Robert Govers's Blog, page 3

Imaginative European Community: Keynote

Listen to the audio-recording of my keynote speech at the Tourism Talks in Antwerp (November 22, 2018) celebrating the 70th anniversary of the European Travel Commission, with special thanks to Visit Flanders and the commission and its team for inviting me (and for providing the above picture).

Keynote Speech at ETC Tourism Talks, Antwerp, November 22, 2018

Here's the text:

It is a great honour to celebrate the European Travel Commission’s 70th birthday with you. I am not that...

Imaginative Tourism Communities

Imaginative Communities are often successful tourism destinations. Through my collaboration with Evan Jordan, Tourism professor at Arizona State University and travel blogger/podcaster, some of the reasons for this were revealed. Please check out the fruits of our partnership.

Check Evan’s podcast to listen to our conversation: Episode 11: Imaginative Communities: Why some destinations captivate and others do not

Check Evan’s guest blog post on imaginativecommunities.com: Imaginative Communit...

Imaginative Communities and Intelligent Travelers: A Perfect Match

Guest blog post by: Evan Jordan

Full disclosure, the author of Imaginative Communities, Robert Govers, was an advisor of mine during a semester of my Master’s degree studies I spent at the Catholic University of Leuven. However, I seek to be as objective as possible in my writing, and this guest blog post is no exception!

My name is Evan Jordan. I’m a tourism professor at Arizona State University in the United States. I’ve also created a travel blog and podcast, called The Trip Doctor, aimed...

Calatramachismo, CRAP, Green-washing, Fashionable Poverty and Future Boredom

About a year ago I was handed this mysterious cardboard box . I had not seen it before, yet it had my name on it. In it I found this book published by The Why Factory; a pamphlet that introduces a set of twelve urgencies that are endangering the future of our built environments. It is also an invitation to “imagining a solution” to fight boredom. The parallels between the thinking presented by the Why Factory and in my own writing of IMAGINATIVE COMMUNITIES are, on occasion, striking. I will...

Globalisation Pushes Communities to be Imaginative

Today people are uprooted and they question the meaning of place. Is the USA still the land of freedom and opportunity? Is Paris still the city of romance? The United Kingdom a global power of significance? Holland the model country for a progressive tolerant world, with Amsterdam as the capital of open-mindedness? Syria and Iraq’s Mesopotamia the cradle of civilisation? Rio de Janeiro the party capital of the world? The Himalayas the centre of spirituality?

Emerging communities

At the same t...