Is tourism inherently exploitative and damaging to local communities? With Chris Christou and Mark Worden

Ever wondered if your photos ‘for the gram’ actually contribute to local problems? This episode tackles a massive question: Is tourism inherently exploitative and destructive to local communities? We enter the debate with the aim of showing you how to disagree better on the pros and cons of mass tourism and globalisation.

Welcome to the latest episode from The Bridge; A Disagreeing Well Podcast from University College London and Students' Union UCL, designed to arm you with a range of approaches you can draw on when navigating tricky conversations. Our goal isn't to make people agree but to explore techniques that can be used to have productive conversations, enable deeper understanding and empathy for those with different perspectives. 

UCL student host Lea Hofer leads a compelling discussion with two key stakeholders in the tourism industry, each with strong views: 

• Chris Christou, host of The End of Tourism podcast, argues that while tourism isn't inherently bad, the way we do it often creates major issues. He breaks down how the rise of short-term rentals (think Airbnb) can push locals out of housing, how "culture" can become a frozen spectacle for tourists, and the ecological damage from rapid development. Chris's take is all about giving local communities a real voice and democratic choice in how tourism impacts them. 
• Mark Worden, from MiHi digital and Visit Cornwall, champions a balanced approach to tourism. He highlights its power to create jobs (like for the 30% of people in Cornwall’s hospitality industry) and boost local infrastructure. Mark admits that "overtourism" is a real problem, especially with too many short-term rentals, but advocates for solutions like statutory registration schemes and prioritising sustainable, restorative tourism. He also suggests tourists should make the most of domestic tourism options. 

Our resident UCL expert mediator, Dr. Melanie Garson, masterfully guides the conversation. Even when Chris and Mark seemed to be on the same page, Melanie used "clarifying questions" to dig deeper, revealing subtle but important differences in their perspectives and visions for the industry. She reflects on how this technique allowed them to understand more what is behind each other's perspectives, proving that understanding how you disagree is key to constructive dialogue.

Key takeaways from this episode:  

• Mastering clarifying questions: Learn how to ask the right questions to genuinely understand someone else's viewpoint, even when their initial statements seem to align with yours. 
• Deconstructing complex debates: See how two experts, with different experiences (one living in a tourist hot spot, the other working in the industry), can hold seemingly opposing views but still seek common ground. 
• Embracing disagreement as progress: Understand that true progress isn't always about achieving consensus, but about deeply understanding the various perspectives and using that insight for constructive dialogue. 

Dive in to refine your ability to engage in productive disagreement.

This production was led by our student presenters, Lea Hofer and Tara Constantine, who are participants on Students’ Union UCL’s Impartial Chairs Programme. Find out more about the programme and how to apply if you are a student - visit Impartial Chairs Programme.

This is a Research Podcasts production for UCL.

Episode Credits
Presenter: Tara Constantine, UCL Impartial Chair
Guests: Albie Amankona and Nels Abbey
Producer and editor: Research Podcasts
Music: The Investigation by Pixabay
Artwork: Mayuko Yamaguchi, UCL undergraduate student

Further Reading and resources
The End of Tourism podcast hosted by Chris Christou
Visit Cornwall  

Creators and Guests

Host

Dr Melanie Garson

Melanie has been teaching on international conflict resolution and international security at UCL since 2010. She provides practical insights and thought leadership for policymakers across the full spectrum of cyber policy, tech geopolitics, and defence innovation challenges. Melanie is an accredited mediator and regularly provides commentary on geopolitics and tech in podcasts, webinars and at major media outlets including Bloomberg, BBC, Sky, CNBC, CNN, Fox News, France 24, and DeutscheWelle.

Guest

Chris Christou

Chris Christou is a writer, educational curator, and activist. In 2021, alongside friends and strangers, he organized and launched the End of Tourism Podcast.

Guest

Mark Worden

Mark is Director at MiHi digital and Visit Cornwall, with more than a decade of tourism marketing experience.

What is The Bridge: a Disagreeing Well podcast?

