Good news in tourism December 1 – 7, 2019

Wel­come to The “Good Tour­ism” Blog’s first sum­mary of and links to a week of good news and quirk­i­ness in the world of travel & tour­ism. Pub­lished on Sunday to be ready on Monday morn­ing, it’s the per­fect pos­it­ive start to a work­ing week in travel & tour­ism! Share it with your colleagues.

In no par­tic­u­lar order:

Phil­ip­pines Tour­ism Sec­ret­ary Ber­na­dette Romulo-Puyat has put sus­tain­ab­il­ity at the top of the Depart­ment of Tourism’s agenda, des­pite arrivals to the South­east Asi­an archipelago fall­ing well short of the likes of Indone­sia and Thai­l­and. Her rationale is sound because quant­ity is not the point, accord­ing to a news­pa­per colum­nist (and “GT”). Let’s hope the imple­ment­a­tion is both sound and on point. 

Accessible tourism

Did you know that it was Inter­na­tion­al Day for Per­sons with Dis­ab­il­it­ies on Decem­ber 3?

South Africa Tour­ism turned the day into a month-long cam­paign with weekly themes based on pri­or­ity areas. And there are hasht­ags, of course: #Dis­ab­il­ity­In­clus­iveSA and #DRAM2019.

Canada’s Brit­ish Columbia (BC) Province and Des­tin­a­tion BC launched a “multi-phased plan to make BC tour­ism more access­ible and inclus­ive”.

In Greece, the Hel­len­ic Fed­er­a­tion of Hoteliers and the not-for-profit Me Alla Matia (“With Oth­er Eyes”) signed a memor­andum of under­stand­ing to pro­mote access­ible tour­ism. Me Alla Matia will advise the fed­er­a­tion on leg­al and tech­nic­al matters. 

Blue car­pets were tem­por­ar­ily rolled out onto Kovalam beach in India’s Ker­ala state as part of the “Blue Ramp” cam­paign to improve the access of “dif­fer­ently-abled per­sons” to tour­ist spots.

Community-based tourism

The great­er decent­ral­isa­tion of tour­ism policy-mak­ing, the bet­ter, gen­er­ally speak­ing, right? That’s what com­munity-based tour­ism is all about, right? 

Aye. So Scot­land’s nation­al gov­ern­ment has been car­ry­ing out a pub­lic con­sulta­tion on wheth­er loc­al gov­ern­ments should be allowed to impose Tran­si­ent Vis­it­or Levies (TVLs) — tour­ist taxes in oth­er words. The City of Edin­burgh Coun­cil has said it would impose a £2 per night room charge fee if allowed, which could raise about GBP13.6 mil­lion per annum in the city. (GBP1 = USD1.32)

Tour­ism is a niche busi­ness in the Nun­avut ter­rit­ory of Canada, with only 7,800 inter­na­tion­al vis­its in 2018, yet vis­it­or fees levied by com­munit­ies are rak­ing in the loon­ies (slang term for Cana­dian dol­lars). In Pond Inlet, cruise ships had to pay a ser­vice fee per pas­sen­ger of CAD75 this year, up from CAD50, with total rev­en­ues in the “hun­dreds of thou­sands”. The Qikiqtani Inu­it Asso­ci­ation is fol­low­ing suit. It announced in Octo­ber charges of CAD25 to CAD150 per tour­ist, depend­ing on the activ­ity, for access to Inu­it-owned lands. (CAD1 = USD 0.76)

Malay­sia’s Sabah state is seek­ing the power to approve and issue tour­ism licences. Sabah’s Min­is­ter of Tour­ism, Arts and Cul­ture, Datuk Christina Liew, said this devol­u­tion of power from the feds would help her boost tour­ism and enhance ser­vice deliv­ery in her state. Liew has cred­ited arrivals growth with more com­munity-based tour­ism with hap­pi­er rur­al entrepreneurs.

Thai­l­and’s Deputy Prime Min­is­ter Somkid Jatus­rip­itak has cited com­munity-based tour­ism as an essen­tial ser­vice industry for the eco­nomy as it attempts to nav­ig­ate through an era of digit­al dis­rup­tion. Cham­bers of com­merce have asked the gov­ern­ment to “pro­mote com­munity-based tour­ism to boost income distribution”. 

In Thai­l­and’s Nak­hon Phanom province, mean­while, the Nak­hon Phanom Tour­ism Busi­ness Asso­ci­ation is lead­ing efforts to help tour­ists exper­i­ence eth­nic­ally- and reli­giously-diverse loc­al com­munit­ies along the Mekong River, includ­ing in neigh­bour­ing provinces. 

