Good news in tourism Dec 28, 2019 to Jan 4, 2020

Wel­come to 2020 and Earth’s most fun sum­mary of a week of good news in travel & tour­ism. Pub­lished on Sunday to be ready on Monday, it’s the per­fect pick-me-up for the start of a work­ing week (and year); a remind­er that the tour­ism industry, tour­ism people, and trav­el­lers can be so very good! 

In no par­tic­u­lar order:

Firstly, a remind­er that the former top exec­ut­ive of IATA, WTTC, and UNWTO, Geof­frey Lip­man of “GT” Insight Part­ner SUNx — Strong Uni­ver­sal Net­work asks that the Earth’s travel & tour­ism industry join him in mak­ing 2020 “the Cli­mate Friendly Travel Year. Meas­ured. Green. And 2050 proof.”

“We can­not look at just one tree; we have to look at the whole forest. We must focus on mak­ing Cam­bod­ia a more attract­ive des­tin­a­tion.” So said Prime Min­is­ter Hun Sen, com­ment­ing on the drop in the num­ber of tour­ists to Siem Reap and Angkor Archae­olo­gic­al Park in 2019. Sihan­ouk­ville, on the coast, attrac­ted more than enough vis­it­ors, mainly Chinese, to cov­er the short­fall. To its cred­it, the Tour­ism Min­istry says it is estab­lish­ing com­munity-based tour­ism and agri­t­our­ism products in the hope vis­it­ors will stay longer.

Community-based tourism policymaking

Com­ing to a decision every­one is com­pletely happy with is nigh on impossible. So it is best if the decision-mak­ing pro­cess involves as many affected people as pos­sible. And that means tak­ing it loc­al. NIMBY — not in my back­yard — com­plaints are a frus­tra­tion to some people. Of them we can legit­im­ately ask: HAYBY — how about your back­yard? Loc­al spats aren’t pleas­ant but hope­fully the final decision is optim­al in the con­text of that com­munity. Con­sulta­tion and con­ver­sa­tion is good, even if it leads to con­tro­versy and con­front­a­tion, just so long as nobody gets con­cussed or conned.

Hotel industry chiefs have warned that loc­als’ com­plaints about Edin­burgh, Scot­land’s Christ­mas and Hog­manay events are run­ning the risk of Edin­burgh being seen as “anti-tour­ist”. The events are worth more than GBP 150 mil­lion (USD 199 mil­lion) to the city. Edinburgh’s young­est ever coun­cil lead­er Adam McVey, who is at the centre of a con­tro­versy over decision mak­ing, reportedly admit­ted that “there was no pro­spect of reach­ing “con­sensus” over what form the event should take — but insisted future organ­isers of the fest­iv­it­ies would have to reflect the city’s “chan­ging aspirations”.

Beaufort County in South Car­o­lina, USA, was right to reject a USD 100 mil­lion pro­ject by Inter­Con­tin­ent­al Hotels Group, accord­ing to the edit­or­i­al staff of The Post and Cour­i­er. IHG want to build a Six Senses on the 345-acre (140-hec­tare) Bay Point Island in Port Roy­al Sound. The island “is suited for eco­tour­ism, but more like day trips, not a lux­ury resort where guests are pampered in dozens of per­man­ent ‘vil­las’” the journ­al­ists opine. IHG has 30 days to appeal. A planned meet­ing with county staff, Janu­ary 15, to dis­cuss the pro­pos­al is open to the com­munity whom, “GT” opines, should go in num­bers to learn both sides of the story and do their own cost-bene­fit analyses.

Some resort com­munit­ies, such as Park City, Utah, USA, are try­ing to sup­port the dom­in­ant tour­ism eco­nomy while mak­ing res­id­ents feel heard and at home. “Park City-area ski resorts are a huge draw for tour­ists. [May­or] Beer­man says it’s tricky to get the resorts on board with sus­tain­able tour­ism, as their busi­ness mod­el cen­ters around high volume of guests and high costs. Still, Beer­man says the city wants to col­lab­or­ate with the resorts on cre­at­ing a bet­ter exper­i­ence for residents.”

Hope­fully some in-prin­ciple com­munity con­sulta­tion has already taken place in Myan­mar, where Yan­gon Region Tour­ism Min­is­ter Daw Naw Pan Thin­zar Myo is reportedly look­ing at War Thin Kha vil­lage in Kawhmu town­ship as the second com­munity-based tour­ism area in her region. “We will con­sult with the vil­la­gers about the pro­gramme,” she said. The first area, Kyaikthale vil­lage in Twante town­ship, opened two years ago.

