Good news in tourism December 15 – 20, 2019

Wel­come to The “Good Tour­ism” Blog’s sum­mary of six days of good news in the world of travel & tour­ism. Pub­lished on Sat­urday this time — because “GT” is trav­el­ling on Sunday — to be ready on Monday, it’s the per­fect start to a work­ing week — or week off if that’s what you are doing. Whatever your cir­cum­stances, share the joy!

In no par­tic­u­lar order: 

Phil­ip­pines’ old­est and largest cor­por­ate con­glom­er­ate is reportedly being res­isted by the res­id­ents of a small town. 

Good news? Yes, because com­munity stake­hold­ers are speak­ing up. And it could evolve into very good news for every­one, includ­ing the con­glom­er­ate, if the suits of Ayala Corp are will­ing to listen. 

The May­or of the Muni­cip­al­ity of Sagada, James Pooten, said: “If we need tour­ism, it must be nature-based tour­ism that sup­ports the devel­op­ment of small busi­nesses for the bene­fit of all sec­tors in the community.”

Aviation

Canada’s Har­bour Air, a small Van­couver-based air­line, made his­tory this month with the world’s first all-elec­tric flight of a com­mer­cial air­craft. The flight was only four minutes — the Wright broth­ers’ first flights were less than a minute — but it was of a six-pas­sen­ger DHC‑2 de Havil­land Beaver sea­plane mod­i­fied to run on a 750-horsepower elec­tric motor (see fea­tured image above). 

UK engin­eer­ing com­pany Rolls-Royce has unveiled a single-engine elec­tric air­craft, which it hopes will become the world’s fast­est all-elec­tric plane. While not for pas­sen­gers, the plane is part of the Accel­er­at­ing the Elec­tri­fic­a­tion of Flight (ACCEL) ini­ti­at­ive to make elec­tric avi­ation a com­mer­cial reality.

USA’s Depart­ment of Energy’s (DOE) Advanced Research Pro­jects Agency-Energy (ARPA‑E) has announced that US$55 mil­lion in fund­ing will go to two pro­jects to sup­port the devel­op­ment of low-cost elec­tric avi­ation engine technology.

DM&MO — marketing and management 

High sea­son too busy? Low sea­son too quiet? It’s time to flat­ten out those curves. It’s time to get cre­at­ive. Seattle, cap­it­al of Wash­ing­ton state, USA — the home of grunge music, Boe­ing, and ‘bucks cof­fee, among many oth­er things — has Seattle Museum Month in Feb­ru­ary. Vis­it­ors who stay in par­ti­cip­at­ing hotels receive 50% off admis­sion prices to more than 40 museums, art gal­ler­ies, and cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions. While Feb­ru­ary is the depths of winter, brows­ing gal­ler­ies and col­lec­tions tends to be an indoor activ­ity. Feb­ru­ary also hap­pens to coin­cide with the cheapest airfares.

Greece’s new 10-year stra­tegic tour­ism plan to 2030 is based on “sus­tain­able devel­op­ment, diver­si­fic­a­tion of the tour­ism product, sea­son expan­sion, the emer­gence of new des­tin­a­tions, the enhance­ment of the value added product, which will lead to salary raises for the sector’s work­force, and strength­en­ing the country’s image in inter­na­tion­al mar­kets” accord­ing to Tour­ism Min­is­ter Harry Theoharis.

Phil­ip­pines’ Depart­ment of Tour­ism (DOT) is no longer just a glor­i­fied advert­ising agency under Tour­ism Sec­ret­ary Ber­na­dette Romulo Puyat. “When I entered the DOT [in May 2018], Bor­a­cay had just closed in April. Since we opened it, we have been rehab­il­it­at­ing oth­er tour­ism des­tin­a­tions […] When you look at the DOT, it [was] more of the pro­mo­tion of our sun and beach, but now we have focused more on rehab­il­it­a­tion and sus­tain­ab­il­ity efforts, togeth­er with the DENR [Depart­ment of Envir­on­ment and Nat­ur­al Resources] and the DILG [Depart­ment of the Interi­or and Loc­al Government].”

Bar­ba­dos’ Ambas­sad­or to the Carib­bean Com­munity (CARICOM) and the Asso­ci­ation of Carib­bean States (ACS), Dav­id Comis­siong, reck­ons his nation and the wider Carib­bean region should embrace sus­tain­able hotels and sus­tain­able tour­ism. He said a sus­tain­able tour­ism industry would focus on more than the tra­di­tion­al sea and sun. Such an industry would recog­nise that the entire island of Bar­ba­dos, includ­ing its people, his­tory, her­it­age, arts, and cul­ture, was the product.

