Taylor on Travel

Two days in Tunisia is enough to gauge the tourist areas are safe. It appears they were never anything but. Some visitors were sufficiently unconcerned to remain in resorts throughout the revolution.

Nine UK visitors returned to Gatwick and 16 to Newcastle on the first Thomas Cook flights home last week, having been out since at least mid-January. They were offered flights back with British Airways or Tunis Air but chose to stay.

A group of British golfers with a trip planned for January 14-17 also declined to cancel, telling staff at the Phoenicia Sentido hotel in Hammamet: "We have been planning this for eight months." Forty-two Norwegian tourists at the Kanta Hotel in Port el Kantaoui also declined to leave.

So how does the country appear now? I flew into Monastir last Wednesday on the first Thomas Cook flight in from Gatwick since January 14. Nearby Sousse appeared quiet, with normal traffic on the roads and pedestrians on the roadside. It was a picture that did not vary around Hammamet, Nabeul and on to Tunis.

At the Dar Khayam Hotel in Hammamet staff are happy for guests to walk the 50-minute route to the medina. We drive, on the way passing couples hand in hand, people chatting by the roadside, busy pavement stalls, groups of well-turned out school kids and fashionably dressed young women. The crowds have something in common - they are all smiling. There appears to be a lot of laughter in the Tunisian revolution.

The 500-year old Hammamet Medina is quiet at mid-morning, but it is spitting with rain and the tourists who have returned are only just stirring. The businesses in the medina are clearly overjoyed to see people.

A shop worker tells me: "Tunisia is calm. We are happy about the change. For 20 years the family of the president tried to eat everything. Now is better. The season is just beginning. The English are beginning to return." He adds: "I have a wife, a baby. I work here on commission. If I don't sell, I don't eat."

As we leave the medina, our guide and translator Zeid says: "Before January 14 you needed permission to bring a journalist into the medina." The police would have checked anyone taking notes, he says.

In the capital Tunis there is some evidence of recent events. Barbed wire surrounds the former internal security headquarters on Avenue Habib Bourguiba, the Champs Elysees of the city. There are a handful of armed troops, armoured cars and a water cannon outside. Protestors vented their fury at the building at the end of February. It is a place where people were tortured and disappeared.

There is damage to the pavement caused by a tank at the end of Avenue Bourguiba, near the entrance to the medina. But the cafes are busy and nine out of ten shops open, the pavements bustling with happy faces, the crowds in the medina welcoming.

We walk through to the Zitouna Mosque at the medina's heart, resisting the entreaties of shopkeepers, then return to bustling Avenue Bourguiba for coffee in a café surrounded by excited people watching a live press conference with their interim prime minister Beji Caid Essebsi. The optimism is tangible, the excitement contagious. Tunisia is awakening.

I have visited the country before and enjoyed every minute, but enjoy more ordinary contact with people in a few hours now than in days previously.

If the revolution leads to the democracy it appears to promise, Tunisia could become a fabulous place to visit. There is no reason whatever to avoid a resort holiday in the country. Tell your clients - now is the time to go.

It strikes me a good tour operator can offer something more substantial than Atol protection in such times. The Thomas Cook reps and ground-handling staff of Tunisian Tourism Services (TTS) are Tunisian or married to Tunisians, resident many years. They are part of Tunisian society - they feel the revolution.

It is theirs. So the company back in Peterborough has no difficulty gauging the situation. It has people on the ground. That is the beauty of the tour operator model and a good ground handler.

Rep Ondine Parnell tells me: "People never thought they would be able to vote. Now they are so excited. My husband says: 'I'll be able to vote'." She has had the past seven weeks off and is glad to get back to work. "I'm very happy," she says. "The atmosphere is fantastic."

Makram of ground-handler TTS tells us: "There is an opportunity now for the future. Tourism will be more easy. Before, it depended how much you gave to the [president's] family."

Thomas Cook was still cancelling most excursions and reps advising against travel to Tunis last week. But such restrictions should ease quickly.

A single note of caution - revolutions are complex processes. They move back and forth as the balance shifts between contending forces.

The democratic elements in Tunisian society are in the ascendant now, but that may not continue unchallenged. We must see whether tension returns around the elections scheduled for late July that will lead to a new constitution.

My guess is it might, but I would not hesitate to visit Tunisia now or in the future. The force is with the people and they are making history. It is a marvellous time to visit.

German trade show ITB runs a series of conference programmes alongside its 20-odd halls of exhibitors, each on three floors, making it not only the most exhaustive but most exhausting event of its kind in the world.

Yesterday saw the corporate social responsibility and sustainable tourism programme. The industry has come on in leaps and bounds in this area, but I have to say I found the tone of some sessions complacent.

The industry is entitled to congratulate itself on its progress over the past few years and there are individuals in various companies and organisations deserving of high praise for their efforts to get sustainability taken seriously and then taken mainstream.

But my god there is a long way to go. Thomas Cook's German chief executive Peter Fankhauser was right when he told the audience: "There is evidence that clients are unwilling to spend more [on sustainability]."

That is not what many of us would like, but it is because a lot of people are on tight and shrinking budgets and they believe they pay quite enough already. Prices may sometimes bear little relation to costs - air fares really should be priced at levels to cover fuel, aircraft, safety, airport use, emissions, wages and so on - but it is where we are.

So it is frustrating to hear simple assertions that there is consumer demand for sustainable practice without any supporting evidence. There is some consumer demand - that is obvious - but how much mainstream demand is there? The survey results are ambiguous. They depend on the questions asked and how these are framed. It would be wrong to say there is no interest in the environment - there is a high level of concern. But it is not clear this translates into changed behaviour.

There is also a marked difference between what people say they do, or intend to do, in surveys - in other words, what they do in theory - and what they do in practice. You don't need to be in travel to understand this. It is the reason sales of fresh fruit and vegetables do not match consumer claims for the amount they eat. It is the reason your doctor does not believe you when you tell her or him how much alcohol you consume in a week.

When we look at what people do, the picture contradicts the claims of those arguing for sustainable practice as though the level of demand resembles the tide coming in.

Consider one example. The UN Global Sustainable Tourism Criteria established in 2008 include respect for workers' rights  - such as the right to belong to a trade union. The biggest airline in Europe, Ryanair, does not recognise trade unions. Some of those sitting through the CSR sessions at ITB in Berlin will have flown to the city with the carrier. People choose it primarily on price.

I'm not having a dig at Ryanair over sustainability or anything else - though there are reasons why one might. Its aircraft are pretty new, so the carrier's emissions per passenger kilometre will be among the lowest on the routes it flies, and god-knows Michael O'Leary would not spend more on fuel than he has to. Its total emissions will be high, of course - it has a lot of aircraft in the air most of the day and the number continues to grow.

Ryanair's passengers are clearly not put off by the fact that the airline does not recognise trade unions. So it seems reasonable to ask what this might tell us about consumer behaviour. It might suggest people care more about price than about an aspect of the working conditions of those who provide the service they are paying for.

It is also worth asking what this might say about potential attitudes to workers in resort and what, therefore, it might require to make progress.

When I tried to ask a question on these lines in a session at ITB, I got a response from the three CSR experts on the platform that amounted to "we're not going to get into Ryanair" and an assertion that consumers want to see corporate social responsibility. I was surprised and disappointed.

Probably I put the question poorly. But come on, O'Leary is a lot of things but he is not bothered by criticism, definitely likes an argument and is not known for being litigious - after all, it costs money. And if sustainability is in a silo, it's in trouble.

Filmed in a Tunis cafe on March 4, 2011, on the first Thomas Cook departure to Tunisia after unrest in the country died down.