80 Years of UNESCO: What It’s Meant to Suppliers, Travel Advisors & Travelers

This year, UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) will celebrate 80 years of working to protect our world’s natural and cultural spaces. The organizations’ work has had an immeasurable impact on the modern travel industry. Without UNESCO’s work, much of what travelers can experience wouldn’t be possible.

“The work that they’ve done over the 80 years has made it possible for us to have an industry,” Scott Nisbett, CEO of the Globus family of brands, told TMR.

“UNESCO World Heritage Sites play a vital role in the travel industry, as they attract millions of visitors annually,” said Graham Carter, CEO and co-founder of Unforgettable Travel Company, adding that the income generated from visitors tot these sites “creates employment for thousands of people working in travel and hospitality around the world.”

“A lot of the UNESCO World Heritage sites are some of the world’s most famous sites, they’re the icons that people want to see…,” added Claire Hanney, managing director of travel experiences for TTC Tour Brands.

She praised UNESCO for its “forward-thinking nature all that time ago.”

Sites like the Angkor Archaeological Park in Cambodia, the Old City of Dubrovnik in Croatia, and the Ngorongoro Conservation Area in Tanzania, are only what they are today because of active restoration efforts enabled by UNESCO.

“Without UNESCO designation and protection, many historical and natural sites are likely to have suffered from neglect or overdevelopment, diminishing their cultural and environmental significance,” Carter explained.

When talking about the impact that UNESCO has had on the travel industry, we’re mostly talking about the last nearly 50 years, from the time the Organization launched the World Heritage list in 1978.

Only 12 sites were on the list at the time. Today, there are more than 1,000 sites designated as a World Heritage site and protected.

“You look at that list and that is the travel industry” Nisbett said. “”The World Heritage list is the ultimate bucket list.”

Just looking at the first 12 sites included on the list reveals a number of places that rank high on travelers’ bucket lists – Galapagos Islands and Yellowstone National Park – or are featured on virtually every tour that visits the local destination – Aachen Cathedral in Germany and Krakow in Poland, to name just a few.

The World Heritage List & Itineraries

Tour operators look to these lists to help build out their itineraries.

“UNESCO has put these destinations on the map for us,” said Melanie Carsjens, director of shore excursion operations and product development for Holland America Line.

“Every tour, every river cruise that we have has a World Heritage site, every single one,” Nisbett added. “We have nearly 400 sites in our portfolio.”

“UNESCO is a mark of quality and that gets our attention,” Jess Peterson, director of destination experience and itinerary planning at Windstar Cruises, told TMR. “As we’re planning, if something is a UNESCO site, whether it’s natural or cultural heritage, as soon as I know there’s a UNESCO site, I think we have to go see it to see if it’s worth including in our itinerary.”

As an example, he told TMR about planning out new itineraries for Windstar’s new Asia sailings.

“One of my first filters was to go to the UNESCO website and see what all the UNESCO sites are in that country… It’s a helpful starting point,” he said.

“For Holland America, our guests are explorers, they are inquisitive, they are collectors. And that’s one thing that UNESCO does deliver is a collector’s item,” Carsjens said.

“Because of the variety and because of the number of them, there are so many that are available and accessible to us [a cruise line],” she added. “In many instances, we can encompass our deployment and our itineraries to give our guests an opportunity to visit multiple sites in multiple destinations.”

Many of the ports cruise lines visit are chosen specifically because there’s a UNESCO Heritage site nearby.

“Think Kusadasi,” Carsjens said. “Why would we go there, but the fact that UNESCO has highlighted this specific site [Ephesus].”

For TTC Tour Brands, which has near 200 World Heritage sites on itineraries across its brands just in Europe alone, the UNESCO list doesn’t so much serve as a starting point as it does a list of places it needs to approach carefully.

During the research stage of determining what to include in a new itinerary, when planners find that a site has a UNESCO heritage site, they take the time to determine the best way to visit there.

“… the seasonality of the tour, how many guests we’re bringing in, the time of day we bring them in, and all those kinds of things, to make sure that it’s going to be ultimately best for the site and best for the guests and they’re not impacting it,” Hanney said.

It’s on a visit to a UNESCO Heritage site than many of the company’s MAKE TRAVEL MATTER activities occur.

“As a tour operator we’ve got a responsibility to conserve them for future generations,” she explained.

Authoritative & Trusted

Whether people understand the specifics that go into a site receiving a UNESCO World Heritage designation or not, there’s an implicit understanding that these sites provide a quality experience.

“The UNESCO designation indicates that the destination takes it seriously, which is to say that they manage it properly and that there are standards,” Peterson said. “If something is a UNESCO site, not only do we take it more seriously, but our guests take it more seriously. All we really need to say is it’s a UNESCO site and they’ll trust us enough to go there.”

“For Insight Vacations, we actually highlight them on the map and show these are all the UNESCO World Heritage sites,” she said. “They want to seek these sites and go to them.”

Carsjens agreed, telling TMR about an overland trip to Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania and a UNESCO Heritage site, that Holland America Line offers.

“We could have sent guests to a town called X, Y, or Z, but there’d be no interest… The fact that Vilnius is a World Heritage site, our guests see the importance of going there so they will, for want of a better word, sacrifice one night on board our ship. They will pay to stay in a hotel even though they’ve paid for a night onboard our ship, so that they can see that particular site. If that site was not recognized by UNESCO, then it’s unlikely that they would consider that.”

Proof of Expertise

While UNESCO sites don’t play as much of a part in the role of a travel advisor, they can help augment an advisor’s “proof” of expertise, especially with clients who don’t know much about the destinations they want to visit.

UNESCO Heritage Sites “offer an enhancement for us the travel advisor to make the suggestion, this is something you might want to visit… And they appreciate it, that’s what we’re there for,” said Donna Greenspan, owner of Travel Quest Inc.

And, like the others we spoke to, Greenspan told us when you mention that something is a UNESCO site, “it piques their interest,” and can make clients more interested in a guided or private tour.