The Bridge: a Disagreeing Well podcast from University College London and Students' Union UCL tackles some of the most hotly debated issues of our time and provides practical techniques to bridge the divide between conflicting views. Each episode, our student hosts Lea Hofer and Tara Constantine, along with expert UCL mediator Dr. Melanie Garson, dive into a polarising question with informed and passionate guests with contrasting views. Tune in to better understand these critical debates, and equip yourself with the skills to have more meaningful conversations. Find out more at https://www.ucl.ac.uk/about/the-bridge

DW 1.3 Tourism Final

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Tourism exploitation, local communities, sustainable tourism, overtourism, short-term rentals, cultural impact, ecological issues, hospitality industry, local investment, infrastructure development, tourism taxes, community voice, domestic tourism, climate change, stakeholder groups.

SPEAKERS

Melanie Garson, Lea Hofer, Chris Christie, Mark Worden, Speaker 1

Lea Hofer 00:04

Hello and welcome to The Bridge; A Disagreeing Well podcast from University College London that tackles some of the most hotly debated issues of our time and provides us with the tools and techniques we need to disagree better about them. Communicating effectively with people whose views are different from ours, is hard, but there's never been a more important time to do just that. But how can we have more fruitful conversations that navigate rather than end in conflict? This is the question our podcast is seeking to answer. I'm Lea Hofer, a current student at UCL and your host for today's episode in which we're asking the question, is tourism inherently exploitative and destructive to local communities?

Chris Christie 00:51

There begins to be a massification. So people start arriving en masse. Governments usually tend to have to accommodate by developing extremely rapidly. With that, there's often a degree of inequality that arises because a lot of people are investing, other people are getting pushed out to the periphery, as I mentioned, in different ways, economically, physically.

Mark Worden 01:14

If I go back to when tourism is working at its best, and that is a balanced model, you have the tourists having a great guest experience. You have those working in the industry gaining jobs, creating local jobs, particularly in my area of the country, that's 30% of people in Cornwall work within hospitality and tourism, and then ideally, the local community gets increased infrastructure and local investment.

Lea Hofer 01:40

Traveling has become many people's favorite hobby. Influencers suggest one new travel destination after the other, promising adventure and relaxation, far away from everyday life and the chance to gain new perspectives on the world. For others, the negative impacts of travel and tourism simply outweigh those benefits. Joining us to discuss this are Chris Christie, presenter of the end of tourism podcast, and Mark Worden, Director of MiHi Digital who create marketing websites for small businesses in Cornwall. Mark is also a non-executive director of Visit Cornwall. But before we bring in our guests, I'd like to introduce you to Dr Melanie Garson, also from UCL, our resident expert mediator, who also teaches mediation and negotiation techniques. So Melanie, what will you be looking to get from the discussion today?

Melanie Garson 02:33

Thank you, Lea. We're looking at a really interesting discussion that people are very torn about, and will have conflicting views, and will be interested to find their own space in that view. I will be looking to see whether Chris and Mark are able to look beyond their position into the interests of each other, whether they're able to reflect that to each other, and whether there's a space for finding, can we make a greater difference sometime by working with the people we perceive we disagree with,

Lea Hofer 03:09

Those sound like really great things to look for in the debate. And I, myself, personally, I'm really looking forward to those local and global perspectives on travel and tourism, and to see how our two guests are weighing in on the topic, and how we can get a chance to have deeper insights in different perspectives. I'm also really interested in how you, Melanie, are bringing in your tips and tricks this time. Okay, I think it's time to bring in our guests and get the discussion going. Chris, the question we're asking today is, is tourism inherently exploitative and destructive to local communities? Can you kick us off by summarising your position on that question please.

