Good news in travel & tourism March 2022

“Good news in travel & tour­ism” wraps up a month of “Good Tour­ism” & “GT” Travel news, insights, and experiences.

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• “Good Tour­ism” Insights
• Good news from friends
• How “GT” enables diversity of thought
• Friends indeed

“GT” Insights: Informed perspectives on the industry

The “Good Tour­ism” Blog pub­lishes informed opin­ions on the issues facing the travel & tour­ism industry, everyone’s busi­ness. “GT” Insights are diverse per­spect­ives writ­ten by, for, and about our sec­tor. Here are the latest from the month that was:

Masters of complexity & change: What travel & tourism needs from the academy

Many travel & tour­ism edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions could be unin­ten­tion­ally restrict­ing stu­dents’ abil­ity to see the ‘big pic­ture’. And some edu­cat­ors may be too tied to their pet per­spect­ives and untested the­or­ies to be doing their stu­dents any favours. Edu­cat­or and entre­pren­eur Lauren Uğur reck­ons the academy can bet­ter reflect real­ity while equip­ping stu­dents to face it, in: “Mas­ters of com­plex­ity & change: What travel & tour­ism needs from the academy”

“Lauren’s remarks […] take a some­what deserved dig at the academy,” wrote Michael Hay­wood in a com­ment on Dr Uğur’s “GT” Insight. “[F]ew in the academy fully appre­ci­ate the nuances of mana­geri­al work.” Read Michael’s full com­ment in con­text, and Lauren’s reply in “Mas­ters of com­plex­ity & change”

Towards ‘magnificence’: The aspirational trajectory of value-creating journeys

‘Mag­ni­fi­cent’, the adject­ive, should prop­erly be applied to human actions and vir­tues rather than tan­gible things, derived as it is from the Lat­in ‘mag­num facere’, which means to do some­thing great. Why is ‘Mag­ni­fi­cence’ K Michael Haywood’s “North Star”? And how does he think tour­ism should nav­ig­ate towards it? “Towards ‘mag­ni­fi­cence’: The aspir­a­tion­al tra­ject­ory of value-cre­at­ing journeys”

War in Ukraine and the real ‘ethical tourism’

The travel & tour­ism industry can do plenty to sup­port the people of Ukraine in their fight for free­dom, such as lever­age its com­mu­nic­a­tions and pay­ments chan­nels. That would rep­res­ent a truly ‘eth­ic­al tour­ism’, accord­ing to Jim Butcher in “War in Ukraine and the real ‘eth­ic­al tour­ism’”.

Tapping potential, preserving value: Rwanda’s cultural heritage tourism challenges

What chal­lenges face those who would tap Rwanda’s cul­tur­al her­it­age for tour­ism and devel­op­ment while pre­serving it for com­munity iden­tity now and in the future? Tour oper­at­or Greg Bak­un­zi shares his thoughts in “Tap­ping poten­tial, pre­serving value: Rwanda’s cul­tur­al her­it­age tour­ism chal­lenges”.

“This is both enga­ging and edu­cat­ive,” wrote Sham­iso Nyajeka in a com­ment on Mr Bak­un­zi’s “GT” Insight. “I totally agree with the idea of har­ness­ing cul­tur­al tour­ism for sus­tain­able development.”

How to do tourism responsibly in the Faroe Islands

Any­one seek­ing new ter­rit­ory to explore, send guests to, or expand into should heed the community’s atti­tudes to vis­it­ors and its expect­a­tions of inbound travel & tour­ism. As part of his post­gradu­ate stud­ies, Saverio Francesco Ber­to­lu­cci under­took research in the remote Faroe Islands to find out what loc­als think about tour­ists and our industry. “How to do tour­ism respons­ibly in the Faroe Islands”

“GT” Travel Experiences: Informed inspiration for travellers

The “Good Tour­ism” Blog’s young sib­ling The “GT” Travel Blog pub­lishes informed inspir­a­tion and top tips for trav­el­lers from tour­ism insiders. Fresh con­tent com­ing soon.

