Good news in tourism October 18 – 24, 2020

Because “impossible is nothing” …

Pub­lished every Sunday, “Good news in tour­ism” is the per­fect pick-me-up for the start of a new week in travel & tour­ism … everyone’s business.

This week’s good travel & tourism news menu:

(Click / touch an item to go straight to it.)

• “Good Tour­ism” (“GT”) news
• COVID ops
• Tour­ism policy & governance
• Net zero travel & tourism
• Odds & ends

It’s “Good Tour­ism”. And go!

“GT” news

The “Good Tour­ism” Blog has a new Event Part­ner: The Glob­al Eco Asia-Pacific Tour­ism Con­fer­ence 2020, which will take place Decem­ber 1 – 3 in Mar­garet River, West­ern Aus­tralia. The organ­isers have pulled togeth­er an impress­ive list of key­note speak­ers befit­ting Eco­tour­ism Australia’s premi­er event. 

If you can’t make it to Mar­garet River, you can attend vir­tu­ally … Register.

The towns of Bundaberg, Queens­land and Coffs Har­bour, New South Wales will also livestream Glob­al Eco at loc­al mini-con­fer­ences. 

Your cor­res­pond­ent hopes to make it to Mar­garet River to explore Glob­al Eco’s com­pel­ling themes with “GT” style; like he did at GSTC 2019 Asia. 

For people with dis­ab­il­it­ies, Nepal was once a des­tin­a­tion to avoid. This has changed. And quickly. In a new “GT” Insight pub­lished Tues­day, Pankaj Pra­dhananga shares how Nepal’s repu­ta­tion as an access­ible and inclus­ive des­tin­a­tion has rap­idly ascen­ded: “Access­ible tour­ism for all: The new man­tra in Nepal”

Malta will soon launch a new 10-year tour­ism strategy based on “com­pet­ing for much smal­ler num­bers of glob­al trav­el­lers” and achiev­ing “net zero car­bon neut­ral”. The lat­ter will likely be influ­enced by “GT” Part­ner SUN^x — Strong Uni­ver­sal Net­work. SUN^x has a strong pres­ence in the Medi­ter­ranean island nation, includ­ing a part­ner­ship with the Insti­tute of Tour­ism Stud­ies in deliv­er­ing the Cli­mate Friendly Travel Diploma.

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The importance of good partnerships

Seek out good part­ner­ships with those who make you their pri­or­ity. 

“GT” is a good part­ner. Please veri­fy that with a “GT” Part­ner and then ask about part­ner­ship oppor­tun­it­ies. There’s a “GT” part­ner­ship oppor­tun­ity for every­one — big or small; pub­lic or private; com­mer­cial or not-for-profit — because travel & tour­ism is every­one’s busi­ness. All “GT” Part­ners not only get a “Good Part­ner” ban­ner and list­ing but also the out­stand­ing oppor­tun­ity every week to con­trib­ute pos­it­ive news & com­ments to these almost-fam­ous weekly “Good news in tour­ism” posts.

COVID ops

To revive the vir­us-hit tour­ism industry and help return it to pre-pan­dem­ic levels, the private-sec­tor-led East Africa Tour­ism Plat­form plans to mar­ket the East Afric­an Com­munity (EAC) region as a single tour­ism des­tin­a­tion. The EAC bloc includes Bur­undi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tan­zania, and Uganda.

UK trans­port sec­ret­ary Grant Shapps wants to imple­ment a new ‘test and release’ regime to reduce the self-isol­a­tion peri­od for those return­ing from abroad. Mr Shapps said a taskforce was work­ing on that and an inter­na­tion­al frame­work. “I know it’s con­fus­ing for pas­sen­gers when every nation has a dif­fer­ent sys­tem. We need a glob­al system.”

Peru’s Com­mis­sion for the Pro­mo­tion of Peru for Exports & Tour­ism (PROMPERU) is work­ing with the private sec­tor on biosafety pro­to­cols ahead of inter­na­tion­al flights from 25 cit­ies resum­ing from Novem­ber 1. Per­u’s most fam­ous attrac­tion, Machu Pic­chu, will reopen that day at 30% capa­city. Oth­er archae­olo­gic­al sites and museums are already open at 50% capacity.

Tiger reserves, nation­al parks, and wild­life sanc­tu­ar­ies in Uttar Pra­desh, India will reopen Novem­ber 1, 15 days ahead of the nor­mal reopen­ing date after mon­soon closures.

The people of Cedar Falls, Iowa, USA have had a tough year. On top of COVID, they have also had to deal with a destruct­ive storm. That’s why the Cedar Falls Tour­ism & Vis­it­ors Bur­eau is pro­mot­ing joy in a new cam­paign called “Find Their Happiness”.

