The tourism industry is built on a desire to see and share the world, experiencing diverse places, people, and cultures. As you read our content on the topic of diversity and inclusion, you’ll see us mention this idea often, and that’s because we believe it to be at the core of our industry.

While we all intend to be inclusive when we get into the tourism industry, our unconscious biases and blind spots can result in the exclusion of certain travelers. In order to promote diversity and inclusion, we need to prioritize understanding travelers, their needs, their limitations, and what we can do to better serve them. 

This type of work takes many forms, from making your tours more accessible to hiring diverse employees and ensuring all your marketing materials are inclusive. This guide offers an overview of how you can start to promote diversity and inclusion in your business. 

It Starts Within

There have been plenty of studies on the benefits of having a diverse workforce, showing that it leads to higher adaptability, innovation, increased revenue, and better performance overall. If your workforce is not diverse, it’s going to be difficult for you to see things from a variety of perspectives and make your business more inclusive. 

Having a diverse tour guide group, for example, can help you identify ways in which your tour route, equipment, or the information shared on your tours could be more inclusive for travelers with different accessibility needs or from different parts of the world. It can also help you understand the fears and concerns some travelers have to contend with, like not knowing whether they’ll feel welcome at a certain destination due to the color of their skin. 

It’s also important to weave in local culture and historical context into tours and activities. Even when that history is fraught with complex topics like colonization, we need to acknowledge it both to do the locals justice and to educate travelers. For example, a Louisiana plantation tour that doesn’t discuss slavery would be leaving out a crucial part of the area’s history, to the detriment of visitors as well as the memories of those who were enslaved on the plantation.

In popular destinations, operators need to balance the desire to show off their beautiful part of the world with reducing or eliminating the negative impacts of over-tourism. Take every opportunity to support the local economy by making decisions that benefit rather than strain it. This could mean working with local vendors, taking your guests to local eateries, and employing local tour guides. Additionally, operators need to consider the environmental impact of travel and how they can mitigate it and educate travelers on sustainable tourism. 

All Are Welcome

Once you’ve considered the internal diversity and inclusion of your business, you’ll be better prepared to ensure your tours and activities are accessible and welcoming to all your customers. People often think accessibility means accommodating people with physical disabilities, but this is only one piece of the puzzle. 

To truly achieve accessibility, you need to think in terms of universal design, a principle that aims to create an environment that can be accessed and used by everyone, regardless of age, size, or ability. This includes travelers with chronic illness and other medical conditions, families with young children, travelers who don’t speak the language, senior travelers — anyone and everyone who would want to experience your tours or activities. 

The only way for your potential customers to know that your business is inclusive and accessible is if it’s reflected on your website, marketing materials, and anywhere else they might encounter your business. Start with your website by adding alt text to your images, adding closed captioning to your videos, and taking other steps to make sure it can be easily navigated by those using assistive technology or screen readers. Learn more on our guide to accessible websites. 

Next, turn to your marketing materials and ask yourself if they’re genuinely inclusive.

• Do the photos reflect the diversity of your customer base?
• Do they convey that your business is welcoming to people of all ages, races, ethnicities, abilities, and sexual orientations?
• Do they take into account the cultural context of your location?

Without knowing it, some of your marketing materials may have a negative impact on your brand. This is precisely why it’s essential to challenge ourselves with these questions and discover how we can improve. 

We Grow Together

We’ve discussed some actionable steps you can take to make your business more diverse and inclusive, but it takes a collective effort to improve our industry as a whole. By connecting with other leaders in the industry and sharing our challenges and successes, we can have a larger impact. 

Use social media networks like LinkedIn and industry conferences like FareHarbor Spark to learn about how other tour operators and industry leaders are promoting diversity and inclusion, and highlight those who you think are doing good work. There is so much we can learn from each other, and by engaging in these discussions, we can share different perspectives and grow together. 

In your local community –

• Connect with and support the businesses that are just as committed to diversity and inclusion as you are
• Get to know your partners and vendors and spend your money where you feel like you can have the most impact. For example, if you offer lunches on your tours, consider working with a business that uses local ingredients and supports local farmers rather than a big national chain. 

Ongoing Efforts

The steps outlined in this guide are just the beginning. Making your business and our industry more diverse and inclusive is an ongoing process that starts with evaluating what you’re currently doing and how you could improve, and it doesn’t end once you’ve put a few measures in place. We should always be thinking about how we can help to ensure the tours and activities industry makes every single traveler feel welcome!