Chris Christie 03:51

Sure. Yeah. Thank you. Leah, thank you all for the invitation. Personally, given my research and my time in living in a tourist destination. I don't think tourism is inherently anything. The people that I've interviewed on my podcast tend to focus in on a number of things. One is housing. There does tend to be in kind of free market tourist economy, short term rentals and the explosion of short term rentals over the last 5 or 10 years, especially with Airbnb, and what you have often is a number somewhere between 10% and sometimes up to 40% of the housing, the apartments and houses in a particular place that are no longer utilised for long term rentals, but in service to people, tourists, who are coming in, usually from from other places. And what it does, tends to do is it tends to push local people to the peripheries of cities, or into other towns and cities. There tends to be a revival of what we might call culture, but not necessarily culture making. So in the English speaking world, we often call this heritage, and it is, kind of follows the tendency towards culture being something that you're a spectator to, that you look at, that you see in museums, etc, that you can pay admission for. This economy, the spectacle, tends to kind of freeze a lot of that culture. And then, of course, we have ecological issues in which, when new airports or highways are created, you have noise pollution, traffic pollution, light pollution, and certainly the contamination of water. There are often, generally four stages in a touristification of a place. The first tends to be where people start to find out about this particular place for different reasons, and it hasn't quite reached a mainstream audience yet, and things are good for a time, then suddenly you start seeing this place, or it's, you know, particular attractions on top 5 and top 10 lists, National Geographic, Lonely Planet, for example, New York Times. And there begins to be a massification, so people start arriving on mass. Governments usually tend to have to accommodate by developing extremely rapidly in this context, with that, there's often a degree of inequality that arises because a lot of people are investing, a lot of people are getting pushed out to the periphery, as I mentioned, in different ways, economically, physically.

Lea Hofer 06:36

I think we'll get more into it in a little bit. Can you tell us something about how you came to hold that position.

Chris Christie 06:43

So in my 20s, I was a part time backpacker, more or less. I saved as much money as I could to travel for as long as I could, and at the end of that decade, I moved to Oaxaca, Mexico, which is a tourist destination, has been at least since I moved there. And I began working in tourism, so I began to see a lot of the consequences of tourism that I couldn't see as a tourist, as a backpacker, as someone who was kind of coming to a place for a very short amount of time and then leaving without really ever thinking of my place as a person of consequence there. In 2021 a lot of this kind of, you know, hostility that I was mentioning in part because of the pandemic was rising up in Oaxaca, and I wanted to find a way to approach and speak to other people about this in a way that honors the complexity and nuance and depth and diverse and disparate views around tourism, travel, migration, hospitality, etc.

Lea Hofer 07:47

Thank you very much, Chris. And Mark, can I ask you also to summarise your position on this question of whether tourism is inherently exploitative and destructive to local communities?

Mark Worden 07:57

Thank you very much for having me a lot of what I kind of, I think about in the industry and others that I work with, essentially a sense of balance, and the term exploitative is probably quite emotionally charged in this context. There's a there's a number of stakeholder groups, which, when tourism is working well and at its best, they can all benefit. So I think you've got the tourists, visitors to a location, so they're getting an experience. They're meeting new people, they're hopefully getting cultural experiences, although completely take on board Chris's point of view in terms of those perhaps being less kind of cultural over time, particularly as tourists visit the area. Then got those that work in the industry in the local area, so that's not just the accommodation providers, Airbnb owners, that's chefs, hospitality, often students. From a UCL perspective, I had my first job in hospitality working behind the bar. A lot of people have so I think that gives you ingrained people skills, hopefully a degree of patience, ability to put a smile on your face and take the rough of the smooth. And I think the final kind of group is the local communities that aren't involved in tourism. So those that sometimes are probably at the periphery of it and have to welcome large volumes or vast amounts of people to a local area, they obviously get the downside. So they get the increased traffic. But I think if I go back to when tourism is working at its best, and that is a balanced model, you have the tourists having a great guest experience, you have those working in the industry gaining jobs, creating local jobs, particularly in my area of the country, that's 30% of people in Cornwall work within hospitality and tourism, and then ideally the local community gets increased infrastructure and local investment, which I'll go on to later, but is a challenge. So when that's in kind of in step with each other, I think that tourism is good for local economies. Certainly, the local area that I live in would struggle without it. So you've either got tourism or you've got agriculture. I think where we run into problems is essentially when demand outstrips supply. So I specifically and the challenge with Airbnb is there, there is an oversupply there. So certainly in Britain at the moment, we're looking at bringing in something like a statutory registration scheme, which will reduce the number of properties that you can stay in, because there are too many on the market at the moment, and that's adversely affecting kind of the experience, and also those that have worked in the within the industry for a number of years. And ultimately, the future of tourism is about making sure that there is a balance there. I know I listened to one of Chris's podcast last week, actually, with the lady from Venice, and I think Venice is a great example of where, not only perception, but I think the balance between those three stakeholder groups has kind of gone out of sync a little bit with local communities suffering. It's kind of the model has gone a little bit wrong in that area and if you if you take other areas such as Machu Picchu, where, again, there is a level of what I refer to as overtourism, not tourism, but overtourism. I think that's where, where our struggle is. The future for all of those is just keeping them all in sync with each other.