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Good news from friends

Good news in travel & tour­ism from the won­der­ful organ­isa­tions that make “GT” pos­sible. Here is some of what happened this month in the “Good Tour­ism” network:

SUNx to offer schol­ar­ships to Ukrain­i­an stu­dents
SUNx Malta will offer schol­ar­ships to four Ukrain­i­an stu­dents in the 2022 intake of the Cli­mate Friendly Travel Dip­loma. Forty-six oth­er schol­ar­ships will cov­er the UN’s least developed coun­tries. Fifty is a nod to the 50th anniversary of UN Envir­on­ment and the first Earth Sum­mit in Stockholm.

Khiri Travel pre­pares to wel­come guests to Cam­bod­ia, Viet­nam
Khiri Travel reports that Cam­bod­ia and Viet­nam have relaxed their entry require­ments to (almost) pre-COV­ID levels. Khiri Travel’s loc­al guide team in Siem Reap, Cam­bod­ia met to plan. Some of them had not seen each oth­er for almost two years. They were all excited to have travel back.

Willem Niemeijer quoted in SCMP
“Nat­ur­al tour­ist sites around Asia have no reg­u­la­tion or vis­it­or man­age­ment, while museums world­wide carry tick­et and reser­va­tion sys­tems, which help man­age foot­fall,” Willem Niemeijer says in a South China Morn­ing Post art­icle about over­tour­ism. Willem foun­ded Khiri Travel. And his Yaana Ven­tures has stakes in Anurak Com­munity Lodge and Car­damom Ten­ted Camp.

Paul Rogers on a mis­sion in Nepal
Plan­et Hap­pi­ness founder Paul Rogers is on a mis­sion in Nepal to revis­it the 30 set­tle­ments and 147 house­holds that 28 years ago formed the basis of his PhD, “Tour­ism, Devel­op­ment and Change in the Sagarmatha (Mt Everest) Nation­al Park and its Environs”. Paul will doc­u­ment how the com­munit­ies have been changed by tour­ism. Plan­et Hap­pi­ness will track his pro­gress and share his adventures. 

For the Inter­na­tion­al Day of Hap­pi­ness, March 20, the “GT” Insight Part­ner cre­ated an infograph­ic about the key play­ers in well-being. 

Mes­sage of cli­mate hope to ‘engage more people’: SUNx part­ner
“Cli­mate is not a story told well,” says Christina Beck­mann of new SUNx part­ner Tomor­row’s Air. “It’s all dooms­day. What we need to do is to get the mes­sage of hope to engage more people.”

CABI Tour­ism Cases’ news­let­ter returns in 2022 …
… with links to new case stud­ies “The Social Prac­tice of Care Hotel Vaca­tions” and “Reset­tle­ment and Regen­er­a­tion: The Pafuri Camp Joint-ven­ture Lodge, Kruger Nation­al Park, South Africa”.

ASSET‑H&C needs a new man­ager
IECD, the Insti­tute for European Cooper­a­tion & Devel­op­ment, is advert­ising for a bilin­gual (French and Eng­lish) man­ager for their Ho Chi Minh City-based pro­ject the Asso­ci­ation of South­east Asi­an Social Enter­prises for Train­ing in Hos­pit­al­ity & Cater­ing. ASSET‑H&C is a “GT” Insight Partner.

Vlog­gers exper­i­ence Car­damom Ten­ted Camp
You­Tuber Tim Ha and his friend Daniel vis­ited Car­damom Ten­ted Camp recently and pro­duced a fun and inform­at­ive video fea­tur­ing won­der­ful drone footage:

WTA part­ners with Ugandan tour oper­at­or
The World­wide Travel Alli­ance has partnered with Gan­yana Safar­is from Uganda. Gan­yana Safar­is is “well placed” to show­case the east Afric­an des­tin­a­tion, which has launched a new tour­ism pro­mo­tion cam­paign: Explore Uganda — The Pearl of Africa.

Off Sea­son Adven­tures invests in trees and the Hadzabe home­land
Off Sea­son Adven­tures invests in the Yaeda Valle REDD+ pro­ject through Car­bon Tan­zania. “We have pro­tec­ted over 206 trees through this pro­ject and helped pre­serve 35,000ha of forest in the Yaeda Val­ley, an area the Hadzabe tribe has called home for thou­sands of years.”

Rwandan gor­il­las the focus of a pod­cast
Off Sea­son Adven­tures CEO Lind­say Booth joined the CATALYST Travel & Pur­pose pod­cast to talk about her trip to Rwanda, and spe­cific­ally the Gor­illa Guard­i­ans Vil­lage and oth­er con­ser­va­tion efforts in Rwanda.

