Get Involved

Blogs

Home
-
Insights
-
Blogs
-
Every Traveller an Ambassador for Peace
Our story October 2026 6 min readBy IIPT

Every Traveller an Ambassador for Peace

A traveller watching the sun rise over a mountain valley

In 1986, the United Nations International Year of Peace, a small group of tourism leaders made a bold claim: that travel and tourism could become the world’s first global peace industry, and that every traveller is potentially an Ambassador for Peace. Forty years later, the International Institute for Peace through Tourism (IIPT) is still making that case, and the world needs it more than ever.

A question born from research

IIPT’s story begins not with a slogan but with research. In the mid-1970s, the Government of Canada commissioned L.J. D’Amore and Associates to carry out the world’s first comprehensive study of the future of tourism. By the early 1980s, its TOURSCAN research program was tracking a troubling picture: environmental decline, a widening gap between rich and poor nations, Cold War tensions and rising terrorism.

Founder Louis D’Amore began asking a simple question. If tourism was set to become one of the largest industries on earth, could it also become a positive force for a better world? As terrorism aimed at travellers peaked in 1985 and 1986, industry leaders reached the same conclusion from the other direction: without peace, there is no tourism.

Vancouver 1988: a higher purpose for tourism

IIPT’s First Global Conference, “Tourism – A Vital Force for Peace”, brought 800 delegates from 68 countries to Vancouver in 1988. It introduced the idea of sustainable tourism four years before the Rio Earth Summit, and it set out a “Higher Purpose of Tourism”: promoting international understanding, cooperation among nations, a better environment, the preservation of heritage, poverty reduction and the healing of the wounds of conflict.

Peace is more than the absence of war. It is something we build every day, within ourselves, with one another and with the earth.

That idea has guided everything since: seventeen international conferences and summits, more than 450 IIPT Peace Parks on six continents, declarations adopted by the United Nations and UNWTO, and awards that honour people who prove the idea works.

From big ideas to everyday choices

Conferences and declarations matter, but IIPT has always believed that peace begins with the individual. That is why it wrote the Credo of the Peaceful Traveler, eight simple commitments that any traveller can make. Read them as a checklist for your next trip and they become surprisingly practical:

  • Journey with an open mind and gentle heart. Leave room in your plans for conversations you did not expect.
  • Accept with grace and gratitude the diversity you encounter. Notice differences without ranking them.
  • Revere and protect the natural environment. Travel lightly, and leave places as you would want to find them.
  • Appreciate the cultures you discover. Learn a few words of the local language and the story behind what you see.
  • Respect and thank your hosts. Hospitality is a gift, not a transaction.
  • Offer your hand in friendship. One honest exchange can change how two people see each other’s countries.
  • Support travel services that share these views. Choose operators, hotels and guides who invest in their communities.
  • Encourage others to travel in peace. Share what you learned when you get home.

Why it matters now

In his message for IIPT’s 40th year, Global President Ajay Prakash put it plainly: tourism alone cannot stop wars, but it can help ease the conditions that allow division and misunderstanding to grow. Conflict fractures trust between nations; tourism rebuilds it, person by person and experience by experience.

That is the quiet power of the Ambassador for Peace. You do not need a title or a conference badge. You need curiosity, respect and the willingness to see the world through someone else’s eyes, and then to bring that understanding home.

Take the next step

Download the Credo of the Peaceful Traveler and take it with you on your next journey, explore the Seven Dimensions of Peace, or read the full IIPT history.

All articles Download the Credo

Keep reading