Lea Hofer 11:12

Wonderful. Thank you so much Mark. I can sense that you're both very eager to get into the discussion, but before we get to that, I would also like to ask you, how did you come to hold that position?

Mark Worden 11:22

So I've lived in the southwest of England, which is one of the major tourism areas of the country. I worked in hospitality from the age of 14 or 15. So that was my first job as a waiter. I then got, I don't know if you're going to call this a promotion, but I certainly feel it's a promotion up to a bartender. So I've worked all throughout the hospitality area. Having graduated, I came back to the southwest of England because I love it and started working with tourism providers. So I've worked with more than 200 accommodation providers, predominantly in South West I'm also on the board of Visit Cornwall, which is the most popular tourism destination in the UK. And I also work with a number of other destinations that are kind of world famous, so Dartmoor, Exmoor, Dartmouth, and all those places. So the thing I take from that is the real people that are involved in the industry. Just give you a quick example. I've got a 75 year old lady that has been working in tourism for more than 40 years. She set up a beach clean on her local beach, and she now does more than 50 a year, she's walked southwest coast path. So a big thing that I want to advocate for is the future of tourism being sustainable and also restorative. And she's kind of at the heart of that in the local area. So very, very well known. So I guess the people that inspire me because they're there to give guests an incredible experience, whilst also being really, really conscious of how fortunate we are to kind of live in an area of the world that is stunning, beaches, countryside. We've got everything, so we want to make sure that's passed on to my children and their children in the future as well.

Lea Hofer 12:49

Thanks, Mark. So I think that gives us a really good feel for where the two sides of the debates are. Melanie, over to you to guide us through the rest of the conversation.

Speaker 1 13:00

Thank you so much Lea. Thank you so much, Chris and mark for sharing some of your history and how you came to this topic. I would like to ask Chris is there a question that you would like to put to mark to try and uncover more about how he perceives his vision of where tourism can go.

Chris Christie 13:29

A question regarding, you know, the future of tourism and sustainability and restoration that often comes up in the conversations that I have is given what happened to tourism as a result of the pandemic, to what extent can tourism be sustainable or restorative if it relies on the potential precarity of people arriving from other countries, other continents. And of course, this question is also kind of based in for a lot of people, the apparent climate issues, conditions, crises, some might say, collapse, that are involved in this. So is it possible to work around this? Is it necessary to do that? How would you perceive an adequate path forward for future generations?

Speaker 1 14:26

Thank you, Mark, and I can see that Chris had some quite vivid reactions to that, and I'm sure you've got a couple of follow on questions, but the Thank you. Was there anything that you wanted to ask to Chris in particular about his current experiences that you feel would be important to clarify in constructing your vision of sustainable tourism?

