‘Not good enough. Move your … !’ Grit, honesty, hope, and how to survive a crisis

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 on the first day of the 2020 Glob­al Eco Asia-Pacific Tour­ism Con­fer­ence.

What matters?

Indeed Sonia Beck­with, co-own­er of Live Nin­ga­loo, had a mes­sage for the power brokers: “What you’re doing is great but may not be good enough.” And she urged fel­low tour oper­at­ors and the industry at large to keep going: “We’ll need you later.” 

She insisted that every­one part­ner up to find cre­at­ive solu­tions to crisis-induced prob­lems. Find what mat­ters, because it may not be what you’re focused on. Emphas­ise what mat­ters, because that’s what will pull you through.

Ms Beck­with ded­ic­ated her speech to her fath­er, a US mil­it­ary man, who taught her and her sib­lings the value of resi­li­ence and self-reli­ance. He made her face her fears; instilled in her the will to fight. This pre­pared her per­fectly for the past year. 

Live Nin­ga­loo, which she co-foun­ded with her part­ner, is the only small-group tour oper­at­or on Nin­ga­loo Reef, West­ern Aus­tralia. “Small groups don’t fatigue staff,” she said, allow­ing guides the abil­ity to make the “magic” hap­pen by max­im­ising the value of each tour for each guest. 

Last year, 2019, was the first break-out sea­son for the young organ­isa­tion. They were pre­pared for a great 2020; pre­par­ing to scale up “just enough” to retain staff, pay off busi­ness loans, put a down­pay­ment on a house, and take an off-sea­son trip. 

Then COVID hit. On March 18, the sea­son opened. On March 23, only five days later, the sea­son closed. Ms Beck­with choked up as she related hav­ing to lay off staff. 

Revert­ing to sur­viv­al mode inspired by child­hood — her fath­er on the side­lines, a spec­tat­or: “That’s not good enough. Move your ass!” — she set out to “resell the sold”. 

Live Nin­ga­loo couldn’t afford to refund 900+ depos­its. That money was already spent to get through the off sea­son, which is nor­mal for a sea­son­al tour­ism busi­ness. But what value could Live Nin­ga­loo offer to entice people to keep faith? Every­body needs cash in a crisis!

“We were hon­est,” she said. And they survived.

‘Not all ablaze’

Craig Wick­ham, man­aging dir­ect­or of Excep­tion­al Kangaroo Island, also advoc­ates hon­esty. Com­mu­nic­a­tion was crit­ic­al in the after­math of the sum­mer 2019/20 Kangaroo Island bush­fire; to make sure stake­hold­ers — cus­tom­ers, staff, etc — knew exactly what was going on. Mr Wick­ham per­son­ally pub­lished 35 updates between Decem­ber 20 and Janu­ary 18. Col­lect­ively, the industry can be much bet­ter at dis­sem­in­at­ing accur­ate, timely inform­a­tion in rela­tion to nat­ur­al dis­asters, he reckons. 

On Kangaroo Island, South Aus­tralia, more than 90 homes and numer­ous busi­ness premises went up in smoke. Mr Wick­ham saw can­cel­la­tions worth AUD 420,000 (USD 310,000) in just 10 days. Yet he remained pos­it­ive; glass half full. For example, while 42% of the island burned, that left 58% untouched! And while the fire impacted mainly in the west of the island, that meant the east was fine! 

Excep­tion­al Kangaroo Island reopened for busi­ness on Janu­ary 14 with adjus­ted itin­er­ar­ies with dir­ect sub­sti­tu­tions of exper­i­ences; like for like. And they only used new time-stamped images in mar­ket­ing and pro­mo­tions so as not to deceive cus­tom­ers. Cus­tom­ers appre­ci­ated that. 

Mr Wick­ham also under­took an ardu­ous 16-city tour of the USA and Canada, Janu­ary 26 to Feb­ru­ary 23, with the truth­ful mes­sage that Aus­tralia was a big place “not all ablaze”. Even in fire-affected areas there was now the attrac­tion of an amaz­ing regen­er­a­tion and regrowth event in the Aus­trali­an bush. And, any­way, there were plenty of places to go and things to do and wild­life to see that were unaf­fected by fire.

