Tourism likes to call itself an industry of peace. On Monday, September 21, the world marks the International Day of Peace. For travel and tourism, the question is more demanding than the slogan: What is the industry actually prepared to do for peace?
The United Nations marks the International Day of Peace on September 21, and the 2026 theme is “Invest in Peace — For Everyone, Everywhere, Every Day.”The UN says this year’s observance recognizes the “everyday architects of peace” — people whose actions build stability and understanding from the ground up.
For the global travel and tourism industry, that message has particular meaning.
Few industries move as many people across borders, cultures, religions and political systems as tourism. Every flight, hotel stay, guided tour and shared meal potentially creates an encounter between people who otherwise might never meet.
But does travel automatically create peace?
Leaders associated with the International Institute for Peace Through Tourism (IIPT)say no. Travel creates an opportunity. What governments, destinations, tourism businesses, travelers — and the media — do with that opportunity determines whether tourism builds bridges or merely generates arrivals.
IIPT brought many of these questions into focus during its recent 40th-anniversary Virtual Global Summit, held on September 10. The organization describes the summit as the beginning of a year-long anniversary program and has connected the milestone directly with the International Day of Peace.
Ajay Prakash: Invest in peace, not simply tourism
For Ajay Prakash, IIPT Global President, the starting point is human connection.
His International Day of Peace message argues that tourism’s greatest asset is not simply its economic contribution but its human value. Travel brings people with different languages, traditions and worldviews face to face. In that encounter, he argues, fear can be replaced by familiarity and suspicion by understanding.
This goes directly to one of IIPT’s founding ideas: every traveler is potentially an Ambassador for Peace.
Prakash’s message also challenges the tourism industry to think beyond jobs, arrivals and economic growth. He calls for an industry that creates connections, respects cultures, protects communities and rejects hatred and prejudice.
The word potentially may be the most important part of IIPT’s famous Ambassador for Peace concept.
Travelers can return home with greater understanding. They can also return with their prejudices untouched. Tourism can connect communities, but badly managed tourism can exploit them. International visitor numbers alone are therefore no measurement of tourism’s contribution to peace.
Alain St. Ange: Peace needs credible and responsible tourism
Former Seychelles tourism minister and Ambassador-at-Large Alain St. Angeapproaches the issue from another direction: credibility.
His message warns against measuring tourism success principally through visitor volume. Tourism, he argues, can strengthen communities or gradually erode them, and economic reach should not be confused with meaningful impact.
That brings sustainable development directly into the peace discussion.
Tourism can preserve heritage, create employment, strengthen local economies and give communities new opportunities. But St. Ange also asks what happens when cultures are packaged primarily for visitor consumption and the people whose heritage is being marketed receive too little of the benefit.
His answer is community ownership: communities should have the right to tell their own stories, participate in decisions and receive a fair share of tourism’s benefits.
It expands the meaning of Peace Through Tourism. Peace is not only the absence of conflict between countries. It also depends on fairness, dignity, participation and economic opportunity within destinations.
Geoffrey Lipman: Tourism once sat at the peace table
For Geoffrey Lipman of SUNx, Peace Through Tourism is not an abstract theory.
Lipman recalls his involvement in Middle East tourism discussions during the 1990s, including meetings involving Israeli and Palestinian leaders. His account describes a period when tourism was being considered as a practical area in which former adversaries might build mutually beneficial economic cooperation.
According to Lipman, discussions produced three important conclusions: former enemies could work together, tourism could help reinforce peace, and joint tourism ventures could create opportunities for young Israelis and Palestinians.
Those plans did not materialize as envisioned amid subsequent political changes.
But the underlying idea remains significant: tourism can potentially provide an economic reason for people to cooperate even where politics divides them.
Lipman now connects that thinking with CanadaStrong.travel, which he describes as an attempt to translate the earlier vision into practical tourism development connecting travelers with local businesses and communities.
Ignacio Packer: The most important borders may be inside us
From Caux, Switzerland, Ignacio Packer, Executive Director of Caux Initiatives of Change, adds another dimension.