Mark Worden 14:26

I think having having listened to Chris's other podcast, I think the the kind of takeaway I often get is that local communities often, whether it's perceived or in reality, feel that they've been left behind by tourism. And specifically the lady in Venice, where you have an incredible amount of people visiting one place specific days of the year, and they do feel left behind. What do you think is the solution, or is there a solution for tourism to offer a better experience for those in the local communities that aren't directly involved with it? So I think the the first thing I would say is air travel is going to be a massive problem no matter what we do, and tourism is obviously a huge contributor to world travel. Thing I'd kind of start with is novel idea of actually exploring what's on your doorstep. So I've got a national park which is 780 miles squared, so huge. Dartmoor National Park, and I've got Exmoor National Park. So I've got two stunning areas. I've got 120 beaches within 100 miles of here. So I mean, incredibly fortunate. Have I explored enough of that area? Area? No, I haven't, and I think the answer for a lot of people is often the same. So I think if you look at UK travel, specifically, there's so many of us that haven't experienced everything that England has to offer, but we will instantly hop on a plane. And I think the reason for that is guaranteed sunshine. I completely appreciate that, but I think there is a big notion in promoting domestic tourism. So our tourism board Visit England currently gets no funding for domestic tourism. Their whole funding model from the DCMS is based around getting international travel into London and then from London, pushing it outwards. So that model, to me, is broken. I would ideally like to see a lot more inward investment, and even to the extent that the government, at present don't currently count domestic tourism as GDP. So if I were to go on holiday in Bath, York, Yorkshire, Lake District, Peter district, or if I just pop up the road to Dartmoor, they don't see that as a product of our GDP, which is a massive, massive issue because it's completely under selling the the importance of domestic tourism. So I think domestic tourism does have a massive role to play in reducing globalization and travel. I think is there a sort of golden bullet for solving climate change? Probably not, because air travel is inherently very, very carbon heavy. I can't say that. I do have a golden bullet, as I said to to that solution other than I think we all need to start by exploring what's close to us, because most people do live in incredible countries, and we're all fortunate to whether that's Spain, Portugal, Italy, the whole of Europe, to be honest, there's some incredible stuff out there that's very close to home. So I think we all need to have a kind of better mindset in terms of traveling domestically, enjoying what's on our doorstep, and making long haul travel certainly less frequent than it currently is.

Chris Christie 17:40

If I can interrogate the question a little bit for a lot of people that I interview, especially the kind of local activists that you know, like the one that I interviewed in Venice, a lot of the issue is that there is no sense of choice within the tourist economy in their place. So in terms of having them be a part of it, I mean, democracy would certainly be a good first step. Now, of course, that varies quite intensely from place to place. You know that woman who I interviewed, she was mentioning that the Mafia, the Italian Mafia, is very much involved in in that part of the world, and in tourism and where I live in southern Mexico, thankfully, not so much exactly where I live, but in certain parts, unfortunately, you have a lot of Narco trafficking involved. Narco Cartel is involved in that as well. So I think it comes down to a degree of choice and democracy and a willingness for governments to invite in discussions like these, dialogs, forums within the communities, to decide whether tourism is something they want in their communities, and if so, what kinds of tourism? And I think a lot of this boils down to a question of hospitality. I also worked 15 years in that industry, and I left it because I found it to some degree quite hollow, in the sense that hospitality was something that was kind of mass produced, where you were made to work as if that was the case, rather than having the ability to with others, find out what that looks like and how you want to be in relationship with others, both strangers and those in your local community.

Melanie Garson 19:33

thank you, Chris for those reflections, and if I may summarise your question, but I think there was a call out that two factors made for me, one is, how do equitably empower communities, or to be part of the conversation about the tourism that's happening with their areas on one level and the second level to have, in some ways, a more meaningful hospitality industry that seems to be more focused on the end goal and the good of the surrounding places. Would that be an accurate reflection of the question Chris?

Chris Christie 20:10

I mean, I wouldn't say necessarily meaningful in terms of putting a value judgment on what kind of hospitality is better or more important, but the ability of local people to decide that for themselves from a kind of grassroots level that doesn't that isn't necessarily imposed on them.

Melanie Garson 20:28

Mark, have you, in your experiences, encountered any solutions to this?

