Tourism in crisis, tourism in need, & the hopeful pivots of the purpose-driven

Even the most altru­ist­ic of tour­ism organ­isa­tions is strug­gling to sur­vive in des­tin­a­tions that have been reli­ant on inter­na­tion­al tour­ism money to take care of anim­als, places, and people. How­ever neces­sity is a par­ent of innov­a­tion and, as Tour­ism In Need co-founders Robert Pow­ell and Ameer Vir­ani have found out, there are plenty of both in Cam­bod­ia, Laos, and Vietnam.

The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has posed unpre­ced­en­ted chal­lenges to tour­ism busi­nesses around the world. Small to medi­um-sized enter­prises (SMEs) in par­tic­u­lar have struggled, espe­cially in the Asia Pacific region where the impact on tour­ism has been greatest. Mil­lions have lost their jobs and count­less fam­il­ies are on the brink of poverty because of this crisis.

While the USA and Europe and oth­er pros­per­ous coun­tries and regions adapt to the new world and start on the long road to “nor­mal­ity”, the COVID-19 crisis con­tin­ues to have a dev­ast­at­ing impact on the people and places of South­east Asia. The com­bin­a­tion of no inter­na­tion­al tour­ism and a lim­ited social safety net has forced the clos­ure of many respons­ible tour­ism organ­isa­tions. This is undo­ing dec­ades of hard work and, with no end in sight, the situ­ation is crit­ic­al for many. 

The futures of com­munit­ies across South­east Asia are in jeop­ardy. Des­pite the bleak out­look, many who work in tour­ism try to remain pos­it­ive. And there are mul­tiple stor­ies of resi­li­ence to share and be inspired by. 

In the rugged green hills of Cambodia’s east­ern Mon­dulkiri province, the team at the Ele­phant Val­ley Pro­ject (EVP) has been strug­gling to keep its ele­phant care and com­munity out­reach pro­grams run­ning since its rev­en­ue was cut from USD 25,000 per month to zero in March. They have scrambled to secure altern­at­ive fund­ing and are now sur­viv­ing on one third of their nor­mal budget with the help of World Anim­al Pro­tec­tion, an anim­al wel­fare NGO, as well as the gen­er­os­ity of past vis­it­ors. Des­pite this they have had to cut staff hours, sus­pend pay­ments of rice to the com­munity, and are behind on salaries. 

The ele­phants are the rais­on d’être for EVP and remain the pri­or­ity. Jemma Bul­lock, EVP’s pro­gram man­ager, is in awe of the com­munity response: “My inspir­a­tion is the guys who went out in the thun­der­storms this morn­ing to look after these ele­phants and haven’t been paid in four weeks.” Staff are stay­ing pos­it­ive and are work­ing with what they have, sourcing food for the ele­phants on cred­it, and work­ing many hours unpaid. Luck­ily, the ele­phants remain bliss­fully unaware of the crit­ic­al situ­ation. So far.

Tourism in crisis: Tourists and donors stay away

Through con­ver­sa­tions with EVP and oth­er Tour­ism In Need part­ner organ­isa­tions, we know that there are many tour­ism stake­hold­ers in des­per­ate need of assist­ance in South­east Asia. And many gov­ern­ments’ prom­ises of emer­gency sup­port to com­munit­ies have not materialised.

Friends Inter­na­tion­al, for example, which provides sup­port and voca­tion­al train­ing to mar­gin­al­ised chil­dren and com­munit­ies through­out the region, has lost a third of its fund­ing and has had to cut a third of its staff and sus­pend much of its essen­tial work. “The mar­ket for our upcycled products has dis­ap­peared and so have the jobs,” Friends’ chief of com­mu­nic­a­tions James Suth­er­land said.

It’s not only tour­ism rev­en­ue that has dried up. So have donations.

CRDT (Cam­bod­i­an Rur­al Devel­op­ment Team), which runs Le Tonle not-for-profit gues­t­house and train­ing centre in Kratie, Cam­bod­ia has lost three donors account­ing for “around 25% of our annu­al budget”, accord­ing to Or Channy, a dir­ect­or. Friends’ donors too have pulled out as they focus on prob­lems in their home countries.

Tourism in crisis: Domestic tourism can’t fill the gap 

As donors dir­ect money else­where and inter­na­tion­al tour­ists stay away, busi­nesses are turn­ing to domest­ic tour­ism to fill the gap. 