OSA high­lights part­ners’ work on IWD
For Inter­na­tion­al Women’s Day, Off Sea­son Adven­tures high­lighted their part­ners’ “fant­ast­ic pro­jects, work, and ini­ti­at­ives world­wide”, includ­ing Roy­al Moun­tain Travel in Nepal whose activ­it­ies were fea­tured in a Feb­ru­ary 2020 “GT” Insight.

ASSET‑H&C cred­its mem­bers on IWD
On Inter­na­tion­al Women’s Day, ASSET‑H&C gave a shout out to its mem­bers who have for years empowered “thou­sands of dis­ad­vant­aged young women to become agen­cies of their own lives through voca­tion­al train­ing in tour­ism and hospitality”. 

ASSET‑H&C social media worth fol­low­ing; tips on waste man­age­ment
Not news, but it’s good: It is worth fol­low­ing the social media of ASSET‑H&C, which reg­u­larly fea­tures con­tent that taps into its net­work and rich resources. For example, this week there’s a short video with tips on waste man­age­ment drawn from its recent Eco-Guide for Hos­pit­al­ity Busi­nesses & Schools.

The importance of good partnerships

To help you nav­ig­ate dire straits, take the tem­per­at­ure in an uncer­tain cli­mate, and keep your head when all about you are los­ing theirs, it’s wise to seek out part­ners who make you their pri­or­ity.

“GT” is a good part­ner. Veri­fy that with a “GT” Part­ner and then look at part­ner­ship oppor­tun­it­ies. There’s a pack­age for every­one — big or small; pub­lic or private; com­mer­cial or not-for-profit — because travel & tour­ism is everyone’s business. 

All “GT” Part­ners enjoy out­stand­ing value, includ­ing the oppor­tun­ity every week to con­trib­ute news to the “GT” news­let­ter and these monthly wraps.

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How “GT” enables diversity of thought

Did you ever want to write a thought­ful piece about the state of the tour­ism industry; how we got here; how we can make it bet­ter (or avoid the worst)?

Has a lack of con­fid­ence in your writ­ing held you back? Well, please don’t let it. Your cor­res­pond­ent is here to help.

I have helped someone with dys­lex­ia pub­lish a “Good Tour­ism” Insight. 

I have helped those for whom Eng­lish is a second (or more) lan­guage pub­lish on “GT”.

And I have helped pro­fess­ors trans­late their Aca­demese into lan­guage that’s a little more access­ible to “GT’s” audi­ence of diverse travel & tour­ism industry stakeholders.

It takes plenty of time and effort, but it’s worth it.

You are invited to write a “GT” Insight. Ser­i­ously. “GT” Insights are open to any­one who has an informed opin­ion on our industry, and not only con­fid­ent writers. 

If you sub­mit a draft that com­plies with the simple “GT” Insight guidelines, I will per­son­ally copy edit your work and ensure you are happy with it before I click “Pub­lish”.

It’s part of “GT’s” mis­sion to offer a plat­form for truly diverse perspectives. 

If you think that’s a worthy mis­sion, I humbly ask for your sup­port to spread the word. 

And … (shhh) … If you could use some (ghost)writing tal­ent, con­tact me. I enjoy dis­tilling com­plex ideas and tail­or­ing shots of insight for diverse stakeholders.

Friends indeed

“Friends indeed” are worthy travel & tour­ism industry fun­draisers and char­it­able causes that are asso­ci­ated with or sug­ges­ted by “GT” Part­ners and friends. Please help them if you can. Share the page with your net­works. And link to it from your website.

Stay healthy, smile, have a good week … And when you travel, 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): Share “Good news in tour­ism March 2022” as you would a cream tea. Image by MillySell (CC0) via Pixabay.

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Donations, diversity, disclosure

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 your ori­gin­al con­tent sup­ports an inde­pend­ent publisher.

Part­ner with “GT”. You know you want to. Here are some testi­mo­ni­als.

Note: It is “GT’s” policy to fully dis­close Part­ner or sponsored con­tent. If an item asso­ci­ated with a “GT” Part­ner is not dis­closed as such, then it either met the “GT” Insight guidelines (includ­ing “not a sales pitch”) or yours truly simply for­got (it happens).