Good news in tourism January 19 – 25, 2020

Happy new year of the rat! Don’t pan­ic. “Good news in tour­ism” is here. Pub­lished on Sunday to be ready on Monday, “Good news in tour­ism” is the per­fect pick-me-up for the start of a work­ing week. And go!

Import­ant “GT” stuff first in case you missed it dur­ing the week:

A fresh “GT” Insight on how tour­ism and fish­ing are help­ing to save Irrawaddy dol­phins in Myan­mar. It’s by Liv­ing Irrawaddy Dol­phin Pro­ject co-founder Paul Eshoo. And, of course, it’s brilliant. 

Geof­frey Lip­man, the former top exec­ut­ive of IATA, WTTC, and UNWTO, and Co-Founder of “GT” Insight Part­ner SUN^x — Strong Uni­ver­sal Net­work has called for a “moon-shot” effort by the avi­ation and air trans­port sec­tor to be car­bon-neut­ral by 2050.

Oth­er good news in tour­ism, in no par­tic­u­lar order:

Coronavirus: Don’t panic

“With the inform­a­tion cur­rently avail­able for the nov­el coronavir­us, WHO [the World Health Organ­iz­a­tion] advises that meas­ures to lim­it the risk of export­a­tion or import­a­tion of the dis­ease should be imple­men­ted, without unne­ces­sary restric­tions of inter­na­tion­al traffic.”  —  from “Updated WHO advice for inter­na­tion­al traffic in rela­tion to the out­break of the nov­el coronavir­us 2019-nCoV” dated Janu­ary 24, 2020. Situ­ation reports.

Climate change: Don’t panic

A fun read, though — trig­ger warn­ing — it may make some people anxious and depressed: “Why tour­ism should die — and why it won’t”. For the pur­poses of this post the good news is that Chuck Thompson, the author, reck­ons tour­ism won’t die. The one in 10 jobs on Earth that are attrib­ut­able to travel & tour­ism are safe. So don’t panic.

Mr Thompson writes: “The only actu­al way to mit­ig­ate tourism’s impact on cli­mate change is for human­ity to stop trav­el­ing [but] I like travel as much as you do, and I’m not stop­ping either.” And he asks: “Where’s the line between hypo­crite and addict?” 

It’s a line “GT” has explored both here and here. And in doing so your cor­res­pond­ent has man­aged to dis­ap­point at least one tour­ism busi­ness own­er for not fol­low­ing the Tour­ism Declares Cli­mate Emer­gency crew into declar­ing a “cli­mate emergency”. 

If it is indeed a “cli­mate emer­gency” — and per­haps it is — then surely all non-essen­tial travel should cease imme­di­ately. Per­haps it should. But it won’t. Nor is it what the sig­nat­or­ies to the Tour­ism Declares ini­ti­at­ive even want; prob­ably because their live­li­hoods are at stake.

What every­one wants, “emer­gency” or not, is for travel & tour­ism to mit­ig­ate the neg­at­ives and accen­tu­ate the pos­it­ives. And that is what The “Good Tour­ism” Blog is all about

Tourism, livelihood, and hope

“The chal­lenges of today’s Africa, espe­cially with­in the employ­ment space, can be resolved by act­ively enga­ging the teem­ing youth in the sec­tor that guar­an­tees an inex­haust­ible source of live­li­hood.” Travel & tour­ism? Yep. But “guar­an­tees” and “inex­haust­ible” are a bit rich!

Over­fish­ing, not over­tour­ism, is for­cing young people from remote islands in the Phil­ip­pines to search for new live­li­hoods. Those that find careers in tour­ism have “changed their lives and broadened their world”.

Wildlife conservation

Earth’s most effect­ive con­ser­va­tion­ists think like entre­pren­eurs and lever­age the trans­form­at­ive power of own­er­ship and enter­prise. Fred Nel­son in the Stan­ford Social Innov­a­tion Review writes: “Entre­pren­eur­i­al con­ser­va­tion is lead­ing the way in four key areas: [1. Reform­ing gov­ernance; 2. Build­ing com­munity capa­city; 3. Broker­ing new part­ner­ships; and 4. New fin­an­cing mod­els] […] Con­ser­va­tion efforts need to gen­er­ate wealth for loc­al people from sus­tain­able businesses.”

