Good news in tourism February 2 – 8, 2020

Happy “Good news in tour­ism” day! “Good news in tour­ism” is when we get woke to prob­lem­at­ic neo­co­lo­ni­al depend­en­cies wake up to the poten­tial for pos­it­ive empower­ment in our travel & tour­ism industry. 

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 in case you missed it dur­ing the week:

In a fresh “Good Tour­ism” Insight pos­ted Tues­day, tour­ism impact & sus­tain­ab­il­ity expert Aady­aa Pandey dis­cusses a few of the chal­lenges over­come by Nepal’s Com­munity Homestay Net­work, a suc­cess­ful social enter­prise that star­ted as a mod­est CSR pro­ject. And she cel­eb­rates its pos­it­ive impacts for women, youth, and busi­nesses in the com­munit­ies in which it oper­ates. Thanks to “GT” Insight Part­ner Second Look World­wide for invit­ing Ms Pandey to contribute.

Oth­er good news in tour­ism, in no par­tic­u­lar order:

Not “good news” as such, but import­ant: Prob­ably the most cred­ible source of inform­a­tion about the nov­el coronavir­us (2019-nCoV) is the World Health Organ­iz­a­tion (WHO).

Def­in­itely good news: Pos­sibly the first high-pro­file vic­tim of Aus­tralia’s 2019/2020 bush­fire sea­son, the Queens­land Her­it­age-lis­ted Binna Burra Lodge has partnered with Grif­fith Uni­ver­sity on vari­ous dis­aster recov­ery ini­ti­at­ives. Loc­ated in Lam­ing­ton Nation­al Park in the World Her­it­age-lis­ted Gond­wana Rain­forests, Binna Burra Lodge was razed by wild­fire back in Septem­ber 2019.

Fun future-for­ward news for loc­al air trans­port: “There could be as many as 200 new eVTOL [elec­tric ver­tic­al takeoff and land­ing] and elec­tric­ally powered fixed-wing air­craft in the works world­wide. […] The Asia Pacific region is fast emer­ging as a key source of momentum […] Sev­er­al cit­ies in the region are expec­ted to be early adopters”.

If you’ve time, go slow

Phil­ip­pines Depart­ment of Tour­ism Under­sec­ret­ary Benito “Bong” Beng­zon, Jr has poin­ted to Aus­tralia as an ideal mod­el for his coun­try to fol­low. They are both island des­tin­a­tions dif­fi­cult to get to, so length of stay and aver­age spend is import­ant. Accord­ing to “records” cited by the source, for­eign vis­it­ors to Aus­tralia stay an aver­age of 32 nights, far more than the Phil­ip­pines at about sev­en nights. 

In a sim­il­ar vein, Vis­itScot­land chair John Thurso likes the #Skye­Time cam­paign, which encour­ages vis­it­ors to “stay longer, see less, exper­i­ence more”. “It’s about say­ing: do tour­ism slowly,” Mr Thurso said. “In oth­er words: do come, do stay – but don’t rush. Take longer to do more. This is a stra­tegic approach to mar­ket­ing, and one of the most import­ant things we can do at Vis­itScot­land is take a stra­tegic approach.” 

Mr Thurso also points out that travel & tour­ism is “not the enemy” of cli­mate or any oth­er prob­lem. Rather it is an import­ant part of the solution.

“It’s not ‘no’. It’s ‘know’” remem­ber?

Agro‑, eco‑, nature-based tourism

Phil­ip­pines Tour­ism Sec­ret­ary Ber­na­dette Romulo Puyat said the province of Isa­bela could be a world-class agro-eco­tour­ism des­tin­a­tion offer­ing exper­i­en­tial tour pack­ages in rice farm­ing, fruit pick­ing, mush­rooms, bees, and fishing.

Mean­while, Phil­ip­pines politi­cian Manuel Cabochan III has filed House Bill No. 5985 pro­pos­ing to declare Pag-asa, Parola, Kota, and Panata islands in the muni­cip­al­ity of Kalay­aan, province of Palawan as new eco­tour­ism des­tin­a­tions and pro­tec­ted areas.

The Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve in Maha­rashtra state is set­ting new stand­ards for eco­tour­ism in India, accord­ing to the linked source. TATR dis­perses vis­it­ors, offers them altern­at­ive activ­it­ies to stay longer, and ensures that loc­al com­munit­ies bene­fit. Also in Maha­rashtra, com­munity-based con­ser­va­tion ini­ti­at­ive Kal­in­je Eco­tour­ism is gen­er­at­ing jobs for young loc­als and cre­at­ing aware­ness about man­groves and mar­ine biod­iversity among travellers. 

