Tourism Review International, Vol. 11, pp. 329–347 1544-2721/08 $60.00 + .00 Printed in the USA. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2008 Cognizant Comm. Corp. www.cognizantcommunication.com 329 Address correspondence to Dr. Brent Lovelock, Department of Tourism, University of Otago, PO Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand. Tel: +64-3-479-8069; Fax: +64-3-479-9034; E-mail: blovelock@business.otago.ac.nz OBSTACLES TO ETHICAL TRAVEL: ATTITUDES AND BEHAVIORS OF NEW ZEALAND TRAVEL AGENTS WITH RESPECT TO “POLITICALLY REPRESSED” DESTINATIONS BRENT LOVELOCK Department of Tourism, University of Otago, New Zealand This article examines the attitudes and behaviors of New Zealand travel agents in relation to providing travel advice for destinations that have known human rights abuses. A postal survey was undertaken of travel agencies throughout New Zealand. Generally, while supportive in principle of ethical travel, travel agents do not operationalize this concern in terms of their workplace behavior (e.g., continu- ing to sell products for destinations that have known human rights issues). A range of workplace and personal factors appear to be influential in the way in which travel agents behave. However, the primary obstacle acting against travel agents participating more actively in ethical travel is the ethical dissonance imposed on the ethical decision-making situation through the agent’s obligation to give credence to their clients’ rights of freedom of choice over where they travel. Key words: Travel agent; Ethical travel; Ethics; Human rights; Destination; New Zealand 1) in explaining what may be a new paradigm for the industry. However, the extent to which actions promoting such moral or ethical travel have been adopted and operationalized by industry practitioners such as travel agents is still unclear. This is an important issue, espe- cially as the tourism industry (as do other industries) operates increasingly in an environment where a range of stakeholders, including NGOs (nongovernment organizations) (e.g., Tourism Concern) along with a growing segment of the traveling public are seeking greater ethical behavior (Tearfund, 2000). Much of the research into tourism industry ethics, however, paints a discouraging portrait of the indus- Introduction Ethics in the Tourism Industry It has been implicitly recognized that ethics form the very foundation of sustainable tourism for some time—at least within tourism academia. Since the early 1990s, writers such as Elkington and Hailes (1992) have been promoting the idea of a consumer revolution in tourism, building the case for holidays that are ethical in the sense that they purposely attempt to reduce their social and environmental impacts. In a similar vein, Butcher (2003) describes what he sees as a contemporary moralization of tour- ism, introducing the term, “new moral tourism” (p.