Tan­ner C Knorr, Pres­id­ent of Second Look World­wide, a “GT” Insight Part­ner, agrees: “Prac­tic­al solu­tions are the only way for­ward and must incor­por­ate busi­ness and gov­ern­ment. Indeed, con­ser­va­tion is gar­ner­ing invest­ment cur­rently, but bril­liant entre­pren­eurs, along with favor­able gov­ern­ment policies and loc­al com­munity par­ti­cip­a­tion, will be the ones to bring the sec­tor forward.”

The rein­tro­duc­tion of jag­uars into the rel­at­ively new Iberá Nation­al Park in Argen­tina “will be a game-changer for both restor­ing the eco­lo­gic­al bal­ance and kick-start­ing a great­er eco-tour­ism industry that can boost the rur­al economy”.

Law­yer and envir­on­ment­al­ist Jagath Gun­award­ana has endorsed tour­ism as an import­ant tool and incent­ive for spe­cies con­ser­va­tion. He told the Sunday Observ­er that Sri Lanka needed a fresh approach when pro­mot­ing wild­life to tour­ists because people are more wel­fare-con­scious and would boy­cott if they see some­thing isn’t right.

More on Irrawaddy dol­phins. Irrawaddy dol­phins have reportedly been spot­ted col­on­ising new areas of the Chilika Lake lagoon/estuary sys­tem in India’s Odisha state. The remov­al of bar­ri­ers and updated tour­ism prac­tices are cred­ited with the result.

Indigenous stories

“GT” Insight Part­ner the World Tour­ism Asso­ci­ation for Cul­ture & Her­it­age (WTACH) has con­grat­u­lated New Zea­l­and’s “Cent­ral Hawke’s Bay Dis­trict Coun­cil and Te Taiwhen­ua o Tam­atea on the announce­ment of a NZD 2.8 mil­lion [USD 1.85 mil­lion] invest­ment to turn Waipukur­au pā sites into a cul­tur­al tour­ism attrac­tion […] Telling the stor­ies of their ancest­ors is so incred­ibly import­ant not only for vis­it­ors but as a way to keep the memory of their his­tory, ances­try, cul­ture and her­it­age alive for future generations”.

The Amer­ic­an Indi­an Alaska Nat­ive Tour­ism Asso­ci­ation (AIANTA) has partnered with USA’s Nation­al Park Ser­vice to find and share the stor­ies of Nat­ive Amer­ic­an tribes that inter­sect with the 4,900-mile (7,886-kilometre) Lewis and Clark Nation­al His­tor­ic Trail.

Cultural heritage tourism

The second Lahore Bien­nale com­mences today (Sunday, Jan 26); a pub­lic event that trans­forms the Pakistan’s second-most pop­u­lous city Lahore into “a liv­ing art gal­lery”. The first took place over two weeks in March 2018 and reportedly attrac­ted more than a mil­lion vis­it­ors. Entitled “Between the Sun and the Moon”, the second edi­tion “is sig­ni­fic­antly lar­ger in scale and longer in dur­a­tion — 12 major sites over 5 weeks — and hopes to attract over three mil­lion visitors”.

The Gujar­at state gov­ern­ment in India will soon announce a policy that will encour­age own­ers of prop­er­ties built before 1950 to con­vert them into hotels, museums, or for some oth­er com­mer­cial pur­pose. Her­it­age prop­erty own­ers who respond will be sup­por­ted with fin­an­cial incent­ives and her­it­age tour­ism mar­ket­ing sup­port.

The city of Walla Walla in Wash­ing­ton state, USA hos­ted a meet­ing Thursday on a pro­pos­al to cre­ate a “Down­town Nation­al Register His­tor­ic Dis­trict” with tax cred­its the primary incent­ive for prop­erty own­ers. Shane Laib, chair of the Walla Walla His­tor­ic Pre­ser­va­tion Com­mis­sion said the ini­ti­at­ive could be pos­it­ive for the rehab­il­it­a­tion of down­town, the renov­a­tion of his­tor­ic build­ings, and her­it­age tour­ism.

Plans for sustainability

Tour­ism accounts for more than 60% of the Seychelles’ eco­nomy so the industry and gov­ern­ment are work­ing togeth­er to ensure it doesn’t take over com­pletely. A cer­ti­fic­a­tion scheme and a mas­ter plan are aimed at elev­at­ing prin­ciples of sus­tain­ab­il­ity and levels of loc­al par­ti­cip­a­tion.

