Good news in tourism February 16 – 22, 2020

Happy “Good news in tour­ism day”! Pos­ted on Sunday to be ready on Monday, “Good news in tour­ism” is the per­fect pick-me-up for the start of a work week. And go!

Import­ant “GT” stuff first:

The cli­mate-related car­bon tar­gets in the United Nations sus­tain­able devel­op­ment goals (SDGs) do not even come close to offer­ing the best value for money in terms of social, eco­nom­ic, and envir­on­ment­al bene­fits, accord­ing to Bjorn Lom­borg and his Nobel laur­eate col­lab­or­at­ors. If true, this has import­ant implic­a­tions for travel & tour­ism. 

If you have ever dis­agreed with any­thing you have read on this web­site, includ­ing the op-ed linked above, “GT” wel­comes your counter-argu­ments. You are free to com­ment on a post or, even bet­ter, share your own “GT” Insights. With­in reas­on — leg­al­ity, top­ic­al­ity, decency, and good faith — “GT” is a free speech platform.

If you find “GT” inspir­ing, inter­est­ing, some­what amus­ing, or at least dif­fer­ent then surely it’s worth a cof­fee or few … 

This week’s good news in tour­ism, in no par­tic­u­lar order:

Not good news as such, but import­ant: Prob­ably the most cred­ible source of inform­a­tion about COVID-19 is the World Health Organ­iz­a­tion (WHO). 

Liber­ia is on track to set up the world’s new­est nation­al tour­ism organ­isa­tion (NTO). The Nation­al Tour­ism Author­ity Act of 2020 reportedly has bipar­tis­an sup­port in the west Afric­an repub­lic’s House of Rep­res­ent­at­ives. Legis­lat­ors led by Aca­rous M Gray hope that the new NTO will oper­ate inde­pend­ently as the “prin­cip­al gov­ern­ment agency”. The Act man­dates that the NTO seek loc­al com­munity involve­ment “in all stages of respons­ible tour­ism development”.

Mean­while, Tur­ismo de Por­tugal has been charged with embed­ding sus­tain­ab­il­ity into a nation­al tour­ism policy with clear envir­on­ment­al, social, and eco­nom­ic goals for 2027 and an accom­pa­ny­ing set of indic­at­ors help them track progress.

Local authority

Nearly every travel trade media out­let, it seems, copied and pas­ted the same press release about the UNWTO boss exchan­ging buzzwords with the Prime Min­is­ter of Greece …

Mean­while, the muni­cip­al gov­ern­ment of tour­ism-reli­ant Park City, Utah, USA is enga­ging the com­munity in a “vis­ion­ing pro­cess”. Among the find­ings of a recent com­munity gath­er­ing is the telling stat­ist­ic that nearly 60% of res­id­ents sur­veyed would prefer that Park City take the lead on region­al issues com­pared to 38% for the county gov­ern­ment and “a small num­ber” for the state gov­ern­ment. City Hall will present a stra­tegic plan to the com­munity on March 3.

With its own “Code of Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Prac­tices”, the Bur­ren Eco­tour­ism Net­work (BEN) now rep­res­ents nearly 70 busi­nesses with ves­ted interests in the Bur­ren and Cliffs of Moher UNESCO Glob­al Geo­park in County Clare, Ire­land. And it’s about to launch a mar­ket­ing cam­paign in “key vis­it­or mar­kets”. BEN chair George Quinn is quoted: “As a busi­ness com­munity, we have a great deal of work to do to pro­tect the product and to pro­mote it as the most access­ible and worth­while des­tin­a­tion in Ireland.”

Gor­don Baird, res­id­ent of Gloucester, Mas­sachu­setts, USA is stand­ing up for strong loc­al author­ity over zon­ing and infilling after his town made a top 10 list: “So if you want to keep win­ning Top 10 travel or liv­ab­il­ity awards — or just to pre­serve our incred­ible beauty, free­dom and pro­por­tion­ate life­style — don’t let them steal a march on us […] Ask the price, the cost to the city and the true bene­fits to the neigh­bor­hoods. By the time all the holes get filled, it will be too late. None of the hole-fillers live here anyway.”

