Good news in tourism March 8 – 14, 2020

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

The World Eco­nom­ic For­um (WEF) describes itself as “a plat­form for the world’s 1,000 lead­ing com­pan­ies”. Main­stream media and politi­cians hang on to WEF’s every utter­ance, pre­sum­ably because the group rep­res­ents a massive chunk of glob­al media spend and eco­nom­ic power.

Any­way, WEF has just told Argen­tina how it should pro­ceed with travel & tour­ism in a new report entitled “Argentina’s Travel and Tour­ism Com­pet­it­ive­ness: The Case for Pro­mot­ing and Pre­serving Cul­tur­al, Nat­ur­al and Her­it­age Assets in Tour­ism” [PDF hos­ted offsite]. 

The good news is that amid all the usu­al feel-good buzz phrases and after extolling the vir­tues of inform­a­tion & com­mu­nic­a­tions tech­no­logy — includ­ing its poten­tial to deliv­er overnight suc­cess (which can lead to bad out­comes for des­tin­a­tions) — the report acknow­ledges that res­id­ents should bene­fit from and feel inves­ted in tour­ism growth. 

“GT” would have liked to have seen stronger advocacy for host com­munit­ies’ par­ti­cip­a­tion in des­tin­a­tion plan­ning all over the coun­try, not just the cit­ies. For it is loc­als who have most to lose should tour­ism get out of hand at their place. And it is loc­als who have the greatest ves­ted interest in the sus­tain­ab­il­ity of their place. It is, after all, their place.

Con­trast that con­sult­ants’ white paper with a simple report by a loc­al journ­al­ist who atten­ded a meet­ing of the North Coast Des­tin­a­tion Man­age­ment Stu­dio in Sea­side, Ore­gon, USA. It is evid­ent that state tour­ism author­it­ies and loc­al tour­ism experts place more import­ance on loc­al com­munity involve­ment than does WEF. 

Travel Ore­gon VP Kristin Dahl described “a shift from des­tin­a­tion mar­ket­ing to des­tin­a­tion man­age­ment […] One of the crit­ic­al changes is listen­ing to the loc­al bod­ies, listen­ing to res­id­ent per­spect­ives, listen­ing to loc­al busi­nesses and jur­is­dic­tions and gov­ern­ment agen­cies doing the work on the ground”. 

Sea­side-res­id­ent tour­ism expert Ken Hem­an said: “When this pro­cess began over a year ago, we invited any mem­ber of the Sea­side com­munity who wanted to take part to attend. It was open and announced often. I would love to see more res­id­ents of Sea­side take a more act­ive role.”

In terms of their people-first approach to con­cep­tu­al­ising, plan­ning, and man­aging travel & tour­ism, “GT” would soon­er listen to Ms Dahl and Mr Hem­an than the “plat­form for the world’s 1,000 lead­ing companies”. 

But what would “GT” know? 

Not a lot. Your cor­res­pond­ent is but a humble writer. While he rarely toots his own horn, he has in pre­vi­ous roles ghostwrit­ten sug­ar-spun words for the pens and mouths of CEOs, exec­ut­ive dir­ect­ors, per­man­ent sec­ret­ar­ies, min­is­ters, and even heads of state. And he is avail­able for hire.

Diversity of thought is wel­come on The “Good Tour­ism” Blog. Share your “Good Tour­ism” Insights. And a remind­er: If you find “GT” con­tent inspir­ing, inter­est­ing, some­what amus­ing, or at least dif­fer­ent then surely it’s worth a cof­fee or few … 

COVID-19

As “GT” has repeated for weeks, the most cred­ible source of inform­a­tion about COVID-19 is prob­ably the World Health Organ­iz­a­tion (WHO). “GT” has no reas­on to stop trust­ing WHO just because their March 11 declar­a­tion of pan­dem­ic adversely affects travel & tour­ism and allied sec­tors. (It would be disin­genu­ous to flip-flop.) For­tu­nately there is good news in the WHO state­ment: COVID-19 is “a pan­dem­ic that can be con­trolled”.

There is no reas­on to pan­ic. There is every reas­on to be smart.

