Its instigator and initial co-ordinator, Alison Stancliffe, was motivated by her experiences when teaching and travelling in South East Asia,[2] where she became concerned that tourists were contributing to economic exploitation in poor regions of the world.
From this point on, Tourism Concern's awareness raising and campaigning was undertaken largely online,[12] reaching out to a global audience through its website, with over 20,000 visits in March 2013, and its e-newsletter, which had just under 10,000 subscribers worldwide in the same month.
In 2014, facing an increasingly difficult financial climate and the loss of its free premises, Watson moved the organisation’s operations completely online, disposing of the unique library and reducing staff.
Despite these difficulties Watson and colleagues produced a regular blog and campaign petitions; and several more reports and digital briefing papers were published before he resigned his post in March 2018.
Members also funded a short film released on YouTube in January 2018, Casas sin Familias,[15] linking the mushrooming holiday rental sector with the housing crisis in Barcelona.
After Watson’s departure, research on the damaging impact of uncontrolled accommodation booking platforms on city communities continued, but so did the trajectory of dwindling membership and core funding.
[18] Tourism Concern director Patricia Barnett said "We can no longer just stand aside and watch destinations suffer whilst they have no voice on whether British tourists can visit them or not.
Major achievements: Noel Josephides, the Managing Director of tour operator Sunvil, said that Tourism Concern has been "like a small dog snapping at the heels of the industry.
"[3] Tourism Concern's first major campaign was spearheaded by a ground breaking report, 'Beyond the Green Horizon', written for the United Nations Rio conference of 1992.
A hard hitting campaign called 'Our Holidays their Homes' uncovered injustice around the world and led to a report linking tourism to human rights for the first time.
[27] Information from a subsequent tsunami related project among coastal communities in India, which was funded by DFID, played an essential part in the Water Equity in Tourism (WET) campaign, launched in 2011.
The research report for this campaign drew on contacts made in India, alongside those provided by a think-tank of international NGOs brought together by Tourism Concern.
[31] In March 2014 at the House of Commons in London Tourism Concern launched a new research report on 'The Impacts of all-Inclusive Hotels on Working Conditions and Labour Rights'.
[32] A further piece of work, an online survey of consumer attitudes to all-inclusives, was completed in late 2014 and formed part of a developing strategy to engage more directly with tourists and travelers through the website.
In the 2010s new research triggered a campaign to highlight the cruise industry's troublesome impacts on destinations and working conditions on board ships, accompanied by a briefing, 'Cruise Tourism - What's below the Surface?'