In India, com­munity-based tour­ism by way of homestays and farm­stays is help­ing rur­al people stay on their land and pre­serve their way of life. 

This trend is reflec­ted in Nepal, where the demand for homestays has attrac­ted the return of eco­nom­ic migrants to their home­land and helped loc­als recon­nect with their cul­ture and landscape. 

New Zea­l­and is rolling out fund­ing for mobile applic­a­tions and oth­er new tools to help coun­cils, com­munit­ies, and campers get along this summer. 

Ecotourism, nature-based tourism, animals, & wildlife

Act­iv­ists are call­ing on India’s Nation­al Tiger Con­ser­va­tion Author­ity (NTCA) to take stressed-out tigers more ser­i­ously. They want the NTCA to push for tight­er reg­u­la­tions in the Bandipur and Nagarahole nation­al parks in Karnataka state. Sci­ent­ists agree that reform may be needed for tour­ism to be truly bene­fi­cial for the parks, their wild­life, and loc­al communities. 

In a move that will fur­ther burn­ish its repu­ta­tion for innov­at­ive sus­tain­ab­il­ity, Ker­ala Tour­ism in India is set to con­sult with stake­hold­ers on cap­ping vis­it­or num­bers to eco­lo­gic­ally fra­gile places such as Mun­nar and the back­wa­ters of Alappuzha. 

While often “seen through the prism of ter­ror­ism and secur­ity”, Pakistan is biod­i­verse and beau­ti­ful. Loc­al experts who have lamen­ted missed oppor­tun­it­ies for eco­tour­ism are now see­ing reas­ons for optim­ism. And Prime Min­is­ter Imran Khan’s act­ive interest should help. 

Kenya needs to diver­si­fy bey­ond nature-based tour­ism, accord­ing to tour­ism industry play­ers there who reck­on the 2.1 mil­lion vis­it­ors from last year is well below par. Wild­life and beaches con­trib­ute nearly 90% of tour­ism industry earnings. 

Mur­rindindi Shire Coun­cil in the state of Vic­tor­ia, Aus­tralia has adop­ted a new five-year tour­ism and events strategy to become a lead­ing nature-based des­tin­a­tion. “Sus­tain­able, innov­at­ive and prof­it­able tour­ism” was the goal, Coun­cil­lor Jack­ie Ashe said. 

At the oth­er end of the scale, Lake Tahoe, Nevada, USA is being “loved to death” by tour­ists accord­ing to some, which is why vari­ous agen­cies are cooper­at­ing to come up with more sus­tain­able vis­it­a­tion policies. 

Some people will be triggered by the words hunt­ing and fish­ing in this story about the Black Belt region of Alabama, USA. How­ever “GT” counts as good any recog­ni­tion that tour­ism-related “treas­ure lies in fer­tile soil and nat­ur­al resources”.

Trophy hunt­ing is con­tro­ver­sial. Simplist­ic argu­ments are used on both sides. While the prac­tice has been of eco­nom­ic import­ance to spe­cies con­ser­va­tion in some places, it may be becom­ing less import­ant and “not irre­place­able”.

Odds & ends

Newsy bits that don’t fit into this week’s arbit­rary clusters:

UNICEF is work­ing with Croa­tia’s Min­istry of Tour­ism and the Croa­tian Tour­ist Board to pro­mote the import­ance of chil­dren’s rights. The Min­istry and Board will also sup­port UNICE­F’s efforts to help Croatia’s most vul­ner­able chil­dren and their families. 

Gaeltacht Mhúscraí, in County Cork, Ire­land has been included in a European Uni­on net­work of loc­ales to bene­fit from a multi-mil­lion Euro invest­ment to pro­mote authen­t­ic cul­tur­al tour­ism exper­i­ences. The net­work includes sites in North­ern Ire­land and Wales, which is awkward.

And finally, while many fret about the vast islands of plastic waste float­ing on oceans, an entre­pren­eur in Ivory Coast has lit­er­ally launched a resort island made from waste plastic.

Fea­tured image: Inuk­suk Point (Inuk­sug­alait, “where there are many Inuk­suit”), Foxe Pen­in­sula (Baffin Island), Nun­avut, Canada. By Ans­gar Walk (CC BY-SA 2.5). Inuk­suit are rock struc­tures that serve as landmarks.

P.S. None of these news items have been fact-checked. Please com­ment below if you know there has been rub­bish pos­ted here, but be nice about it. The linked sources might get offen­ded (“GT” won’t). And there’s no need to harsh the vibe by being nasty.