On the same day as WHO’s announce­ment, the “lead­ing inter­na­tion­al organ­iz­a­tion in the field of tour­ism” — that’s how UN World Tour­ism Organ­iz­a­tion (UNWTO) describes itself — said that it would liaise with its mem­bers and the chairs of this and that com­mit­tee, as well as “oth­er UN bod­ies, includ­ing ICAO (Inter­na­tion­al Civil Avi­ation Organ­iz­a­tion) and the IMO (Inter­na­tion­al Mari­time Organ­iz­a­tion), and with IATA (Inter­na­tion­al Air Trans­port Asso­ci­ation) [and oth­er] key sec­tor stake­hold­ers to ensure tourism’s response is coordin­ated and con­sist­ent”. 

Just a few days later, on March 14, UNWTO announced that it had sus­pen­ded its own events until the end of April at least. And, at writ­ing this, there was no accom­pa­ny­ing state­ment related to UNWTO’s coordin­a­tion with any oth­er “key sec­tor stake­hold­er”, ICAO, IMO, IATA, or oth­er­wise of which “GT” was aware. 

With their events cal­en­dars now clear, UNWTO’s bosses would do well to sit this coronavir­us crisis out, let WHO take the lead, and have a good hard think about how it can pos­sibly be the “lead­ing inter­na­tion­al organ­iz­a­tion in the field of tourism”. 

And do we even need such an organ­isa­tion? If we sin­cerely believe in com­munity-based tour­ism prin­ciples then tour­ism is everybody’s busi­ness. Lead­ing it loc­ally is very dif­fi­cult — like herd­ing cats. Lead­ing it inter­na­tion­ally may well be impossible. Tour­ism is, after all, a case-by-case, place-by-place proposition.

But what would “GT” know?

In oth­er coronavir­us-related tour­ism news:

Moun­tain gor­il­las are highly sus­cept­ible to human-borne dis­eases and might be threatened by COVID-19. The good news is that the Inter­na­tion­al Gor­illa Con­ser­va­tion Pro­gramme is using the COVID-19 moment to tight­en the “Cer­ti­fied Gor­illa Friendly” tour­ism stand­ards it wants to see imple­men­ted in Rwanda, Uganda and the DR Congo.

While vis­it­a­tion rates are down due to COVID-19 fears, Malay­sia’s Ter­eng­ganu state gov­ern­ment is upgrad­ing tour­ism infra­struc­ture. Terengganu’s Men­teri Besar (Chief Min­is­ter) said few­er tour­ists would allow repair and beau­ti­fic­a­tion work to get under­way. He also said they would pro­duce new edu­ca­tion­al and pro­mo­tion­al mater­i­als for tourists.

Phil­ip­pines’ Tour­ism Under­sec­ret­ary Arturo P. Boncato, Jr has reportedly said that the nation­al tour­ism strategy dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic is to improve des­tin­a­tions such as Bor­a­cay, includ­ing upgrad­ing med­ic­al facil­it­ies and ser­vices avail­able to visitors. 

The state gov­ern­ment of South Aus­tralia has announced a AUD 22 mil­lion (USD 14.3 mil­lion) “fund­ing injec­tion” for nature-based tour­ism in the wake of drought, bush­fire, and now COVID-19. It is part of a broad­er AUD 350 mil­lion (USD 216 mil­lion) stim­u­lus pack­age for the state, but sep­ar­ate to a AUD 17.6 bil­lion (USD 11.4 bil­lion) stim­u­lus for the country.

Kenya’s Min­istry of Tour­ism has set aside KES 500 mil­lion (USD 4.88 mil­lion) for its post-pan­dem­ic recov­ery plan.

Electric aviation

To the extent avi­ation com­pan­ies pre­dict the elec­tri­fic­a­tion of com­mer­cial air routes, they think region­al routes and urb­an mobil­ity will be where it first takes off. And 2030 is real­ist­ic, they reckon. 

“GT” pic­tures a return to the early days of com­mer­cial avi­ation when a series of short hops was how one flew around the world, such as the “kangaroo route” between Aus­tralia and the UK. Depart­ing Decem­ber 1, 1947, Qantas flew this route: “Sydney to Lon­don with stops in Dar­win, Singa­pore, Cal­cutta, Kara­chi, Cairo, and Tripoli.” How­ever it is likely the hops in early elec­tric pas­sen­ger planes will be short­er. But what would “GT” know?