The new five-year tour­ism policy for Karnataka state in India will include niches, such as well­ness tour­ism, adven­ture tour­ism, eco­tour­ism, med­ic­al tour­ism, spir­itu­al tour­ism, and cul­tur­al tour­ism. Tour­ism Min­is­ter CT Ravi hopes niches will “impact the mul­ti­pli­er effect through sec­tions of soci­ety, from jobs to pre­serving her­it­age to improv­ing infrastructure”.

Pilgrimages

Israel’s Tour­ism Min­is­ter Yariv Lev­in has called for extend­ing the open­ing hours of the Church of the Holy Sep­ulchre to help shorten the queues of Chris­ti­an pil­grims with­in and out­side the church. Mean­while, Arch­bish­op Pier­bat­tista Pizza­balla, the apostol­ic admin­is­trat­or of the Lat­in Pat­ri­arch­ate of Jer­u­s­alem, reportedly said that while the Mad­rid cli­mate change con­fer­ence was “unsuc­cess­ful”, it should not stop loc­al and indi­vidu­al efforts. “As the num­ber of pil­grims increases, the desire for green pil­grim­ages is also increasing.”

Tour­ism stake­hold­ers in Tiruchirap­alli, the fourth largest city in India’s Tamil Nadu state, are explor­ing the untapped poten­tial for Chris­ti­an, Hindu, and Muslim pil­grim­ages from domest­ic and inter­na­tion­al source markets.

Culture & heritage

The Roy­al Com­mis­sion for AlUla hopes to trans­form the ancient city of Hegra, and the AlUla Val­ley in which it sits, into “a world­wide cul­tur­al and tour­ist­ic des­tin­a­tion”. A region the size of Bel­gi­um in Saudi Ara­bia, AlUla is “full of archae­olo­gic­al treas­ures from the Dadan­ite, Nabatae­an, Roman and Islam­ic civil­isa­tions, nestled amongst stag­ger­ingly beau­ti­ful desert land­scapes”. Read all about it from this stun­ning web­site.

Accord­ing to its Tour­ism Min­is­ter Kadakam­pally Surendran, India’s Ker­ala State gov­ern­ment will come up with a new her­it­age tour­ism pro­ject link­ing import­ant sites in and around the coastal town of Vadakara, includ­ing Lokanarkavu temple and Thazhe Angadi market.

When expect­ing vis­it­ors, one tends to tidy up. And so tour­ism is the reas­on giv­en for revital­ising the mar­ket square of Kil­dare, Ire­land; to “upgrade it in a way that con­nects the town’s her­it­age assets”. May­or Suz­anne Doyle reck­ons Kil­dare can com­pete with “the Kilkennys and Kil­lar­neys of the tour­ism world”.

The York­town Land­marks Pre­ser­va­tion Com­mis­sion is devel­op­ing an app that it hopes will help gen­er­ate her­it­age tour­ism. York­town is in New York state, USA. Com­mis­sion Chair Lynn Briggs said her­it­age or cul­tur­al tour­ism is the fourth largest industry in New York state.

Non-smoke industry! “Boast­ing a long list of tan­gible and intan­gible cul­tur­al her­it­ages, the north­ern province of Bac Ninh [in Viet­nam] has huge poten­tial to devel­op its non-smoke industry”, includ­ing “green tour­ism […] based on nature and culture”.

Eco- & nature-based tourism

An estim­ated 83% of Earth’s pop­u­la­tion live under light-pol­luted skies. So if they want to see the stars they have to travel! “Ast­ro­tour­ism” or “dark sky tour­ism” is a thing.

Moun­tain gor­illa pop­u­la­tions in the Demo­crat­ic Repub­lic of Congo, Rwanda, and Uganda are on the rise. There are now at least 1,069 indi­vidu­als liv­ing in the wild. And a care­fully-man­aged eco­tour­ism industry, such as this example, is cred­ited with help­ing to sup­port con­ser­va­tion efforts.

Since UNESCO declared Berbak-Sem­bil­ang Nation­al Park in South Sumatra, Indone­sia a world bio­sphere reserve in 2018, tour­ism has become an urgent pri­or­ity for loc­al admin­is­tra­tions keen to cash in. For­tu­nately there are those on the ground who recog­nise that the fish­ing vil­lages in the area require waste man­age­ment infra­struc­ture and that the people need more time to pre­pare for the great opportunities.