Tracking trends & trailing indicators

The Ninki Nanka Trail and its tales of bene­vol­ent and malevol­ent dragons is open. The Gam­bia Tour­ism Board, the Insti­tute of Travel and Tour­ism of The Gam­bia, and the EU-fun­ded Youth Empower­ment Pro­ject launched it Feb­ru­ary 17. The trail offers “a com­bin­a­tion of river-based and over­land excur­sions”, “immers­ive and mean­ing­ful inter­ac­tions with loc­al people”, a “vari­ety of Gam­bi­an nat­ur­al and cul­ture her­it­age”, and “the import­ant oral legend of the Ninki Nanka dragon”.

Embu county and the Kenya Forest Ser­vice have trained 20 youths to work as tour guides and port­ers for a new track through Irangi Forest to Mt Kenya. The youth will “sens­it­ise loc­al com­munit­ies on cul­tur­al and agri­cul­tur­al tourism”.

A bill in the New Mex­ico state legis­lature seeks USD 5 mil­lion to devel­op the El Cam­ino Real de Tierra Aden­tro trail that runs through the south­west­ern USA state. The trail clips the west­ern­most corner of Texas before end­ing at El Paso near the bor­der with Mex­ico. His­tor­ic­ally, the track con­tin­ued on to Mex­ico City. Parts of it “were likely estab­lished over 1,000 years ago, when indi­gen­ous people organ­ized trade routes through the Rio Grande Basin”.

Plan­ning is under­way for 14 Secwepemc land­marks and 100 trail­head posts in the Shuswap lands of Brit­ish Columbia, Canada. The Secwepemc Cul­tur­al Tour­ism Eld­ers Com­mit­tee is seek­ing pro­pos­als for what they want to see in Sal­mon Arm Mar­ine Park: “A sev­en-foot-tall rock and met­al sculp­ture [with] First Nations imagery such as pet­ro­glyphs, icon­o­graphy, visu­al and writ­ten stories”.

An aban­doned 22-kilo­metre rail­way link­ing the inland town of Kanfan­ar with the coastal town of Rov­inj in north­w­est Croa­tia will be repur­posed for bik­ing and hik­ing, “revital­iz­ing an area that is of utmost import­ance to the locals”.

A com­munity-based tour­ism ini­ti­at­ive in Derry, North­ern Ire­land has received fund­ing to devel­op an urb­an his­tory trail, which is hoped will regen­er­ate interest and pride in the Rose­mount and Glen areas of the city.

Odds & ends

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

Regions impacted by the decline of coal need to diver­si­fy their eco­nom­ies. “We took a hard look at ways that Car­bon and Emery [counties] could diver­si­fy, and we know one of the ways that they can diver­si­fy is through tour­ism,” said Jen­nifer Robin­son, Utah Coal Coun­try Strike Team mem­ber and asso­ci­ate dir­ect­or of the Kem C Gard­ner Policy Insti­tute at the Uni­ver­sity of Utah, USA.

A new Aus­tralia Coun­cil report shows that domest­ic arts-related tour­ism, includ­ing for First Nations arts and crafts, is grow­ing, and that trav­el­lers inter­ested in the arts tend to stay longer, spend more, and explore bey­ond the big cit­ies.

Bangladesh Prime Min­is­ter Sheikh Has­ina on Wed­nes­day asked author­it­ies to rule out high-rise devel­op­ment along the coast at Cox’s Baz­ar, per­haps the best-known des­tin­a­tion in her coun­try. At the present­a­tion of mas­ter plans for three “spe­cial tour­ism parks”, the PM said: “We will not allow con­struc­tion of high-rise estab­lish­ments along the sea as it will harm the nat­ur­al beauty of Cox’s Bazar.” 

Have a good week!

Fea­tured image: Coastal dreams, Algarve, Por­tugal. By finepic Beat (CC0) via PDP.

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Dis­claim­er 1: It is “GT’s” policy to fully dis­close partner/sponsor con­tent. If an item is not dis­closed as part­ner or spon­sor-related then it will have caught “GT’s” atten­tion by some oth­er more organ­ic means. Part­ner with “GT”. You know you want to.

Dis­claim­er 2: None of the third-party stor­ies linked from this week’s post have been fact-checked by “GT”. All ter­min­o­logy used here is as the linked sources used it accord­ing to 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 so that you might be the one to set the record straight, you are welcome! 🙂