Plans by Nor­way’s civil avi­ation admin­is­tra­tion and air nav­ig­a­tion ser­vice to intro­duce “domest­ic sched­uled ser­vices using elec­tric air­craft by 2030, and the com­plete trans­ition to elec­tric air­craft on such routes by 2040” are to be “put to the country’s par­lia­ment” next year.

Climate change adaptation and resilience

Not air­borne. And only use­ful if snow is still a thing. Engine man­u­fac­turer Rotax from Aus­tria has unveiled the first zero-emis­sion snow­mobile, which has an elec­tric driv­etrain and a hydro­gen fuel cell. 

And that leads to anoth­er ques­tion: How can ski resorts become year-round tour­ism des­tin­a­tions that don’t rely on sea­son­al snow? Moun­tain tour­ism experts from Aus­tria are shar­ing their insights with coun­ter­parts in Tur­key.

At sea level, Bar­ba­dos’ Min­is­ter of Eco­nom­ic Affairs and Invest­ment Mar­sha Caddle recog­nises that rather than hop­ing for the best and rely­ing on extern­al forces bey­ond their con­trol, small island devel­op­ing states con­cerned about cli­mate change should pro­act­ively seek out and invest in adapt­a­tion, resi­li­ence, and diver­si­fic­a­tion. 

That is a theme repeated across the Carib­bean. Tour­ism stake­hold­ers grap­pling with the symp­toms of cli­mate change want their sec­tor to become more adapt­ive and resi­li­ent.

Collaborations

A col­lab­or­a­tion between Indone­sia and the Neth­er­lands to cre­ate sus­tain­able tour­ism in Lake Toba, Sumatra, Indone­sia will imple­ment the “Liv­ing Lab concept”, which com­bines “the strengths of edu­ca­tion­al and research insti­tu­tions from both coun­tries in col­lab­or­a­tion with the loc­al com­munity, entre­pren­eurs and government”.

Under the Aus­tralia Awards Short Course pro­gram fun­ded by the Aus­trali­an Gov­ern­ment, Grif­fith Uni­ver­sity and the Uni­ver­sity of the Sun­shine Coast delivered a sus­tain­able tour­ism devel­op­ment course to 19 tour­ism industry people from Sri Lanka, includ­ing rep­res­ent­at­ives of the Tour­ism Devel­op­ment Author­ity and the Min­istry of Tour­ism and Aviation.

India’s Mad­hya Pra­desh state is so impressed with Ker­ala state’s Respons­ible Tour­ism Mis­sion that it has asked the lat­ter to help it real­ise the “com­munity-ori­ented and her­it­age-pre­serving” bene­fits of respons­ible tour­ism. Mad­hya Pra­desh and Ker­ala have signed a memor­andum of under­stand­ing to that end. Kerala’s tour­ism min­is­ter Kadakam­pally Surendran said it was “a proud moment”.

Odds & ends

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

Big num­bers. Really? The muni­cip­al gov­ern­ment of Xi’an in China will invest “13.7 bil­lion yuan (about 1.97 *bil­lion* U.S. dol­lars) for 23 cul­tur­al tour­ism pro­grams this year”. This, from one city, is more than double what the Nation­al Devel­op­ment & Reform Com­mis­sion, “Chin­a’s top eco­nom­ic plan­ner”, has alloc­ated cul­tur­al tour­ism coun­try-wide: “5.7 bil­lion yuan (about 814 *mil­lion* U.S. dol­lars) for the con­struc­tion of 485 pro­jects in [cul­tur­al tourism]”.

Niger­ia’s Pres­id­ent Muham­madu Buhar opened the 60^th Argun­gu Inter­na­tion­al Fish­ing and Cul­tur­al Fest­iv­al in Kebbi State on Thursday after a hiatus of more than a dec­ade. He said it sig­nalled con­fid­ence in the country’s improved secur­ity situ­ation, which would boost cul­tur­al tour­ism and the enter­tain­ment industry. Min­is­ter of Inform­a­tion and Cul­ture Alhaji Lai Mohammed said the gov­ern­ment would seek fin­an­cial assist­ance from the Afric­an Import-Export Bank to build infra­struc­ture to sup­port the fest­iv­al.

Have a good week!

Fea­tured image (top of the post): Couple dan­cing in Argen­tina. Source (CC0).

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! 🙂