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Friends indeed

“Friends indeed” are worthy travel & tour­ism industry fun­draisers and char­it­able causes. Please help if you can. Share the page with your social net­works. And link to it from your web­site or email signature.

Tourism policy & governance

St Lucia’s Vil­lage Tour­ism Incor­por­ated (VTI) aims to cre­ate new oppor­tun­it­ies for entre­pren­eurs and job-seekers in rur­al com­munit­ies, and diver­si­fy and expand the loc­al com­munity tour­ism product. Tour­ism accounts for 65% of St Lucia’s GDP. VTI is the first fund of its kind in the Carib­bean, accord­ing to the island nation’s Min­istry of Tourism. 

A tour­ism mas­ter plan for Kakadu Nation­al Park in Aus­tralia’s North­ern Ter­rit­ory, which was draf­ted “in con­sulta­tion with Tra­di­tion­al Own­ers”, has been released for pub­lic com­ment. Envir­on­ment min­is­ter Sus­san Ley reck­ons an addi­tion­al AUD 60 mil­lion (USD 42.7 mil­lion) injec­tion into “park improve­ments” this year will “cre­ate jobs and max­im­ise domest­ic tour­ism as we invest in Australia’s COVID recovery”.

Sarawak, Malay­sia aims to have at least 500 tour guides after the first round of train­ing by the state’s Tour­ism, Arts, & Cul­ture Min­istry. There are now only 169 tour guides in Sarawak com­pared to 2,000 in neigh­bour­ing Sabah. Mean­while, eco­nom­ic plan­ning and tour­ism author­it­ies are under­tak­ing a Sarawak Tour­ism Mas­ter Plan 2020 – 2035 study.

As one of Indone­sia’s 10 “Bey­ond Bali” pri­or­ity des­tin­a­tions, Labuan Bajo will be trans­formed into a “super premi­um” des­tin­a­tion for world lead­ers and the well-heeled. Loc­ated at the west­ern end of Flores Island in East Nusa Teng­gara province, the town is pre­par­ing to host ASEAN and G20 sum­mits in 2023.

Iran’s Alborz province has poten­tial to become a hub for eco­tour­ism and health tour­ism, accord­ing to the pro­vin­cial tour­ism chief Ferey­doon Moham­madi. How­ever, both its infra­struc­ture and its mar­ket­ing strategy will need to improve he reckons.

Tour­ism in Prague, the cap­it­al of the Czech Repub­lic, has a new strategy to “bal­ance the eco­nom­ic bene­fits of tour­ism with the stra­tegic interests of the city and its inhab­it­ants”. Among oth­er things this means tar­get­ing more domest­ic tour­ists and favour­ing more sus­tain­able exper­i­ences.

Cape Town, South Africa is rethink­ing “busi­ness as usu­al” as it devel­ops a 10-year strategy and a recov­ery plan. “We have had to rethink the future of tour­ism,” Cape Town Tour­ism Board chair Brett Hendricks said. “Do we con­tin­ue to invest in the growth of inter­na­tion­al tour­ism at the expense of domest­ic tourism?”

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Net zero travel & tourism

Rath­lin Island in North­ern Ire­land and Valen­tia Island in Ire­land reck­on they can “become enter­prise zones, where cap­it­al allow­ances pro­mote and encour­age a new type of energy secur­ity”. The Valen­tia and Rath­lin 360˚ Des­tin­a­tion Green strategy seeks to “bal­ance a sus­tain­able and inclus­ive tour­ism demand that will be coupled with sim­il­ar renew­able energy, mobil­ity and indus­tri­al strategies based on con­tinu­ally redu­cing the island’s car­bon imprint and not leav­ing an envir­on­ment­al impact”.

Gran­ted EUR 8 mil­lion (USD 9.5 mil­lion) from a EU research and innov­a­tion pro­gram, the HySHIP pro­ject involves 14 European part­ners col­lab­or­at­ing on the design and con­struc­tion of a new ves­sel run­ning on liquid green hydro­gen (LH2) plus a LH2 sup­ply chain and bunk­er­ing plat­form. Nor­way’s Wil­helmsen will oper­ate the demo ves­sel “Topeka” on a fixed sched­ule along the Nor­we­gi­an coast, car­ry­ing roll-on/roll-off cus­tom­er cargo as well as LH2 for bunk­er­ing hubs.

Small elec­tric air­craft that can carry up to 19 pax could revital­ise region­al air travel in North Amer­ica. “We expect sav­ings of 25 – 30% in fuel cost with hybrid-elec­tric air­planes, and per­haps 65 – 80% per­cent sav­ings with fully elec­tric mod­els, [with] sig­ni­fic­ant sav­ings in main­ten­ance costs,” Stan Little, chief of US region­al car­ri­er South­ern Air­ways Express, reck­ons. Greg McDou­gall of BC, Canada’s Har­bour Air Sea­planes is also bullish.