Tour­ism on the Isle of Arran, North Ayrshire, Scot­land is worth GBP 61 mil­lion (USD 80 mil­lion) per year. How­ever, the industry and the envir­on­ment that sup­ports it could be adversely impacted by a planned sal­mon farm, accord­ing to island res­id­ents and Scot­tish Nat­ur­al Her­it­age, which has sub­mit­ted a form­al objection.

Tourism vs. oil

“Guyana iden­ti­fies tour­ism as a sec­tor that can con­trib­ute to the country’s sus­tain­able devel­op­ment, by earn­ing for­eign exchange and provid­ing job oppor­tun­it­ies, while con­serving the nat­ur­al envir­on­ment and the diverse cul­ture of the coun­try. [… But …] The coun­try is on the brink of becom­ing the West­ern Hemisphere’s next big oil pro­du­cer.” With cred­it in the eco-cred­ib­il­ity bank, there are indeed many shades of green for the Carib­bean Com­munity mem­ber coun­try to consider.

On the oth­er hand, Iran’s Min­is­ter of Cul­ture Her­it­age, Tour­ism and Han­di­crafts Ali Asghar Moun­es­an says the coun­try is plan­ning to replace oil with tour­ism as its top source of income. “If we had focused on tour­ism earli­er, the prob­lem of employ­ment and fair dis­tri­bu­tion of wealth would have been resolved soon­er,” he is repor­ted as saying.

Tourism & sustainability

The tour­ism depart­ments of Cook Islands, Palau, and Vanuatu signed a “state­ment of intent” to share resources and pro­mote sus­tain­able tour­ism. They were the only nation­al tour­ism depart­ments to attend the recent Sus­tain­able Islands Tour­ism Con­fer­ence in Vanuatu.

Guyana and Sur­i­n­ame have signed an agree­ment aimed at enhan­cing sus­tain­able tour­ism, and tour­ism more gen­er­ally, to and between the two Carib­bean Com­munity coun­tries. A Guyana-Sur­i­n­ame Tour­ism Cooper­a­tion Coun­cil is being established.

An agree­ment between the Brit­ish Embassy in Tunisia, Tunisia’s tour­ism min­is­ter Rene Tra­belsi, and the UK’s travel agents and tour oper­at­ors asso­ci­ation ABTA, aims to cut down on plastic waste among oth­er sus­tain­ab­il­ity ini­ti­at­ives. The UK is an import­ant source mar­ket for the north Afric­an destination.

Drop­ping the use of “Hol­land” in its brand­ing is the head­line-grabbing part of the Neth­er­lands’ new tour­ism strategy which aims to “put an end to large num­bers of vis­it­ors on cheap flights, par­tic­u­larly to Ams­ter­dam, and pro­mote more sus­tain­able and respect­ful travel”.

Phil­ip­pines’ Depart­ment of Tour­ism has star­ted to tar­get trav­el­lers with mes­sages about sus­tain­able tour­ism and respons­ible travel and will roll out mar­ket­ing col­lat­er­al at touch­points, such as air­ports, sea­ports, ves­sels, and accommodation.

India’s eco- and sus­tain­ab­il­ity-con­scious mil­len­ni­als are cre­at­ing travel & tour­ism products for like-minded mil­len­ni­al trav­el­lers, such as in the north­east­ern state of Sikkim.

Palau is the first coun­try in the world to ban sun pro­tec­tion creams and lotions that dam­age cor­al reefs and mar­ine life. Indi­vidu­als who have it, and shops that sell it face fines of up to USD 1,000. The ban went into effect with the enact­ment of Palau’s Respons­ible Tour­ism Edu­ca­tion Act. 

Hawaii and Key West in Flor­ida, USA, have also for­bid­den the sale of sun­screens con­tain­ing oxy­ben­zone and octin­ox­ate, two chem­ic­als known to dam­age cor­al reefs. How­ever, that ban won’t go into effect until Janu­ary 1, 2021.