EGBOK (Everything is Going to Be OK), which provides train­ing and employ­ment oppor­tun­it­ies in hos­pit­al­ity to dis­ad­vant­aged youth in Siem Reap, Cam­bod­ia plans to re-open their social enter­prise to tar­get loc­al cus­tom­ers to keep their pro­grams alive. The res­taur­ant will be com­pletely student-run.

Friends Inter­na­tion­al has re-opened four of its res­taur­ants for domest­ic cus­tom­ers, but they have had to reduce their train­ee num­bers from 60 people to only a handful.

Suc­cess is not guar­an­teed. Domest­ic tour­ism in many South­east Asi­an nations remains a very small mar­ket and, even where it does exist, is not a tra­di­tion­al source mar­ket for social busi­nesses or nature-based tour­ism. These have depended almost entirely on inter­na­tion­al tourists. 

Man­daLao Ele­phant Con­ser­va­tion near Luang Pra­bang in Laos nor­mally relies on inter­na­tion­al tour­ists for 95% of its rev­en­ue. It is now offer­ing heav­ily-dis­coun­ted tours to domest­ic trav­el­lers but has so far received very few bookings.

The organ­isa­tions we have men­tioned so far are the lucky ones. Many have had to close. 

KOTO (Know One, Teach One)‘s mis­sion is to end the cycle of poverty in Viet­nam through hos­pit­al­ity edu­ca­tion and train­ing. While those activ­it­ies con­tin­ue, KOTO’s res­taur­ants have had to close their doors after 21 years.

After four years of hard work, Ele­phant Val­ley Thai­l­and is anoth­er. It had just launched a second sanc­tu­ary with its self-sus­tain­ing mod­el for re-wild­ing ele­phants. The tough decision to close fol­lowed three months of oper­at­ing without any fund­ing at all. They could not see any light at the end of the tun­nel before the end of 2020. 

And while Thail­and’s islands con­tin­ue to be eer­ily silent and Siem Reap, gate­way to Cam­bod­i­a’s won­der-of-the-world, Angkor Wat, remains a “ghost town”, these stor­ies are the tip of an ever-expand­ing ice­berg across the region.

Tourism In Need. Indeed.

COVID-19 is a glob­al tragedy and every­one has been impacted by it. How­ever, as rich eco­nom­ies return to a new kind of “nor­mal”, the out­look for South­east Asia is wor­ry­ing. The con­ver­sa­tion here isn’t about two-week quar­ant­ines for trav­el­lers return­ing from their sum­mer hol­i­days — all bor­ders have been closed or restric­ted in South­east Asia since March — it’s about hav­ing enough food to eat, mass poverty, and a lost generation.

As we saw the situ­ation deteri­or­at­ing, we set up our Tour­ism In Need web­site in April to con­nect people in Europe with pur­pose-driv­en tour­ism busi­nesses in need of fin­an­cial assist­ance. We registered 25 organ­isa­tions on the web­site and saw good trac­tion with donors at the begin­ning of the cam­paign. How­ever, since lock­downs have ended in Europe, the long-term impact on inter­con­tin­ent­al tour­ism has crystallised.

The situ­ation for all our part­ners is now crit­ic­al, espe­cially as we approach what would nor­mally be the peak sea­son for travel & tour­ism in South­east Asia. 

Ele­phant Val­ley Pro­ject (EVP) in Cam­bod­ia is cur­rently USD 30,000 in the red and look­ing like going fur­ther into debt for the rest of the year. Man­daLao Ele­phant Con­ser­va­tion in Laos needs anoth­er USD 40,000 to feed the ele­phants under its care and pay loc­al staff for the rest of the year. The NGO Phare Pon­leu Selpak in Cam­bod­ia needs anoth­er USD 400,000 to run its school and train its 1,000 stu­dents next year. 

This list goes on.

Hopeful pivots: Diversifying beyond tourism

Rather than feel­ing sorry for them­selves, our respons­ible tour­ism busi­ness part­ners have been busy devis­ing and imple­ment­ing innov­at­ive plans to fight the COVID-19 crisis by find­ing altern­at­ive sources of income. 

Jemma Bul­lock, pro­gram man­ager for the EVP in Cam­bod­ia says the biggest thing to come out of the crisis is “how people look at tour­ism”; how “it will lead to diversification”.

