Good news in tourism “Good Tourism” catch-up Dec 13, 2020

Because we can­not be cancelled …

Pub­lished most Sundays, “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” news (since the last “Good news”) incl. ele­phants!
• Cov­er­age of the 2020 Glob­al Eco Asia-Pacific Conference

It’s “Good Tour­ism”. And go!

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“Good Tourism” news (since the last “Good news”)

Des­pite not pub­lish­ing a “Good news in tour­ism” post since Novem­ber 15, “GT” and friends have been busy, as evid­enced by the following …

Happy news! Plan­et Hap­pi­ness has joined the crew as a “GT” Insight Part­ner! A not-for-profit, Plan­et Hap­pi­ness’ mis­sion is to “focus the atten­tion of all tour­ism stake­hold­ers on the well-being agenda; and use tour­ism as a vehicle for devel­op­ment that demon­strably strengthens des­tin­a­tion sus­tain­ab­il­ity and the qual­ity of life of host com­munit­ies”. Look out for a “GT” Insight about Plan­et Hap­pi­ness’ rais­on d’être and hap­pi­ness guage next week.

Neville Har­greaves is work­ing on turn­ing every­day waste into jet fuel at a com­mer­cial scale. In a “Good Tour­ism” Insight pub­lished Novem­ber 24, Dr Har­greaves explains why he thinks sus­tain­able avi­ation fuel is the only real­ist­ic near-term solu­tion to air travel’s cli­mate quandary: “With sus­tain­able avi­ation fuel, is a new era of green air travel pos­sible by 2025?”

Speak­ing of cli­mate, “GT” Part­ner Khiri Travel is intro­du­cing a com­pre­hens­ive off­set­ting pro­gram with Cli­mate­Care, and new low-emis­sion ‘slow travel’ hol­i­day options that do away with region­al flights with­in and between its South­east Asian des­tin­a­tions: “Khiri Travel to go car­bon-neut­ral from Janu­ary 2021”

“GT” Part­ner SUN^x’s Cli­mate Friendly Travel Registry has gained 200 regis­trants; tour­ism SMEs from the Thompson Okanagan region of BC, Canada. Regis­trar Dr Hans Friederich and SUN^x pres­id­ent Prof Geof­frey Lip­man had import­ant things to say about the Registry and Cli­mate Friendly Travel in “Cli­mate Friendly Travel Registry gains 200 from Thompson Okanagan, Canada”

Prof Lip­man this week spoke at a United Nations Depart­ment of Eco­nom­ic & Social Affairs (UN DESA) prep ses­sion for next year’s Glas­gow Cli­mate Sum­mit. “I high­lighted the need for travel & tour­ism to play a big­ger role in main­stream car­bon reduc­tion pro­grams,” he repor­ted. “And I called on avi­ation to increase its neander­th­al cur­rent ICAO-focused 2050 ambi­tion; to align it with Par­is 1.5.”

To Canada’s south, Lake Tahoe, USA lived through the sud­den over­tour­ism-to-no-tour­ism with­draw­al exper­i­enced by many pop­u­lar des­tin­a­tions in 2020. The area also had to endure a wrench­ing return to over­tour­ism as city-slick­ers rushed to get their nature fix after COVID lock­down. In a “GT” Insight pub­lished Decem­ber 8, Lake Tahoe Vis­it­ors Author­ity boss Car­ol Chap­lin out­lined the crazy jour­ney before shar­ing what she believes rep­res­ents an oppor­tun­ity and chal­lenge: “Over­tour­ism to no tour­ism and back again: What is Lake Tahoe’s ‘new nor­mal’?”

On Novem­ber 17, social entre­pren­eur Kumar Anubhav wrote about the exist­en­tial prob­lems facing rur­al tour­ism stake­hold­ers in India, and the sur­viv­al and sus­tain­ab­il­ity solu­tion he and his friends are rolling out as Pro­ject TraViv­al: “How will rur­al tour­ism in India sur­vive the COVID crisis?”

In neigh­bour­ing Sri Lanka, Susan Eardly and Dinesh Pathir­ana are empower­ing rur­al fam­il­ies pre­vi­ously reli­ant on tour­ism income to devel­op sus­tain­able busi­nesses. In her “GT” Insight pub­lished Decem­ber 10, Ms Eardly answered the ques­tion: “Why are travel & tour­ism work­ers grow­ing mush­rooms in rur­al Sri Lanka?”