Tourism & infrastructure

Iran’s Arde­bil province, home to the UNESCO-registered Sheikh Safi al-Din Khaneg­ah and Shrine Ensemble, will soon open IRR 1.500 tril­lion (US$ 35 mil­lion) worth of tour­ism pro­jects, includ­ing restored his­tor­ic­al monu­ments, newly-built hotels and water treat­ment com­plexes, and oth­er infra­struc­ture, includ­ing an “all-glass” sus­pen­sion bridge.

Ser­bia’s Pres­id­ent Aleksandar Vucic and Prime Min­is­ter Ana Brn­ab­ic have announced a five-year EUR 14 bil­lion (US$ 15.6 bil­lion) infra­struc­ture invest­ment plan. This includes EUR 3.33 bil­lion for rail­way infra­struc­ture, of which EUR 1.7 bil­lion is ear­marked for the first sub­way in the Ser­bi­an cap­it­al of Bel­grade, and EUR 200 mil­lion for invest­ment in “tour­ism infrastructure”.

In the USA, sev­er­al large MICE, resort, and trans­port pro­jects cost­ing lots will reshape Las Vegas, Nevada’s sky­line in 2020. The Raid­ers NFL side will move from Oak­land, Cali­for­nia to their new US$ 2 bil­lion Vegas home sta­di­um due for com­ple­tion by July 31.

Accord­ing to a mem­ber of the Tour­ist Mar­ket­ing Com­mit­tee in Luxor, Egypt, the tour­ism sec­tor is plan­ning to fur­ther devel­op infra­struc­ture due to the recov­ery of cul­tur­al tour­ism.

Odds & ends

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

Is cap­tur­ing the moment the same as being “in the moment”?

If you have tat­toos and you vis­it Japan, where tat­toos are taboo … what to do? And what would you do if you were a tour­ism admin­is­trat­or there?

More than 200 grow­ers of medi­cin­al plants in Ker­ala state, India, stand to bene­fit from a gov­ern­ment-led pro­ject to offer well­ness tour­ists the oppor­tun­ity to exper­i­ence the cen­tur­ies-old tra­di­tions of pre­par­ing ayurved­ic medi­cines. In the same state, 225 tour­ism accom­mod­a­tion units will become plastic-free this year as part of the ‘Clean Ker­ala Initiative’.

West Indi­an manatees are a tour­ist attrac­tion in Cit­rus County, Flor­ida, USA. And there are plenty of them this sea­son thanks to efforts to re-estab­lish appro­pri­ate hab­it­ats and food sources, such as eel­grass. Mean­while, New Mex­ico state is “Open for Adven­ture”; look­ing to bet­ter lever­age nat­ur­al attrac­tions to get loc­als and vis­it­ors outdoors.

Azerbaijan’s Min­istry of Eco­logy and Nat­ur­al Resources took the lead in devel­op­ing eco­tour­ism in nation­al parks in 2019. About 25% more people vis­ited the country’s nation­al parks in 2019 com­pared to the pre­vi­ous year. This was off a low base. And less than 10% of the vis­it­ors were foreign.

Tour­ism Har­ris­on will look to expand an event cred­ited with attract­ing 20 times more vis­it­ors than usu­al to the Brit­ish Columbia, Canada vil­lage and its hot springs dur­ing its low sea­son last winter.

Thai­l­and’s Des­ig­nated Areas for Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Admin­is­tra­tion (DASTA) is pre­par­ing Suphan Buri, Nan, Loei, Phetch­aburi, and Chi­ang Rai for the 2021 UNESCO Cre­at­ive Cit­ies com­pet­i­tion. Mean­while, the north­east­ern province of Muk­da­han is look­ing to sports and com­munity-based tour­ism to help pos­i­tion it as a bridge con­nect­ing the provinces of Thailand’s Isan region with neigh­bour­ing Laos across the Mekong River.

Fea­tured image: West Indi­an manatee rest­ing at Three Sis­ters Springs, Crys­tal River, Flor­ida, USA. A school of man­grove snap­per enjoy the shade. By Keith Ramos and the US Fish & Wild­life Ser­vice (CC BY 2.0) via Flickr.

PS: None of the items above have been fact-checked by “GT”. All ter­min­o­logy used here is as the linked sources use it accord­ing the know­ledge and assump­tions they have about it. Please com­ment below if you know there has been buzzword-wash­ing or blatant non­sense relayed here, but be nice about it as the linked sources might get offen­ded. (“GT” won’t). And, as for “GT” bring­ing it to your atten­tion, you are welcome!

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.