Fol­low­ing a series of suc­cess­ful test flights, VoltAero will take its Cassio hybrid-elec­tric-powered test air­craft on a tour of France. The com­pany is devel­op­ing a range of four- to 10-seat mod­els. It aims to deliv­er Cassio pro­duc­tion air­craft from late 2022.

Good news for elec­tric vehicle drivers in Aus­tralia’s east­ern states. It is now pos­sible to plan road trips between Port Douglas in north Queens­land and Adelaide in South Aus­tralia thanks to DC fast char­gers that lie along the route. 

US start-up Lavle claims lith­i­um-met­al bat­ter­ies have double the energy dens­ity of con­ven­tion­al lith­i­um-ion; says it will man­u­fac­ture the next-gen­er­a­tion bat­ter­ies at scale by the end of 2023. 

The high-speed rail link between Lon­don, Kent, and the Chan­nel Tun­nel will be the first UK rail­way to be powered by renew­ables; trains and sta­tions.

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Sustainable tourism & responsible travel is everyone’s business

Free­dom of move­ment is a basic human right. And the travel & tour­ism industry is everyone’s busi­ness; not only the busi­ness of those who earn a liv­ing from the travel & tour­ism industry, but also people who travel, and people who live in places trav­elled to and through. EVERYONE. Please share “Good news …” with your friends and col­leagues. And dive deep­er into “Good Tour­ism” Insights for ideas on how to make sus­tain­able tour­ism and respons­ible travel bet­ter … for you, for your people, and for your place. For they are your people. And it is your place.

Odds & ends

Bits ‘n pieces that don’t eas­ily fit into this week’s arbit­rary clusters:

In Jamaica, the Urb­an Devel­op­ment Cor­por­a­tion and Jamaica Pro­mo­tions Cor­por­a­tion are part­ner­ing to pro­mote “sus­tain­able eco-tour­ism pro­jects for loc­al and inter­na­tion­al invest­ment” The first is at Two Sis­ters Cave in Hell­shire, St Catherine.

Iran’s south­west­ern Kohgiluyeh-Boy­erahmad province — home to more than 200 holy shrines — has the poten­tial to become one of the top reli­gious tour­ism des­tin­a­tions in the coun­try, accord­ing to pro­vin­cial tour­ism chief Majid Safai. He wants to see new and improved tour­ism infra­struc­ture and services.

Israel’s Tour­ism Min­istry has approved plans to devel­op areas of Beer­sheba and Mitzpe Ramon in the nation’s south. In Beer­sheba, plans are for a camp­ing ground, 250 beds, and facil­it­ies for sports and leis­ure. In Mitzpe Ramon, a 70-unit hotel will fol­low an “urb­an plan­ning trend, which is based on integ­rat­ing tour­ism and hotels with­in the res­id­en­tial areas of the city”.

It is hoped cul­tur­al tour­ism will bene­fit from a scheme to help artists and revital­ise the com­mer­cial dis­tricts of Miami Beach, Flor­ida, USA. The City is work­ing with private prop­erty own­ers to provide free space and fin­an­cial sup­port to eli­gible artists and not-for-profit cul­tur­al organisations.

The first Ant­arc­tic sight­see­ing flight from Hobart, Tas­mania, Aus­tralia since 1994 will take off in 2022. The organ­isers say it will be carbon-neutral.

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Stay healthy, smile, have a good week … And when you can travel again, remember:

It’s not ‘no’. It’s ‘know’.

Gotta go? Then go!
If you’ve time, go slow
If you don’t, try low
Do what you know is good
And know there is more to know

Fea­tured image (top of post): Birch forest in autumn. By Neal0892 (CC BY-SA 4.0) via Wiki­me­dia. “GT” cropped it.

Donations, diversity, disclaimers

To help your cor­res­pond­ent keep his energy-effi­cient lights on, please con­sider a private one-off gift or ongo­ing dona­tion. THANK YOU to those who have! 😍

You are a tour­ism stake­hold­er — yes, YOU! — so what’s your view? Do you dis­agree with any­thing you have read on “GT”? Join the con­ver­sa­tion. Com­ment below or share your “Good Tour­ism” Insights. Diversity of thought is wel­come on The “Good Tour­ism” Blog. And you will be sup­port­ing an inde­pend­ent pub­lish­er with your ori­gin­al content.

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 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 for “GT” bring­ing it to your atten­tion for you to set the record straight, you’re wel­come! 🙂