Good news in tourism March 15 – 21, 2020

Pub­lished Sunday to be ready Monday, “Good news in tour­ism” is the per­fect pick-me-up for the start of a new week in travel & tour­ism. And go!

“Good Tour­ism” Insight Part­ner SUN^x — Strong Uni­ver­sal Net­work says tour­ism “can walk and chew gum at the same time” when it comes to deal­ing with COVID-19 and aspir­ing to SUN^x’s “Cli­mate Friendly Travel” vis­ion. Geof­frey Lip­man reck­ons there is a “light at the end of the tun­nel” that doesn’t belong to a train. 

While SUN^x rightly under­scores the grav­ity of the COVID-19 crisis when mak­ing its points, “GT” has seen mis­an­throp­ic cli­mate act­iv­ist con­tent cel­eb­rat­ing the vir­us and wist­fully ima­gin­ing a world in which travel & tour­ism remains at today’s sup­pressed levels. 

For­tu­nately, there are con­ser­va­tion­ists, such as Dilys Roe of the Inter­na­tion­al Uni­on for Con­ser­va­tion of Nature, who recog­nise that there are ser­i­ous down­sides to tourism’s vir­al melt­down. 

The pos­it­ive takeaway is that respons­ible travel and sus­tain­able tour­ism is missed. 

What would an overtourism vaccine look like?

Dur­ing this coronavir­us COVID-19 pan­dem­ic we are see­ing some­thing we have wit­nessed many times before — the fickle­ness of travel & tour­ism demand — exacer­bated by enforced travel restrictions.

As gov­ern­ments around the world shut down travel, bor­ders, and gath­er­ings of vari­ous sizes to “flat­ten the curve” of coronavir­us con­ta­gion and buy time to devel­op treat­ments and vac­cines, “GT” wondered what a fail-safe vac­cine or treat­ment for over­tour­ism might look like.

But what would “GT” know? 

Not a lot. Your cor­res­pond­ent is merely a writer avail­able for hire. 

Do you dis­agree with “GT”? Diversity of thought is wel­come on The “Good Tour­ism” Blog. Com­ment below or share your “Good Tour­ism” Insights. 

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

COVID-19 resilience & recovery

The World Travel & Tour­ism Coun­cil is demand­ing fin­an­cial assist­ance for travel & tour­ism stake­hold­ers “NOW”. That’s to be expec­ted. It wouldn’t be doing its job as an industry lobby group if it didn’t.

Resi­li­ent Des­tin­a­tions is a new user-con­trib­uted resource lib­rary and ref­er­ence for des­tin­a­tions and stake­hold­ers seek­ing ideas and inspir­a­tion for get­ting through the coronavir­us emer­gency. The resource­ful Jeremy Smith, who co-foun­ded Tour­ism Declares Cli­mate Emer­gency, is among the instigators.

A little more than half — PHP 14 bil­lion (USD 270 mil­lion) of PHP 27.1 bil­lion (USD 520 mil­lion) — of the spend­ing to com­bat COVID-19 and provide eco­nom­ic relief to affected indus­tries in the Phil­ip­pines has been ear­marked for the tour­ism sec­tor. (How­ever, health work­ers aren’t happy about it.)

South Africa’s Nation­al Regis­trar of Tour­ist Guides is encour­aging its mem­bers to remain pos­it­ive and pre­pare for recov­ery through lan­guage learn­ing. The Depart­ment of Tour­ism has star­ted a lan­guage train­ing pro­gramme to “empower guides to be pro­fi­cient in lan­guages of coun­tries that have been iden­ti­fied as focus mar­kets, such as China”.

Sir Dav­id Vun­agi is optim­ist­ic about the future of tour­ism in the Solomon Islands. Speak­ing at the open­ing of Par­lia­ment the Gov­ernor Gen­er­al said there was huge poten­tial in the Nation­al Tour­ism Devel­op­ment Strategy but it needed to be adequately resourced.

Dun­huang in north­w­est China’s Gansu province has reopened its tour­ist attrac­tions, accord­ing to loc­al authorities.

Iranians can enjoy vir­tu­al tours of museums in Tehran that are closed due to COVID-19.

