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Archaeology Travel Media

Archaeology Travel is a popular and award winning travel website aimed at people who like visiting archaeological and historical sites and museums. Until now the website provides information and tips about what there is to see in different areas around the world. As a business in the travel sector, we believe we have to be more actively involved in promoting and encouraging sustainable tourism. We are about to relaunch our website (December 2022) in which we forefront a tripartite mission: to inspire everyone to explore the world's pasts in more sustainable and engaging ways.

First, we promote the accessibility and inclusivity agendas, showing how everyone can explore our pasts whatever race, colour, national origin, religion, sex or sexuality, as well as abilities. Second, by taking an active role in tourism and sustainability discssions and initiatives as a business, we encourage our readers and members to adopt practices and behaviours that contribute to fullfilling the 17 sustainability development goals. And finally, we foster a deeper engagement with the world's histories, an attitude that has the realistic potential to feed back to the sustainability development goals. 

Our strategy is to go further than simply recommending our readers 'take nothing but photographs and leave nothing but footprints'. Our guides will not only list archaeological and historical points of interest, but also promote initiatives that foster a greater engagement with local communities and their sustainability initiatives. For example, in Sardinia an organisation we are working with is about to launch a SMART card for visitors to the Italian island that will allow them to explore a number of archaeological sites and museums. In principle, this card is not unlike the traditional 'city pass'. Integrated into the scheme, however, are initiatives offering visitors food, accommodation and other cultural experiences local to the attractions included in the pass. Such a scheme not only ticks many of the sustainable tourism boxes, it also allows for more engaging and rewarding experiences. Our guides then will allow our readers to make more informed decisions about the sites and museums they want to visit. 

Our vision is to work with relevant stakeholders to create a network of attractions, sites and museums that promote accessibility and inclusivity in their visitor profiles, adopt sustainable practices at their venues, and provide visitors with a more meaningful experience of the site or museum. Our work is to find initiatives such as the one described briefly above, not only will we recommend them to our readers but also share best practices with stakeholders in other regions and help communities develop similar initiatives that are locally suited to their needs and requirements within the sustainability agenda. 

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