The Soor Saro­var Bird Sanc­tu­ary in Uttar Pra­desh (UP) state, India will be developed into an eco­tour­ism des­tin­a­tion, UP forest and envir­on­ment min­is­ter Dara Singh Chauhan told the open­ing of a bird fest­iv­al. He affirmed that the gov­ern­ment was com­mit­ted to con­serving wet­lands and the envir­on­ment and poin­ted to an increase in forest cov­er in UP.

The forest and envir­on­ment depart­ment of Odisha state, India has launched a new trekking and hik­ing pro­gramme called Eco-trails Odisha. The ini­ti­at­ive includes train­ing for “loc­al vil­la­gers who have been entrus­ted with the respons­ib­il­ity of man­aging the eco-tour­ism des­tin­a­tions or the nature camps”.

Cam­bod­ia’s Min­istry of Eco­nomy and Fin­ance has flagged Mon­dulkiri province for “trans­form­a­tion into the biggest agro- and eco-tour­ism des­tin­a­tion in Cam­bod­ia”. A feas­ib­il­ity study includes upgrad­ing the air­port of the pro­vin­cial cap­it­al Sen Monorom. A for­eign com­pany will research and pre­pare the mas­ter plan.

Art & tourism

There are poten­tially “huge eco­nom­ic gains for the host com­munity from the [third Sutukoba Kank­il­ing Fest­iv­al], espe­cially [via] com­munity-based tour­ism”, accord­ing to Sheikh Omar Jallow, Dir­ect­or of Lit­er­at­ure, Cre­at­ive and Per­form­ing Arts at The Gam­bia’s Nation­al Cen­ter for Arts and Cul­ture. The Fest­iv­al, which was sched­uled to take place Feb­ru­ary 7 – 8 in Wuli, Upper River Region, is deemed import­ant for “cul­tur­al pre­ser­va­tion and reviv­al in society”.

Wel­ling­ton Dam in Col­lie, West­ern Aus­tralia is set to become the can­vas for a record-break­ing mur­al. The state gov­ern­ment will com­mit AUD 1.5 mil­lion (USD 1 mil­lion) to a “mur­al trail” pro­ject that will cul­min­ate at the 367m x 34m dam wall. Loc­al Abori­gin­al lead­ers, the Shire of Col­lie, and the Col­lie com­munity will come up with the concept.

While recog­nising the import­ance of tour­ism dur­ing “the dry years”, the Goondi­windi Region­al Coun­cil in Queens­land, Aus­tralia has adop­ted its new Vis­it­or Strategy 2020 – 2024. Pri­or­ity pro­jects include pub­lic art attrac­tions and Indi­gen­ous tourism.

Miami Beach, Flor­ida, USA has announced a new cul­tur­al tour­ism ini­ti­at­ive ‘No Vacancy’ to bring “tem­por­ary pub­lic art inter­ven­tions” to ten loc­al hotels for ten days in May. 

Indelible India

Alap­puzha, India will be reborn as a her­it­age city, accord­ing to Ker­ala state fin­ance min­is­ter TM Thomas Isaac. Dr Isaac said that at least a dozen museums in Alap­puzha could be opened to the pub­lic in 2020 – 21. Alap­puzha is also known by its former name Alleppey.

Being piloted at Kumarakom and Vaikom, a myth and folk­tale storytelling pack­age will soon be avail­able to tour­ists in oth­er dis­tricts of Ker­ala, India. The pro­ject is being imple­men­ted by the Respons­ible Tour­ism Mis­sion through a batch of 16 com­munity tour lead­ers who have under­gone related training.

UNESCO has “prom­ised to help” con­serve the cul­tur­al and archi­tec­tur­al her­it­age of Jaipur, the cap­it­al of Rajasthan, India. UNESCO put Jaipur on the World Her­it­age list in 2019.

Odds & ends

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

After a sur­vey of Moab, Utah, USA res­id­ents, the coun­cil launched the “Do it Like a Loc­al” cam­paign to edu­cate vis­it­ors on sus­tain­able tour­ism prac­tices that are kinder both to the envir­on­ment and res­id­ents. Moab Area Travel Coun­cil boss Elaine Giz­ler said ongo­ing con­ver­sa­tions with loc­als about what ‘do it like a loc­al’ means to them are lead­ing the effort.

His­tor­ic pre­ser­va­tion is “a real, func­tion­ing, viable tool that links land use plan­ning and eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment,” accord­ing to Troy Ainsworth, a spe­cial­ist on the top­ic. It can also be a driver for her­it­age tour­ism for Las Cruces, New Mex­ico, USA, which has “a well-main­tained stock of his­tor­ic build­ings” that offer a “unique sense of place” to visitors.

Fea­tured image: Arches Nation­al Park, north of Moab, Utah, USA. Photo by Robb Han­nawack­er (CC0) via GFP.

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 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 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! 🙂