real-life examples of sustainable travel in action and emphasizes the local voices behind these efforts. 

“This series aims to captivate and inspire viewers to take action within their own lives or professional roles to further sustainable travel,” said Paloma Zapata, CEO of Sustainable Travel International. “Over the past two years, people spent a lot of time looking back and reflecting on the harmful effects of tourism and everything that’s gone wrong. Now is the time to look forward and as we do so, it is more important than ever to be telling powerful, uplifting stories that encapsulate the positive side of tourism, and its potential to conserve our planet and create social benefit.”

The series includes an episode focused entirely on Barbados’ sustainability efforts, including how it’s working collaboratively as a community to propel the country forward through the current climate crisis.  

Speaking on Barbados’ inclusion in the documentary, Thraenhart stated that “It is a major accomplishment for Barbados to be included in this important global documentary, besides other destinations including Edmonton and Victoria in Canada, Park City, Utah, Vail, Colorado and Sonoma County, California in the USA, Oslo in Norway, Ljubljana in Slovenia, Australia, Denmark, and St. Kitts as the only other country in the Caribbean, on one hand to position ourself to the increasing share of travelers that want to travel more sustainably, especially young people, but also as a catalyst to drive our sustainability journey to mitigate existential threats like climate change,” he said.

To mitigate the environmental footprint of the film production, Zinc Communicate is partnering with Sustainable Travel International to offset the main sources of carbon emissions: crew flights, accommodations, and ground transport. 

Sustainable Travel: Where Next? can be streamed online at sustainabletravel.org/where-next and is also available on Sublime Magazine. The Barbados portion of the documentary can be viewed here.

BARBADOS

The island of Barbados offers a unique Caribbean experience steeped in rich history and colourful culture, and rooted in remarkable landscapes. Barbados is the home of two of the three remaining Jacobean Mansions left in the Western hemisphere, as well as fully functional rum distilleries. In fact, this island is known as the birthplace of rum, commercially producing and bottling the spirit since the 1700s. Each year, Barbados hosts several world-class events including the annual Barbados Food and Rum Festival; the annual Barbados Reggae Festival; and the annual Crop Over Festival, where celebrities such as Lewis Hamilton and its very own Rihanna are often spotted. Accommodations are wide and varied, ranging from picturesque plantation houses and villas to quaint bed and breakfast gems; prestigious international chains; and award-winning five-diamond resorts. In 2018, Barbados’ accommodation sector captured 13 awards in the Top Hotels Overall, Luxury, All-Inclusive, Small, Best Service, Bargain, and Romance categories of the ‘Traveler’s Choice Awards’. And getting to paradise is a breeze: the Grantley Adams International Airport offers plenty non-stop and direct services from a growing number of U.S., U.K., Canadian, Caribbean, European, and Latin American gateways, making Barbados the true gateway to the Eastern Caribbean. Visit Barbados and experience why for two years in a row it won the prestigious Star Winter Sun Destination Award at the ‘Travel Bulletin Star Awards’ in 2017 and 2018. For more information on travel to Barbados, click here, follow on Facebook, and via Twitter @Barbados.

Media Contact: Keisha Springer, Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc., [email protected]