Good news in tourism February 23 – 29, 2020

After a week of rising fears and a big can­cel­la­tion, “Good news in tour­ism” is the per­fect pick-me-up for the start of a new work week. And go!

“GT” pub­lished a fresh “GT” Insight on Fri­day about a back­pack­ers in a rur­al com­munity at the edge of Hogs­back, East­ern Cape, South Africa. It’s a small tour­ism oper­a­tion mak­ing a big com­munity-based dif­fer­ence. New “GT” Friend Lieve Claessen, who oper­ates Elundini Back­pack­ers with her hus­band Elli­ot Son­jani, sum­mar­ises some of the ongo­ing chal­lenges facing them and their host community.

Whatever “Good Tour­ism” means to you, you too are invited to share your own “GT” Insights. With­in reas­on — leg­al­ity, top­ic­al­ity, decency, and good faith — “GT” is a free speech plat­form;  a “safe space” to think out loud, make mis­takes, risk offend­ing someone, risk being offen­ded, and to learn some­thing. It’s like a university …

Tourism & climate change

From a young fam­ily in rur­al South Africa giv­ing back to their com­munity, to a room­ful of jet-set­ter tour­ism elites in Malta … erm, think-tank­ing? … “GT” has quite the range of interests! Tour­ism really is everybody’s business. 

Yes, “GT” Insight Part­ner SUN^x — Strong Uni­ver­sal Net­work con­duc­ted its first Cli­mate Friendly Travel Think Tank in Malta dur­ing the week. Accord­ing to a SUN^x social media post: “An amaz­ing group of world lead­ers in the fields of avi­ation, tour­ism, cli­mate change, and sus­tain­able devel­op­ment have agreed a series of urgent actions for the tour­ism sec­tor to respond to the grow­ing cli­mate crisis.” 

Here are their key calls to action. If you have any ques­tions about them, please con­tact “GT”. “GT” will pass them on to its friends at SUN^x.

A remind­er that if you find “GT” con­tent inspir­ing, inter­est­ing, some­what amus­ing, or at least dif­fer­ent then surely it’s worth a cof­fee or few … 

COVID-19

“Damn the coronavir­us. (And bless the cheap fares!)” That’s what your cor­res­pond­ent thought to him­self as he booked flights from Perth to Bangkok for late March after post­ing a WHO and UNWTO joint state­ment about COVID-19 on Wednesday. 

Then on Fri­day, Messe Ber­lin announced that the world’s largest travel trade event ITB Ber­lin would be can­celled. While shut­ting down ITB does not set a good example to the trav­el­ling pub­lic, neither does it do the industry any good blam­ing the organ­isers. It appears that high­er author­it­ies inter­vened. Nev­er­the­less, there are those who have already arrived in Ber­lin and those who can­not can­cel their travel arrange­ments (or don’t want to) determ­ined to arrange busi­ness meet­ings and social get-togeth­ers regard­less. That’s the spirit!

Prob­ably the most cred­ible source of inform­a­tion about COVID-19 is the World Health Organ­iz­a­tion (WHO). 

This week’s “Good news in tour­ism”, in no par­tic­u­lar order:

Due to domest­ic travel, fam­ily com­mit­ments, and oth­er excuses, “Good news in tour­ism” this week offers a much smal­ler-than-usu­al sample of pos­it­ive third-party travel & tour­ism news.

Culture & heritage

“GT” Insight Part­ner the World Tour­ism Asso­ci­ation for Cul­ture & Her­it­age (WTACH) high­lighted the fol­low­ing news items dur­ing the week:

On news that Egypt and Greece plan to organ­ise joint tour­ism pro­grams, WTACH reck­ons: “A rela­tion­ship designed to sup­port respons­ible tour­ism growth ‘togeth­er’ makes per­fect sense and prom­ises many bene­fits for both des­tin­a­tions and vis­it­ors alike.”

On an op-ed about why New Jer­sey, USA needs to invest in its past, WTACH asks: “Why wouldn’t you? […] It’s clearly under­stood that the pro­tec­tion and pre­ser­va­tion of cul­tur­al her­it­age assets is key to the ongo­ing devel­op­ment of a des­tin­a­tion. These things tell a story of who you are. Where you came from. Where you’re going. And so much more. So … Where’s the downside?”

On news of a new frame­work to unlock the poten­tial of cul­ture in West York­shire, Eng­land, WTACH says: “West York­shire boasts a rich and ancient past. This then is a very pos­it­ive step to pro­mote and pro­tect these unique sites for both vis­it­ors and future generations.”

Odds & ends

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

Domi­n­ique Hoover, a research pro­fes­sion­al in mar­ine bio­logy and ocean­o­graphy, told AIRDA that respons­ible tour­ism can play a huge sup­port­ing role in pro­tect­ing mar­ine envir­on­ments in India, so long as simple guidelines / rules for tour­ists on what to do and what not to do are effect­ively com­mu­nic­ated / policed.

And that’s good news.

Have a good week!

Fea­tured images (at the top): Akhona and her Xhosa bread (left) and har­vest­ing onions from the Elundini com­munity garden (right), East­ern Cape, South Africa. Both images sup­plied by “GT” Friend Lieve Claessen who con­trib­uted an awe­some “GT” Insight.

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! <3

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 the linked sources might get offen­ded. (“GT” won’t.) And as for “GT” bring­ing it to your atten­tion so that you might be the one to set the record straight, you are welcome! 🙂