Travel, he says, can help people cross not only geographical borders but the internal borders created by fear, prejudice and assumptions.
Caux has spent decades bringing together people from societies separated by conflict, religion, politics and history. They live together, eat together and engage in conversations that may be difficult or impossible elsewhere.
Packer sees an opportunity to take the IIPT Peace Park concept further by connecting Peace Parks into an active network involving communities and young people.
His proposed measurement of tourism is strikingly different from the industry’s conventional scorecard: not simply how far people travel or how much they spend, but whom they encounter, what changes inside them and what they understand differently when they return home.
That may be one of the most useful definitions of Peace Through Tourism in 2026.
Juergen Steinmetz: Peace Through Tourism also needs a free press
My own contribution to IIPT’s 40th anniversary addressed another part of the equation: information.
Before travelers encounter another country personally, most encounter it through news, social media, search engines and increasingly artificial intelligence.
Information can build a bridge before a traveler arrives. It can also destroy that bridge before someone ever boards an airplane. A destination can be reduced to the word “dangerous,” a population described as “hostile,” and millions of ordinary people made indistinguishable from the actions of their government.
That is why independent media should be considered part of the infrastructure of Peace Through Tourism.
Travel journalism faces a particular problem. Tourism media work closely with destinations, tourism boards, airlines, hotels, governments and advertisers. The industry naturally wants positive stories.
But journalism cannot become public relations simply because uncomfortable reporting may hurt a commercial relationship.
Tourism needs journalists willing to ask whether local communities benefit, workers are treated fairly, travelers are genuinely safe, statistics are credible, minorities are welcome and journalists themselves are free to report.
There is another responsibility.
Political conflict should not automatically become hostility toward entire populations.
Travel journalism can criticize governments without demonizing their citizens. It can report war without declaring an entire nationality the enemy. And it can tell stories about hotel workers, guides, taxi drivers, restaurant owners, students and families whose lives rarely fit neatly into political narratives.
Such stories will not stop a war.
They may, however, make hatred a little more difficult.
Peace Through Tourism 40 years later
IIPT was founded four decades ago around what was then a radical proposition: tourism could have a higher purpose.
The organization developed Peace Parks, planted trees, convened conversations and promoted the idea of travelers as ambassadors for peace. Forty years later, the challenge may be to turn that philosophy into something more operational.
- Peace Through Tourism in 2026 can mean community ownership.
- It can mean creating economic cooperation across political divisions.
- It can mean young people from opposing communities meeting one another.
- It can mean travelers questioning their own assumptions.
- It can mean tourism organizations defending human dignity and dialogue.
And it can mean independent journalists refusing to turn people into stereotypes simply because governments are in conflict.
The United Nations’ 2026 message points in much the same direction. Secretary-General António Guterres says peace is built not only through governments but through volunteers, advocates, civil society, peacekeepers and people working within their own communities.
- Tourism belongs in that ecosystem.
- But tourism does not create peace simply because people cross borders.
- It creates the possibility of peace when people cross borders and actually encounter one another.
- Perhaps that is the most relevant message for this International Day of Peace.
- A passport can get us into another country.
- An airline can take us there.
- A hotel can give us somewhere to sleep.
But Peace Through Tourism begins with what happens after we arrive — when a stranger gets a name, a nationality gets a human face, and someone we were taught to regard as “the other” becomes someone with whom we share a conversation, a meal, a story or a cup of coffee.
Bead Brode: Happy International Day of Peace
IIPT respectfully observes this special day, celebrating four decades of initiatives and meaningful progress toward a more peaceful world. For 40 years, our organization has worked to bring people and events together in the spirit of peace, and we are deeply grateful to every volunteer who shares this vision and brings it to life.
The Virtual Summit held on September 10 th was just the beginning of a year-long celebration of IIPT’s 40th anniversary, with many more exciting events to come. Stay tuned for updates and join us as we continue to advance the cause of peace through tourism!
Bea Broda: Editor & Communications
That is tourism’s opportunity. And in 2026, it may also be tourism’s responsibility.
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