Looking to an education-based model

For the EVP this means a great­er focus on aspects of the pro­gram that can be accessed from abroad, such as its edu­ca­tion-based ini­ti­at­ives; con­nect­ing with schools, offer­ing uni­ver­sity sum­mer research courses, and selling online courses and tours to sup­ple­ment income from nature-based tour­ism activities. 

The EVP has already star­ted to exper­i­ence some suc­cess from this effort. And not only from over­seas. For example, EVP recently hos­ted a pro­gram for film stu­dents from Phnom Penh who vis­ited the sanc­tu­ary to learn how to film ele­phants and wildlife.

Engaging with corporate partners

Anoth­er option for diver­si­fy­ing income is through CSR (cor­por­ate social respons­ib­il­ity), accord­ing to Jemma Bul­lock; “cor­por­a­tions can con­trib­ute to con­ser­va­tion and give part of their profits to char­ity.” The REDD+ (Redu­cing Emis­sions from Defor­est­a­tion and Forest Degrad­a­tion) pro­gram is an ini­ti­at­ive that secures CSR fund­ing for large pro­tec­ted areas. The EVP oper­ates on the bound­ary of one of them. The EVP team is also look­ing for cor­por­ate spon­sors for their own ele­phant and com­munity programs.

Hopeful pivots: Repurposing the core mission

As with the EVP, all of Tour­ism In Need’s oth­er part­ners have a social or envir­on­ment­al mis­sion at the heart of what they do. They rely on funds from tour­ism to ful­fill that mis­sion. Or at least they used to. Tak­ing into account drastic­ally reduced income and a change in their bene­fi­ciar­ies’ needs, many organ­isa­tions have had to rethink the ser­vices they provide their beneficiaries.

Widening the scope of community support

Phare Pon­leu Selpak is an NGO based in Bat­tam­bang, Cam­bod­ia. Phare puts on cir­cus shows for inter­na­tion­al vis­it­ors to gen­er­ate funds to sup­port their core mis­sion, which includes improv­ing the stand­ard of liv­ing of loc­al chil­dren and their fam­il­ies through edu­ca­tion, social sup­port and voca­tion­al arts programs. 

When the glob­al crisis hit, Phare sur­veyed 485 fam­il­ies in Bat­tam­bang Province, and dis­covered that 80% of them were “fin­an­cially impacted by COVID-19 [and were] in dire need of food and hygiene sup­plies”, accord­ing to Mor­gane Dar­rasse of Phare. As a res­ult, every month since June, Phare has put togeth­er needs-based emer­gency relief pack­ages to sup­port the most at-risk fam­il­ies in sur­round­ing com­munit­ies. “We provide them with rice, noodles, tuna, and essen­tial cook­ing items,” Mor­gane said.

Changing business models

EGBOK in Siem Reap, Cam­bod­ia has had to go one step fur­ther and com­pletely change its social enter­prise res­taur­ant busi­ness mod­el in response to reduced income. They are no longer able to pay their staff so the res­taur­ant will instead be com­pletely stu­dent-run as part of the program’s intern­ship component. 

Laurie Par­ris, EGBOK’s exec­ut­ive dir­ect­or says they have added entre­pren­eur­ship train­ing to their pro­grams. “We think many stu­dents may wish to go back to their home com­munit­ies to start a busi­ness after fin­ish­ing with us as they may not be able to find work in tour­ism after the pan­dem­ic,” Laurie said.

Sim­il­arly, Reach­ing Out Tea House in Hoi An, Viet­nam has been train­ing its dis­abled staff on grow­ing fruits and veget­ables to help them become self-suf­fi­cient in the absence of tour­ism income. 

Hopeful pivots: Adopting technology

Some organ­isa­tions have looked at more tech­nic­al solu­tions to ground-level problems.

Conducting virtual training

Unsur­pris­ingly, many organ­isa­tions have turned to tech­no­logy to con­tin­ue their train­ing pro­grams while face-to-face inter­ac­tion has not been possible. 

Phare has been try­ing to provide socially-dis­tanced and e‑learning to get its hun­dreds of stu­dents through their final exams, how­ever the chal­lenge has been that many do not have a com­puter or inter­net con­nec­tion at home. 