Agri‑, eco- & nature-based tourism

In the USA, legis­la­tion for the Nature Coast Aquat­ic Pre­serve, which encom­passes seagrass beds north of Tampa, Flor­ida awaits the sig­na­ture of state Gov­ernor Ron DeS­antis. A com­munity peti­tion in sup­port of the legis­la­tion stated: “Healthy coastal hab­it­ats foster fish­ing, boat­ing, and tour­ism [and] sup­port valu­able fish­er­ies, sea­food pro­duc­tion, work­ing water­fronts, and eco-tour­ism that gen­er­ate approx­im­ately $600 mil­lion for the region’s eco­nomy annu­ally, provide more than 10,000 jobs, and fuel over 500 businesses”

Aris Kukuh Pra­setyo, an Indone­sian ele­ment­ary school teach­er whose stu­dents have gone on to become “agents of change” by form­ing an eco-tour­ism com­munity, has been short­l­is­ted for the USD 1 mil­lion Glob­al Teach­er Prize 2020. His school is near the pol­luted Rawa Pen­ing swamp in Semarang, Cent­ral Java, which was the motiv­a­tion for much of his ped­ago­gic­al focus.

The addi­tion of private land, which will be rewil­ded, will see an exist­ing nature reserve triple in size to cre­ate the largest low­land heath­land in Eng­land. Pur­be­ck Heath — stretch­ing from Poole to Ware­ham in the south­w­est of the coun­try — already attracts more than 2.5 mil­lion vis­it­ors a year.

Some 80 volun­teers; stu­dents and teach­ers from eight schools in Pen­ang, Malay­sia cleaned up the beach at Kuala Muda on the main­land. They col­lec­ted 150kg of rub­bish over three hours. Seber­ang Prai City Coun­cil revealed that there were plans to devel­op eco­tour­ism in the area.

Hanoi city author­it­ies in Viet­nam are integ­rat­ing agri­cul­tur­al and tra­di­tion­al craft vil­lages into tour­ism products yield­ing “encour­aging res­ults”. The Hanoi muni­cip­al Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture and Rur­al Devel­op­ment says tour­ism adds value to farm produce. 

Community-based tourism

A sur­vey of res­id­ents in White­fish, Montana, USA showed that tour­ism growth is viewed as neg­at­ive in rela­tion to hous­ing prices, infra­struc­ture, traffic, and “com­munity char­ac­ter”. The good news is that a new draft tour­ism man­age­ment plan by White­fish City Coun­cil “aims to pro­mote sus­tain­able com­munity-based tour­ism devel­op­ment that will be bene­fi­cial to all”. And the pub­lic will have an oppor­tun­ity to com­ment on that.

County Cork, Ire­land res­id­ents have an open invit­a­tion to have their say on the key issues, includ­ing tour­ism, in a 56-page con­sulta­tion doc­u­ment entitled “Your Home, Your Future, Your Views”. May­or Doyle said: “We are hop­ing to engage as many of our cit­izens as pos­sible, as early in the plan-mak­ing pro­cess as pos­sible, so they feel they have been giv­en every oppor­tun­ity to influ­ence the policies that shape their communities.” 

The cent­ral city of Da Nang, Viet­nam has decided to spend VND 46.1 bil­lion (USD 1.98 mil­lion) on devel­op­ing com­munity-based tour­ism in Nam O Bay, Lien Chieu district.

Odds & ends

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

In Nam­i­bia over the past five years more than 10 cli­mate change adapt­a­tion and mit­ig­a­tion pro­jects cost­ing NAD 1.21 bil­lion (USD 70 mil­lion) have been imple­men­ted with the help of mul­ti­lat­er­al and bilat­er­al part­ners through Namibia’s Min­istry of Envir­on­ment & Tour­ism and Envir­on­ment­al Invest­ment Fund. In addi­tion to secur­ing water, food, and energy, devel­op­ing tour­ism is a goal com­mon to many of those and future projects.

How can the tour­ism industry cater for people liv­ing with demen­tia? That’s research Dr Mar­cus Hansen of Wrex­ham Glyndwr Uni­ver­sity is con­duct­ing in the USA along­side col­leagues from the Uni­ver­sity of Cent­ral Flor­ida and Edin­burgh Napi­er University.

Cel­eb­rat­ing the cul­tur­al rich­ness of Eng­land’s south­east, an art tour­ism and “art Geo­Tour” pro­ject named “Cre­at­ive Coast: Water­fronts” will see sev­en “ambi­tious” out­door art com­mis­sions situ­ated along the coast­lines of Essex, Kent and East Sussex. 

We Are Lao has launched an online lib­rary of use­ful resources for Laos’ travel trade as well as pro­spect­ive vis­it­ors to the country.

Have a good week!

Fea­tured image (at the top): Home to port, Luang Pra­bang, Laos. Image © Dav­id Gillbanks.

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! 🙂