Rhodes and San­torini in Greece are the tar­gets of pilot plans for sus­tain­able des­tin­a­tion devel­op­ment. The Rhodes plan is about des­tin­a­tion iden­tity, extend­ing the tour­ist sea­son, and tar­get­ing MICE (meet­ings, incent­ives, con­fer­ences, and exhib­i­tions). The San­torini plan is focused on redu­cing the neg­at­ive impacts of over­tour­ism. Both are being car­ried out by the Greek Tour­ism Con­fed­er­a­tion (SETE) with the sup­port of the European Bank for Recon­struc­tion and Devel­op­ment, the Greek tour­ism min­istry, and loc­al chambers.

A new plan, and new fund­ing, is aimed at tack­ling “some of the main chal­lenges facing the tour­ism industry in Wales — sea­son­al­ity, spend and spread”.

Pub­lic con­sulta­tion on the draft man­age­ment plan for the “Northum­ber­land Coast AONB” in Eng­land star­ted on Monday (Jan 20) and will run for six weeks. The AONB, which stands for “area of out­stand­ing nat­ur­al beauty”, stretches from Ber­wick to the Coquet Estu­ary. It is feared the area will reach a “tip­ping point”. The draft plan reck­ons vis­it­ors should be “enticed to oth­er des­tin­a­tions around the county” instead. Mean­while, Wel­come to York­shire (WtY) wants to hear from “mem­bers, part­ners and the wider tour­ism industry” about “hopes and aspir­a­tions for the sec­tor”.

Bangladesh has star­ted put­ting togeth­er “a detailed mas­ter plan to ensure sus­tain­able devel­op­ment of the loc­al tour­ism industry”.

“Eco-Tourism”

The Parks and Wild­life Depart­ment in Texas, USA has approved plans for the South Texas Eco-Tour­ism Cen­ter, an indoor/outdoor facil­ity for “edu­ca­tion­al and inter­act­ive exhib­its and exper­i­ences show­cas­ing the region’s unique eco­sys­tems”. Fun­ded mostly by Camer­on County’s “ven­ue tax”, the “USD 9 mil­lion facil­ity will be built on 10 acres [4 hec­tares] in the town of Laguna Vista”.

The Pres­id­ent of the Malay­si­an Asso­ci­ation of Tour & Travel Agents (MATTA) reck­ons Chinese tour­ists are more likely to choose an eco­tour­ism des­tin­a­tion over a shop­ping des­tin­a­tion these days. That’s what Malay­sia’s peak private-sec­tor tour­ism body is bank­ing on as it tar­gets 4 mil­lion Chinese vis­it­ors this year.

The “rugged and remote” West End of Rottnest Island, West­ern Aus­tralia, with its seal colony and oth­er nat­ur­al attrac­tions will par­take in a “AUD 33 mil­lion (US$ 22.6 mil­lion) suite of Fed­er­al and State Gov­ern­ment pro­jects to revital­ise and build new infra­struc­ture”.

Odds & ends

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

Myan­mar’s Min­istry of Hotels & Tour­ism has relaxed travel restric­tions for for­eign­ers vis­it­ing Kayah State, allow­ing them to vis­it two pre­vi­ously restric­ted areas.

The Algarve Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Obser­vat­ory in south­ern Por­tugal will join the UNWTO’s Inter­na­tion­al Net­work of Sus­tain­able Tour­ism Obser­vat­or­ies (INSTO).

India cel­eb­rated its Nation­al Tour­ism Day on yes­ter­day (Jan 25).

And, finally, don’t you just love an open demo­crat­ic pro­cess and a free media? Enjoy this loc­al reporter’s account of a debate on increas­ing the lodging tax by 2% that took place dur­ing a Board of Alder­men meet­ing in Her­mann, Mis­souri, USA, a city in which tour­ism is the num­ber one industry.

Fea­tured image: All smiles in Myan­mar at the Liv­ing Irrawaddy Dol­phin Pro­ject. Image by Tony Deary, which fea­tured in the “GT” Insight “How tour­ism & fish­ing are help­ing to save Irrawaddy dol­phins in Myan­mar”.

PS: None of the items above have been fact-checked by “GT”. All ter­min­o­logy used here is as the linked sources used it accord­ing 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 the linked sources might get offen­ded. (“GT” won’t.) And as for “GT” bring­ing it to your atten­tion so that you might set the record straight, you are welcome! 🙂

PPS: 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.