UN Forum on Sustainable Tourism
On January 30th, 2024, the META Foundation participated in the Forum Discussion on Sustainable Tourism at the United Nations Headquarters, hosted by the UN SRC CTC. Executive Director Markus Schreyer was joined by leaders from the Solomon Islands, the World Bank, along with other notable hospitality and tourism brands to share their visions on a sustainable, responsible future, aligning with the UN's Sustainable Development Goals.
The META Foundation presented its approach to hospitality, being not just about making people feel welcome in a new place, but about creating systems and technologies that ensure our world can be a home to everyone, now and in the future. We shared our perspective that crises of humanity are crises of hospitality. From inhospitable environments, to societies which create loneliness and depression, to cultures driven by consumerism and commodification, the rapid adoption of new technologies with little regard for their impact on us and on our environments has turned us into bad hosts — and bad guests. Could a new understanding of hospitality bring us new tools to address these three crises? With emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Web3, and Spatial Computing, hospitality will become an interface and catalyst of exchange and connection — a frictive space of intersection of people and technology, of space and place and time.
We posed the following questions:
— Can AI models promote sustainable tourism, ensuring that popular sites and destinations can continue welcoming visitors without sacrificing the social and cultural fabric of local communities?
— Can Web3 decentralize profits from tourism, insuring equal opportunities to benefit from cultural heritage, and give power back to indigenous communities?
— Can Spatial Computing and virtual reality democratize travel, reaching typically disenfranchised audiences, from those who cannot afford to travel, to elderly or disabled populations?
Fully leveraging these new technologies, hospitality will serve as a catalyst for cultural immersion, community building, and meaningful connections, strengthening bonds between guests and hosts. Our upcoming Hospitality 3.0 framework, coming this spring, will dive further into our research and outline paths forward for more sustainable tourism and a more hospitable world.