Mark Worden 20:33

I think at present, if you're in a community that you are experiencing over tourism, which I don't think we are in, fortunately, in my part of the world. But if you look at other very, very popular destinations driven by social media and historically, very, very popular side. Earlier I mentioned Machu Picchu, I think the problem that the local communities have there is that they only see the downside. And I think having a voice is important. But I also think a greater degree of the revenue from tourism, staying within those communities and seeing real change in terms of infrastructure improvements and some sort of upside is important. So I think if you look more globally at tourism taxes, so if you land in the Caribbean, you spend a certain amount, if you land in Spain, you spend a certain amount that's often not being plowed back into those local communities and just generally being redistributed by central government in terms of funding the area. I think they're then going to see some of the upside, rather than, you know, we're just overpopulated at certain times of the year, which happens to be the best times of the year, or there's a lot of traffic, which, again, goes back to infrastructure and development. So in Cornwall, specifically where I live, we have one main tributary road into the county, which is the A30 that's just been improved. But we need more improvement in in infrastructure. And Chris touched on the point of housing earlier, which is, which is a massive one, specifically in in my area the world, we need more housing. And there is no, there is no simple, simple solution to that, other than a statutory registration scheme to push some of those people that are not good tourist accommodation providers or are not adhering to the same regulation that professionals have to moving them out of the tourism market into the domestic market would be advantageous in terms of pricing in low community that said, not all of the pricing issues in terms of housing in my part of the world is due to tourism. A lot of it is due to second home ownership. It's a beautiful place to live, and affluent people do want to live here. They want to see and see we're four hours from London. They want to come down at the weekends. And there's very little you can do to stop that in our society. So it's a it's a tricky one, but I think if communities that do have over tourism, not just tourism, but over tourism were to be able to be invested in, specifically from local investment and infrastructure projects, they would see some direct benefit, which I think then gives you a feeling of voice without that direct kind of communication channel. If that makes sense,

Melanie Garson 22:55

I want to give Chris a moment to respond to that, but particularly be interesting in relation to what Mark said in your experience of talking to people? Have you seen any or has anyone shared good examples of where over tourism has been dealt with. Have you seen any particular insights where you know best practice? What does good look like?

Chris Christie 23:19

In terms of over tourism, I think the jury's still out. There's, you know, a number of cities and towns who have, as Mark said, levied tourist taxes on people. I think it's against too early to tell how, how that money's being used, how it's being spent. Venice has something like a quarter of a million people, and there's something in the range of 6 million that visit every year. So I don't know what that looks like, personally, I've never been. But I can imagine, right? And I imagine just because someone pays that tax doesn't mean that there's less over tourism. So at the moment, you know, the simple answer is, no, I haven't seen examples of over tourism being combated to the extent that it is, quote, no longer over tourism. Barcelona, from what I understand, decided that, you know, I think in a year or two, they're going to be prohibiting banning Airbnb, maybe that includes short term rentals in general. You know, there's a lot on the proverbial plate in terms of what might be done. From what I've seen, there's a lot of governments and tourist bureaus or ministries, they don't want to scare away tourists, they don't want to risk a loss in revenue. So I think that whatever steps are being taken currently, typically, you know, in southern Europe, it tends to be, so far, tend to be kind of window dressing, kind of, let's do this as minimally as possible, step by step, to ensure that the bottom line isn't compromised, which, of course, is understandable, but at the end of the day, might not change very much.

Melanie Garson 24:52

Well, thank you for that. I would love to continue this conversation, to actually move it forward and see how we could visualise a solution to this problem, but it is now my turn to hand back to Lea.

Lea Hofer 25:05

what a great discussion. We'll be sharing some more reflections at the end of this episode. But for now, Chris, how did you feel about how Melanie was guiding you through all of that? And are there one or two key things you take away about disagreeing well around these questions of the negatives and positives of travel and tourism,

Chris Christie 25:26

Yeah, I think in these conversations, moderation is always a key, key factor, not only in you know, how I proceed or how Mark proceeds, but an actual moderator, right, in the centre is it's always important. Dialog is important, but you know, if we can engage in plural logs where there's there's multiple, multiple views, and not just two. So it doesn't appear that there's a degree of opposition. Because I think at the end of the day, from what little I've listened to mark, it seems that we, you know, both want to live and help to live in worlds that are healthy and sane and hospitable. So I think that, yeah, a degree of ambivalence, not collapsing into good or bad, positive or negative, is extremely important from my own perspective. You know, I think I used to be a very dogmatic person, and I could easily say that the more I learned about a particular subject, and of course, tourism is one here. The less dogmatic I became, the less positive and negative I saw, the less good and bad, the more I was willing to understand different points of view and hold them up together, even if they were opposing as being true at the same time. I think that's really important. And thank you very much for disagreeing well, and I think it's an incredible project.

Lea Hofer 26:42

Thank you. And Mark, same question to you, what were you feeling during all that, and what one or two key things do you take away?