A water­fall, a boat ride, a trek, and, most import­antly, a vil­lage in Cam­bod­ia. These are ele­ments of a tour through “one of the few places in the King­dom that has remained untouched and unex­plored”. The vil­lage col­lects 10,000 riel (US$ 2.50) per per­son plus 5,000 riel for side­t­rips to the vil­lage cemet­ary. Guid­ing ser­vices and boat rent­al are more luc­rat­ive at US$ 15 for a guide and US$ 25 for a boat. All told it’s a decent, though wildly incon­sist­ent, income for the villagers.

The pres­ence of migrat­ory and rare bird spe­cies win­ter­ing in and around Ashuradeh, Iran’s sole island in the Caspi­an Sea, is an excel­lent oppor­tun­ity for tour­ism, accord­ing to experts. Appar­ently “bird­watch­er tour­ists do not care about tour­ism infra­struc­ture as much as oth­er hol­i­day­makers do”.

Dur­ing a famil­i­ar­isa­tion tour of two new nation­al parks, Ibanda-Kyer­wa and Burigo-Chato, Tan­zania’s Per­man­ent Sec­ret­ary of Nat­ur­al Resources & Tour­ism Pro­fess­or Adolf Mkenda reas­sured tour oper­at­ors that pro­posed laws reg­u­lat­ing the film­ing of wild­life by for­eign­ers will be relaxed and simplified.

The Palan­car and Colom­bia reefs have reopened. All reefs in the Cozumel Reefs Nation­al Mar­ine Park in the Carib­bean Sea off Mex­ico were closed to the pub­lic due to white band dis­ease, which kills cor­al. El Cielo reef will remain closed until March 31. From April 2020 the reefs will be opened and closed intermittently.

Con­ser­va­tion­ists love respons­ible tour­ism. Nearly a mil­lion dol­lars’ worth of grants for Hud­son River pro­jects will “build on loc­al con­ser­va­tion efforts and pri­or­it­ies by advan­cing new pos­sib­il­it­ies for nature-based tour­ism”, accord­ing to the Com­mis­sion­er of the Depart­ment of Envir­on­ment­al Con­ser­va­tion in New York state, USA.

And busi­nesses enjoy the bene­fits. Michelle Rotellini, boss of the Beckley Raleigh County Cham­ber of Com­merce in West Vir­gin­ia, USA, reck­ons the res­tor­a­tion of nation­al parks is a top pri­or­ity in order to reap the busi­ness bene­fits of the tour­ists they attract.

Odds & ends

Newsy bits that don’t eas­ily fit into this week’s arbit­rary clusters:

By 2021, up to 500 farm­ers will be involved in a “From City to Vil­lage” pro­ject in Azerbaijan. The goal is to devel­op agri­t­our­ism and increase incomes in rur­al areas.

Earth’s cruis­ing sec­tor released its state-of-the-industry report some time ago. (You have prob­ably seen the Cruise Lines Inter­na­tion­al Asso­ci­ation press release copied and pas­ted ver­batim onto oth­er industry media plat­forms. “GT” isn’t into that at all.) A CLIA slideshow present­a­tion sum­mar­ising the con­tent of the report is avail­able right here (PDF 13.8 MB; hos­ted off­s­ite). What’s the good news? As one would expect from such a doc­u­ment from an industry asso­ci­ation it is filled with pos­it­ive buzzwords, which is nice.

Fea­tured image: The suc­cess­ful flight of Har­bour Air­’s ePlane, a six-pas­sen­ger DHC‑2 de Havil­land Beaver mag­ni­fied by a 750-horsepower (560 kW) magni500 propul­sion sys­tem, took place on the Fraser River in Rich­mond, Van­couver, Canada, on Decem­ber 10.

P.S. None of the items above have been fact-checked. Please com­ment below if you know there has been rub­bish pos­ted here, but be nice about it. The linked sources might get offen­ded. (“GT” won’t). And there’s no need to harsh the vibe by being nasty.

P.P.S. It is “GT’s” policy to fully dis­close sponsored con­tent. If an item is not marked as sponsored or part­ner-related then it will have caught “GT’s” atten­tion by some oth­er more organ­ic means. Part­ner with “GT”. You know you want to.