EGBOK faces the same chal­lenge but has adop­ted the use of tech­no­logy to con­tin­ue sup­port­ing their bene­fi­ciar­ies. Exec­ut­ive dir­ect­or Laurie Par­ris is inspired by the “speed with which the team has adap­ted to the new situation” .

Trialling virtual tours

Man­daLao Ele­phant Con­ser­va­tion in Laos has been tri­al­ling vir­tu­al tours of their ele­phant con­ser­va­tion centre but found that the poor inter­net con­nec­tion in the forest makes it very dif­fi­cult to provide a pro­fes­sion­al ser­vice. Addi­tion­ally, vir­tu­al tours just aren’t the same as the real thing, espe­cially when it comes to get­ting up close and per­son­al with a lar­ger-than-life elephant.

What does the future hold for purpose-driven tourism organisations?

The very lim­ited gov­ern­ment sup­port for SMEs in South­east Asia through­out this crisis has left respons­ible pur­pose-driv­en tour­ism organ­isa­tions fend­ing for them­selves. Tra­di­tion­al fun­drais­ing has become more chal­len­ging giv­en the heightened demand for donor funds. Organ­isa­tions have there­fore had to innov­ate in order to con­tin­ue serving the people and anim­als that depend on them to sur­vive and thrive.

Nev­er­the­less, there is some light at the end of the tun­nel. Gov­ern­ments in South­east Asia may not have been sup­port­ing loc­al busi­nesses through fur­lough schemes as those in Europe and else­where have been, but they have dealt with the actu­al vir­us more suc­cess­fully. The part­ners we inter­viewed were in Cam­bod­ia, Laos and Viet­nam — we also work with part­ners in Myan­mar, Thai­l­and, and Indone­sia — which have exper­i­enced low rates of infec­tions and deaths in com­par­is­on to oth­er glob­al des­tin­a­tions. This leaves them well-posi­tioned to wel­come tour­ists back.

We sin­cerely hope that the innov­a­tion shown by respons­ible tour­ism organ­isa­tions through­out the crisis, along­side an increas­ing desire in the tour­ism sec­tor to not go back to the old ways, will place our pur­pose-driv­en busi­ness part­ners in a strong pos­i­tion to thrive in the future.

Give today, go tomorrow

Tour­ism has been the lifeblood of many people and places in South­east Asia but it isn’t return­ing to his­tor­ic levels any­time soon. These people and places need the sup­port of the inter­na­tion­al tour­ism com­munity. Trav­el­lers who would like to help can vis­it Tour­ism In Need, where we have cur­ated a list of socially- and envir­on­ment­ally-focused busi­nesses that are strug­gling to survive. 

Every penny of every dona­tion goes dir­ectly to the organ­isa­tions in need so that they can con­tin­ue their import­ant social and envir­on­ment­al work. If you can, give today and go tomor­row. And know that your assist­ance will be put to good use; that it will con­trib­ute to a hope­ful cause. 

What do you think? Do you know of oth­er pur­pose-driv­en tour­ism organ­isa­tions and how they are sur­viv­ing? Share a short anec­dote in the com­ments below. Or write a deep­er “GT” Insight. The “Good Tour­ism” Blog wel­comes diversity of opin­ion and per­spect­ive about travel & tour­ism because travel & tour­ism is everyone’s business.

Fea­tured image (top of post): Ele­phant Con­ser­va­tion Cen­ter, Say­a­boury, Laos. Image by Jimmy Beunardeau; sup­plied by authors.

About the authors

A strategy con­sult­ant based in Thai­l­and, Robert Pow­ell is Tour­ism In Need’s co-founder & com­mu­nic­a­tions man­ager. Since 2012 he has sup­por­ted organ­isa­tions and gov­ern­ments across Europe, Lat­in Amer­ica, and South­east Asia in the devel­op­ment and imple­ment­a­tion of policy and strategy.

Respons­ible tour­ism pro­fes­sion­al Ameer Vir­ani is Tour­ism In Need’s co-founder & part­ner­ships man­ager. He has worked through­out the tour­ism eco­sys­tem since 2012, in Cam­bod­ia, India, Myan­mar, and Viet­nam, sup­port­ing the devel­op­ment of respons­ible tour­ism in the region through private-sec­tor and NGO initiatives.

Tour­ism In Need con­nects trav­el­lers with respons­ible tour­ism organ­isa­tions strug­gling through the COVID-19 crisis.