For max­im­ising the pos­it­ive impacts of trav­el­ler good­will, Iain Pat­ton of tour oper­at­or Uganda Part­ner­ship (UP!) reck­ons “hold­ing back and look­ing and listen­ing for longer” is a win-win strategy. Mr Pat­ton spoke with Tan­ner C Knorr of “GT” Insight Part­ner Second Look World­wide in “Wake UP! to the trans­form­at­ive power of part­ner­ship & enterprise”

“GT” Des­tin­a­tion Part­ner WeAre­Lao reports that more than 7,300 people have par­ti­cip­ated in train­ing courses sup­por­ted by the Skills for Tour­ism Pro­ject (LAO/029) since 2016. Some 72% of gradu­ates have been able to find jobs or pur­sue fur­ther stud­ies. Next year is the Pro­ject’s last. Co-fin­anced by the gov­ern­ments of Laos, Lux­em­bourg, and Switzer­land, and imple­men­ted by Laos’ Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion & Sports and the Lux­em­bourg Devel­op­ment Cooper­a­tion Agency (LuxDev), LAO/029 still has EUR 3 mil­lion (USD 3.6 mil­lion) of its total EUR 15 mil­lion (USD 18.1 mil­lion) to spend in 2021.

“GT” Part­ner the World Tour­ism Asso­ci­ation for Cul­ture and Her­it­age (WTACH) has appoin­ted Helena Egan and Shaun Vor­ster to its Exec­ut­ive Board. Ms Egan joins as chief mar­ket­ing and innov­a­tion officer, Mr Vor­ster as chief strategist. Florence Nkini has been appoin­ted dir­ect­or of oper­a­tions for Africa.

Elephants

“The concept of ‘essen­tial work­ers’ has been front and centre since the COVID-19 vir­us struck our world earli­er this year,” Hol­lis Burb­ank-Ham­marlund of “GT” Insight Part­ner Work for Wild Life Inter­na­tion­al wrote. “For cap­tive Asi­an ele­phants, the most essen­tial work­ers are mahouts.” Ms Burb­ank-Ham­marlund penned the intro­duc­tion to this inform­at­ive piece by Ana­bel Lopez-Perez at the Ele­phant Con­ser­va­tion Cen­ter, Laos: “Mahouts mat­ter: The Ele­phant Con­ser­va­tion Center’s essen­tial workers”

Work for Wild Life Inter­na­tion­al is sup­port­ing veter­in­ary care for tour­ism ele­phants through its COVID-19 Ele­phant Health­care & Wel­fare Emer­gency Life­line Fund. In news from the field, Ms Burb­ank-Ham­marlund reports that a new team mem­ber, Dr Aon from the South­ern Thai­l­and Ele­phant Found­a­tion, has been teach­ing mahouts how to per­form basis wound care and main­ten­ance on their elephants.

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The importance of good partnerships

Many com­ment­at­ors would like to see des­tin­a­tions recov­er from the COVID-19 depres­sion focused on qual­ity rather than quant­ity. That would be nice, of course, par­tic­u­larly if host com­munit­ies want that. How­ever, some or many extant tour­ism stake­hold­ers will likely go out of busi­ness. Don’t let one of those be you. 

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.

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.

2020 Global Eco Asia-Pacific Conference

The “Good Tour­ism” Blog covered the 2020 Glob­al Eco Asia-Pacific Tour­ism Con­fer­ence, Decem­ber 1 – 3, 2020 in Mar­garet River, West­ern Aus­tralia, Aus­tralia.

On day one, politi­cians and pub­lic ser­vants spruiked their respect­ive places and tax-pay­er-fun­ded ini­ti­at­ives, and industry giants and glob­al con­sult­ants had their say, but it was the small entre­pren­eurs who were the most inspir­ing speak­ers: “‘Not good enough. Move your … !’ Grit, hon­esty, hope, & how to sur­vive a crisis”

Sev­er­al speak­ers con­sidered what eco­tour­ism might look like post-COV­ID and explored “revolu­tion­ary” ideas dur­ing the second day of the event. And, pre­dict­ably, there were lots of oth­er “re-” words ban­died about — Reset. Rethink. Redesign. Reflect. Reboot. Regen­er­ate. … “Re: Eco­tour­ism”

“Ask­ing ques­tions is the best place to start,” Anna Pol­lock said dur­ing the after­noon of the third and final day of the 2020 Glob­al Eco show. She’s right, of course, yet no-one got the oppor­tun­ity to ask her any after she delivered her take on what “regen­er­at­ive” tour­ism means. And there are so many ques­tions: “Regen­er­at­ive eco­tour­ism: Ask­ing ques­tions is the best place to start”

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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): Nor­na­lup Inlet at sun­set, West­ern Aus­tralia. Image by Dav­id Gill­banks (CC BY 4.0).

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! 🙂