Mark Worden 26:51

I think the question itself can be quite polarising, in terms of, is tourism inherently exploitative? But as with most things in life, nothing here is is kind of black and white, I think there's challenges that the industry faces. And as I said, I think those are largely when, when those stakeholder groups have fallen out of balance. I think where there are challenges, as long as you're looking for solutions, then you're always going to come to some level of agreement. And I think, as Chris said, we both want to live in a world where we have natural resources that people can enjoy without the sacrifice of others I think. For tourism, it's not exploitative at its heart, it does have challenges. I think those are more on a global scale, rather than the domestic area in which I live in which is pretty reasonably in step. But there are solutions to be had out there, and as long as you're talking to people that don't have the same opinion as you, you're likely to to find better solutions than in an echo chamber.

Lea Hofer 27:50

Mark Worden and Chris Christie, thank you both very much for coming on to our podcast today. So Melanie, time now for you and I to reflect on what we've heard and learned today. Can you explain a bit about the technique you were using there, how it played out, and any other reflections or tips you have for our listeners?

Melanie Garson 28:08

For those who've listened to the conversation, at the outset, it might not have been obvious where there was difference. Although it was actually a very polarising topic in its title, both came to the conversation with some ideas that seem to have quite a lot of convergence between them. So what I wanted to use a conversation for was to help each clarify where interests were, and perhaps because they both have a strong sense of vision to then show where there's possibilities that they could work together, or where there are ideas in the ecosystem to work together going forward. So what I was trying to use, if you notice, rather than me asking a lot of questions, was the concept of using clarifying questions, using questions to understand when I can dig deeper into what another person's thinking was about. So do a little bit of guided questions. The power of a good question is a really important part of any conversation, and particularly when to have that technique sometimes in conversations that don't seem as fiery or polarizing, but to actually sometimes develop that technique in what, it's sometimes a safe environment is really, really important. So that's what I was trying to get each of them to do. And as you heard, it sort of sparked some really interesting ideas for both of them, and you could begin to see where there was pathways where they could continue that conversation. So part of this would be urging people. People to take on just in any conversation. You know that part of active listening? We talk a lot about active listening, but part of active listening is asking a really good question to help dig deeper, to enable your listening more. So Leah, what did you take away from this conversation,

Lea Hofer 30:22

I'm completely with you that I at times found it pretty hard to make out where they were actually disagreeing in the conversation, because it was so very much on eye level I found, and they didn't really oppose each other's points of view. But then I also noticed that how asking each other questions helps them to maybe find their disagreements a little bit. Or that's the sense that I got from it in the very end. I would have loved to see if there would be more disagreement coming up, even to get to further ideas of or, yeah, ideas of a future of sustainable tourism.

Melanie Garson 31:02

Absolutely, and it's sometimes that's always a challenge in these conversations, are you going to make it worse by asking too much. But sometimes that's also part of the problem, when we perceive that somebody disagrees with us, that sometimes you do have to dig down a little bit more understand where it's coming from, open up a little bit of pathway to fully understand the whole breath that's underpinning that person's perspective or those person's interests. It's asking those questions that help us dig deeper into people's perspective and understand them and see the difference, but not just see the difference, but really understand where those differences are coming from. Again, in a longer conversation, I think we were beginning to hear it, we were beginning to hear the experiences of working in hospitality. So both of them had those long experiences of working in hospitality, but to come to slightly different perspectives due to that, and I think that was really important to see that those are the functions of these kind of deep, clarifying questions.

Lea Hofer 32:19

So almost as if disagreement is part of the process of understanding each other.

Speaker 1 32:26

Understanding the disagreement can also be the part of constructive change.

Lea Hofer 32:32

Thank you to our guests, Chris Christie and Mark Worden, and our expert mediator, Dr Melanie Garson, and thank you for listening. We hope you enjoyed the discussion and picked up some tips for disagreeing well. If you have a comment or a question on anything you've heard, please drop us a line at [e-mail]. You can find out more about UCL's Disagreeing Well campaign on the UCL website, or follow us on LinkedIn and bluesky using #UCLDisagreeingWell. Please do subscribe wherever you receive your podcasts to access earlier and forthcoming episodes. Final thanks to Students' Union UCL and the UCL podcast team. This is a Research Podcasts production.