Tour guiding career and local community support: academia and practice Tour guides are tourism professionals who interpret the attractiveness of their country including the culture, lifestyle, and natural landscape to visitors from abroad. The tour guides help the local culture stay alive because they safeguard local culture and heritage. By expressing the value of their destination they encourage local cultural preservation by both the local community and the tourists including the tangible and intangible cultural heritage. Tour guides play a variety of functions while they introduce their region to tourists. They serve as cultural moderators, promoters of local products and services, and local community supporters. This webinar brings together academia who are specialized / and practitioners of tour guiding to discuss the tour guiding career and its support to the local communities in tourism destinations. ...

Impacts of climate change on tourist destinations Climate change has come to the fore as a global issue, threatening the livelihood of the human being. The brunt of climate change is vividly presented by a series of events in various parts of the earth. Tourism destinations, which largely rely on the beauty of nature as a way of enticing tourist demand, are inescapable from the effect of climate change. For example, in the Arctic, the pace of temperature increase is twice as faster than that of non-Arctic regions, wearing off the food chain feeding polar bears. This panel is to stroke scholarly discourses on the resilience and adaptation strategies coping with crisis from climate disasters through case discussions transpiring in California, Queensland, and Nordic regions. ...

Sustaining Globally Important Agriculture Heritage Systems through Tourism Globally important agriculture heritage systems (GIAHS) by UNFAO safeguards traditional agriculture systems and showcase the life in harmony with nature. It designates sites with unique agricultural and plants biodiversity. Traditional agriculture is the main source of livelihood for GIAHS communities and tourism is an option. A unique agriculture system makes GIAHS sites different from other agriculture landscapes. GIAHS program has a mandate to promote mutual support and synergy between agriculture and tourism through public and private sector involvement for sustainable tourism. UNFAO coordinator and specialist in charge this program will explain the background, concept and dynamic conservation strategies of GIAHS. The panel, discuss sustaining GIAHS through tourism and the way forward. The next webinar(s) invites representatives form various GIAHS sites around the word to learn from their experiences and challenges of sustainable GIAHS tourism development. ...

Your Destination, My Hometown: Community Well-being in Tourism The webinar discusses the impact of tourism on local communities. Guest speakers from the public sector, community groups and scholars from Macao and Mainland China will share their perspectives and experiences on how responsible development of tourism can bring prosperity to local communities while unmanaged growth may lead to social, environmental and economic consequences that residents have to live with long after the tourists are gone. Creating a dialogue between residents and visitors, and helping them understand their roles in promoting community well-being is fundamental in achieving sustainability for the destination. A special community project conducted in Azheke, Yunnan Province, China with pro-poor initiatives will be introduced. It illustrates how proper and inclusive tourism development has brought economic and social benefits to a local community and empowered the villagers to pursue growth while preserving their culture, heritage and environment. ...