Writing or just producing any type of media takes you on a journey. I have always been in love with travelling and in love with my country, Colombia. The process of writing these blogs have helped me, and hopefully helped anyone who read them, to reflect and change my perspective on travelling.
Being a privileged kid, I have always related travelling with consuming. Buying souvenirs, staying at the best hotels, eating excessively and sleeping until late had been for many years my definition of a perfect vacation. With more travel and more experience, that started to change as I was interested in knowing the places but I still think I had that consumer approach to it without realizing the impact of tourism. I have always been distracted and mesmerized by any detail or great view that I found, but maybe, not in appreciation to it, with discoverer view as if it did not exist before I arrived. I realized this while writing my first blog.
When realizing that I wanted to look for more, what was beyond those places? Writing my second blog I realized that more than just tourism is a way to preserve the culture of a place. In the Eje Cafetero (Colombia's coffee region) a big issue regarding coffee farms which affected Colombia's culture as coffee farming has been a tradition for many time in those parts of Colombia.
Thanks to this the eje cafetero decided to search for other economic activities to support the region like tourism. This meant for me that tourism no longer had a consumer responsibility but it also had a responsibility with the place, the people and their culture.
Tourism not only has a responsibility to people, but there is also much more affected. I realized that with my third blog post. Tourism, although it is a human activity, it is responsible for species and others. The Colombian rural dog, the Firulais, is one of them. Often overlooked but in my opinion essential for a complete touristic experience in Colombia. These small friends often live on the streets and depend on restaurants and shops to be fed. These shops, unfortunately, closed with the pandemic leaving stray dogs unprotected.
With my fourth blog post and my final blog post, I realized that although the touristic industry and all of those who depend on it have been deeply affected, something could be done about it. Through social media and communication, something could be done. Like Marca País Colombia showed, communication is key in selling ideas and changing the image of something and as glamping resorts showed, social media is a great platform to do this. The power of words, of communication, not only helped me realize more about tourism by helping me reflect but is also a tool necessary for it to succeed.
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