Then COVID.

Mr Wick­ham shared four points he thinks are crit­ic­al to effect­ive crisis com­mu­nic­a­tions and busi­ness sur­viv­al dur­ing tough times. He recom­mends remaining:

• Vis­ible — access­ible, pos­it­ive, innov­at­ive, empathetic 
• Flex­ible — find ways and means to access new mar­kets and gen­er­ate revenue
• Engaged — stay in touch with part­ners and industry by any means
• Con­fid­ent — pro­ject a pos­it­ive atti­tude; always answer when oppor­tun­ity knocks 

Rising consciousness

Amy Carter-James, co-founder and CEO of Raaise, still reck­ons tour­ism can be a force for pos­it­ive change in the world. 

As a fresh gradu­ate, Ms Carter-James and friends set out to cre­ate a tour­ism exper­i­ence in Mozam­bi­que, where life-expect­ancy was 37. They estab­lished a lodge offer­ing “exper­i­en­tial lux­ury” as opposed to mater­i­al lux­ury; cre­ated a social enter­prise from which 5% of the rev­en­ue went back to the com­munity; gen­er­ated sus­tain­able enter­prises and live­li­hoods; pos­it­ively impacted 60,000+ lives; tripled school attend­ance almost imme­di­ately; delivered bet­ter health out­comes … It took some 14 years to have a 100% loc­al workforce.

Then Cyc­lone Ken­neth, in April 2019, 17 years after it all star­ted. Ken­neth took down everything; the hotel; the schools … Then a glob­al pan­dem­ic… Now a loc­al war; sev­en weeks ago insur­gents took over the whole community … 

Des­pite the crush of dis­asters and crises in a place she knows so well and loves so dearly, Ms Carter-James is gen­er­ally “more hope­ful today than ever” because of a rising con­scious­ness among people. To lever­age that, Raaise allows indi­vidu­al investors to align their invest­ments with their val­ues; and entre­pren­eurs to raise funds that give them the lee­way to grow sus­tain­ably and responsibly.

Ecotourism Australia’s outcomes focus

Keynot­ing the event in her role as chair of Eco­tour­ism Aus­tralia (EA), Dr Claire Ellis said her aim has been to make EA more than a cer­ti­fic­a­tion organ­isa­tion. EA is becom­ing more “out­comes-focussed” around new chal­lenges, such as cli­mate change, as well long-stand­ing issues, such as enga­ging tra­di­tion­al landown­ers. Across a range of issues, trav­el­lers increas­ingly want to feel good about their trips, she asserted. 

Tour­ism remains a power­ful tool in region­al devel­op­ment, Dr Ellis said. It’s an “old word” but ‘sus­tain­ab­il­ity’ still has mean­ing; and the new­er buzzword ‘regen­er­at­ive’ is help­ing to “sharpen focus”. It’s time to “reset”, she said, to think about “bet­ter” when build­ing back; to put com­munit­ies “back on top”; to “influ­ence up”.

At the start of the event, Tony Charters AM, co-con­ven­or of the 2020 Glob­al Eco Asia-Pacific Tour­ism Con­fer­ence, said they were determ­ined to run the event des­pite the dif­fi­culties of the year. They were forced to look at live-stream­ing, includ­ing set­ting up region­al “nodes”, which have helped deliv­er the second-highest del­eg­ate count in Glob­al Eco his­tory. Prof Ross Dowl­ing AM, Hon­or­ary Pro­fess­or of Tour­ism, School of Busi­ness & Law at Edith Cow­an Uni­ver­sity and co-con­ven­or of the event, per­formed mas­ter of cere­mony duties.

The 2020 Glob­al Eco Asia-Pacific Tour­ism Con­fer­ence is tak­ing place Decem­ber 1 – 3, 2020 in Mar­garet River, West­ern Australia.

Fea­tured image (top of post): Sand­pa­per in dif­fer­ent grits (40, 80, 150, 240, 600). By Simon Eug­ster (CC BY-SA 3.0) via Wiki­me­dia. (“GT” cropped it.)