Good news in tourism December 21 – 27, 2019

Wel­come to The “Good Tour­ism” Blog’s hip sum­mary of a week of good news in the world of travel & tour­ism. Pub­lished on Sat­urday to be ready on Monday, it’s the per­fect pick-me-up for the start of a work­ing week — or week off. You can love it with a latte. You can attend to it with tea. Just be sure to share it around with com­pli­ments as well as complements.

In no par­tic­u­lar order: 

Geof­frey Lip­man of “GT” Insight Part­ner SUN^x — Strong Uni­ver­sal Net­work urges the industry: “Let’s make 2020 the Cli­mate Friendly Travel Year. Meas­ured. Green. And 2050 proof.”

Iran is all about tour­ism, it seems, work­ing with UN agen­cies and reg­u­larly announ­cing new ini­ti­at­ives and policies. The Tehran Times pub­lished numer­ous tour­ism-related items dur­ing the week. Here are two:

Decent­ral­isa­tion. Iran’s Cul­tur­al Her­it­age, Tour­ism and Han­di­crafts Min­istry is encour­aging pro­vin­cial tour­ism admin­is­tra­tions to devel­op their own for­eign source markets.

Access­ib­il­ity. In Iran’s cap­it­al Tehran, the his­tor­ic­al Si‑e Tir street, includ­ing nearby museums and monu­ments, is being made more access­ible for the physically-challenged.

Tourism’s potential

Com­munity-based tour­ism is pulling Jordan’s north­west­ern vil­lage of Umm Qais out of poverty des­pite “mis­lead­ing travel advisor­ies”. Tour­ism accounts for the “largest slice of the country’s economy”.

Tripura state in north­east­ern India will focus on pub­lic-private part­ner­ships to help tour­ism reach its poten­tial. The state has numer­ous nat­ur­al and cul­tur­al attrac­tions that require bet­ter con­nectiv­ity and tour­ism infra­struc­ture, includ­ing more accommodation.

Exec­ut­ive dir­ect­or of Mis­souri Pre­ser­va­tion, USA, on tourism’s poten­tial to breathe new life into small towns: “When rail­roads leave small towns, people leave small towns. When agribusi­ness buys up small farms, people leave [small towns] … I do think that by rein­vent­ing them­selves as tour­ist des­tin­a­tions, we can again try to attract some kind of busi­ness back to our small towns.”

Eco- & nature-based tourism

The people of Liu Mulang, a small vil­lage on the banks of the Dan­um Usan trib­u­tary of the Mahakam River, East Kali­mantan, Indone­sia, are look­ing to eco­tour­ism as a means to raise their stand­ard of liv­ing and pro­tect the old-growth rain­forest they call home. 

Is eco­tour­ism the future for travel in Cam­bod­ia? “Could green be the answer to the Kingdom’s tour­ism woes?” So asks the Globe. The answer, of course, is nuanced.

Mean­while, Wild­life Con­ser­va­tion Soci­ety coun­try dir­ect­or Ken Serey Rotha wel­comed the news that Cam­bod­ia’s Min­istry of Envir­on­ment and the World Bank are work­ing on a pro­ject to “improve the effect­ive­ness of nat­ur­al resources man­age­ment, eco-tour­ism and the value chains of non-tim­ber forest products in tar­geted provinces”.

Thai­l­and’s Depart­ment of Nation­al Parks, Wild­life and Plant Con­ser­va­tion will dis­trib­ute one mil­lion “green heart pass­ports” to pro­mote envir­on­ment­ally-friendly tour­ism in the Kingdom.

Culture & heritage

Chris Flynn of “GT” Insight Part­ner the World Tour­ism Asso­ci­ation for Cul­ture & Her­it­age reck­ons: “When it comes to respons­ible cul­tur­al her­it­age tour­ism devel­op­ment, the pos­sib­il­it­ies are end­less. Here’s one example [from Iran] and an exper­i­ence I would per­son­ally relish.”

The Yim Tin Tsai Arts Fest­iv­al has breathed new life into the cul­tur­al tour­ism and eco­tour­ism industry of Yim Tin Tsai (‘Little Salt Field’) Island in Hong Kong SAR. Until last month, when the fest­iv­al opened, tour­ism had been lim­ited to small-scale guided tours and workshops. 

The Pun­jab Her­it­age Tour­ism Pro­mo­tion Board in India is restor­ing the sum­mer palace of Sher-e-Pun­jab: Maha­raja Ranjit Singh (Lion of Pun­jab: King Ranjit Singh), the founder of the Sikh Empire. The Empire las­ted 50 years, from 1799, when the Lion cap­tured Lahore, to 1849. At its peak, it exten­ded from the Khy­ber Pass in the west to west­ern Tibet in the east; from Mithankot in the south to Kash­mir in the north.

The First Snow & Ice Cul­tur­al Tour­ism Fest­iv­al took place in Jingy­uan county of Guy­uan, north­w­est China’s Ningx­ia Hui autonom­ous region.

Odds & ends

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

Improved tour­ism infra­struc­ture, new tour­ist attrac­tions, and more travel pack­ages that fea­ture “cul­tur­al land­scape” are reas­ons why Viet­nam has sur­passed Thai­l­and as Taiwan / Chinese Taipei’s favour­ite destination. 

Phil­ip­pines’ Tour­ism Infra­struc­ture and Enter­prise Zone Author­ity (TIEZA) will dis­burse almost PHP 4 bil­lion (USD 78.8 mil­lion) on infra­struc­ture pro­jects that pro­mote sus­tain­able tour­ism. Among the pro­jects is the rehab­il­it­a­tion of the Chocol­ate Hills Com­plex. “Our thrust is to pre­serve and rehab­il­it­ate cul­tur­al and her­it­age areas, as well as ensure envir­on­ment­al sus­tain­ab­il­ity,” TIEZA Chief Oper­at­ing Officer Pocholo Paragas said.

The Gaylord Area Con­ven­tion and Tour­ism Bur­eau in Gaylord & Otsego County, Michigan, USA, is tak­ing a com­munity-first approach to tour­ism. Accord­ing to its Treas­urer, the Bur­eau has been “work­ing dili­gently to edu­cate and engage our com­munity on the import­ance of the tour­ism industry”.

Fea­tured image: Inside Nas­ir ol Molk Mosque, Shiraz, Iran by Moham­mad­Reza Domiri Ganji (CC BY-SA 4.0) via Wiki­me­dia.

PS: None of the items above have been fact-checked. Please com­ment below if you know there has been rub­bish or buzzword-wash­ing 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.

PPS: It is “GT’s” policy to fully dis­close sponsored con­tent. If an item is not dis­closed as sponsored then it will have caught “GT’s” atten­tion by some oth­er more organ­ic means. Part­ner with “GT”. You know you want to.