Good news in tourism April 19 – 25, 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!

“GT” stuff first:

Rachel Sher­wood, a travel blog­ger from Oxford­shire in Eng­land, is organ­ising well-deserved hol­i­days for health­care work­ers at the front lines of the coronavir­us COVID-19 fight. Oper­a­tion Recu­per­a­tion is col­lect­ing pledges from accom­mod­a­tion pro­viders and second home own­ers from all over the world. “GT” invited Ms Sher­wood to write about “Oper­a­tion Recu­per­a­tion” and how hotels and resorts might get involved.

“GT” Insight Part­ner the World Tour­ism Asso­ci­ation for Cul­ture & Her­it­age (WTACH) has organ­ised a webin­ar series “to help the industry through the COVID-19 crisis with insights from some of the most respec­ted author­it­ies in our travel industry”. WTACH’s “Tour­ism Expert Recov­ery” series of 12 webinars will run twice-weekly. The first, to take place Tues­day, April 28 at 0600 GMT, will fea­ture Dr Dav­id Beir­man, “Inter­na­tion­al Tour­ism Expert on Tour­ism Crisis and Resi­li­ence” [cap­it­al­isa­tion as per source mater­i­al], from the Uni­ver­sity of Tech­no­logy Sydney. Register here. [Your cor­res­pond­ent may attend to bring you the “GT” take. Or may not. So you had bet­ter be there just in case, eh?]

Malta’s Insti­tute of Tour­ism Stud­ies (ITS) and Min­istry for Tour­ism and Con­sumer Pro­tec­tion have launched the world-first Dip­loma in Cli­mate Friendly Travel in col­lab­or­a­tion with “GT” Insight Part­ner The SUN^x Pro­gram.

Corona contemplations

Per­cep­tions of health risks will likely dampen tour­ism demand even when travel restric­tions are stripped away. In any case, eco­nom­ic hard­ships brought about by job losses and busi­ness clos­ures will mean many who would oth­er­wise travel can’t or won’t. 

Andy Northrop of Michigan State Uni­ver­sity in the USA cites con­sumer con­fid­ence research to sug­gest that des­tin­a­tions most likely to enjoy a quick rebound are small towns, rur­al com­munit­ies, and beaches. And the tour­ism busi­nesses that sur­vive to see recov­ery in those places and else­where will have to be cre­at­ive and adaptable.

For Japan’s tour­ism industry to emerge “more diver­si­fied and resi­li­ent” from the coronavir­us pan­dem­ic it must “shift gear from hard to soft tour­ism”, accord­ing to cor­por­ate con­sult­ant Nobuko Kobay­ashi. She writes: “Crises accel­er­ate and amp­li­fy exist­ing, if subtle, under­cur­rents, and this crisis will bring to the fore the trend of soft or sus­tain­able tour­ism, in which trav­el­ers spend longer immersed in the loc­al cul­ture they respect, rather than on coach tours tick­ing the boxes of fam­ous sites.”

Can­ter­bury Aoraki Con­ser­va­tion Board mem­ber Dr Robert Wynn-Wil­li­ams reck­ons the time is right to dis­cuss the future of tour­ism in New Zea­l­and. He believes there are les­sons to learn from Bhutan, which takes a “high value, low impact” approach.

Tour­ism in The Bahamas needs to be reima­gined for post-pan­dem­ic life rather than dis­carded, accord­ing to Mal­colm Strachan writ­ing for The Tribune. “The gov­ern­ment has to invest heav­ily in the Fam­ily Island exper­i­ence and make eco-tour­ism more of a pri­or­ity. Com­ing out of this exper­i­ence, the sim­pli­city of life is likely to become even more valu­able […] Coup­ling tour­ism pro­jects with ini­ti­at­ives to pro­mote agri­cul­ture and food secur­ity may be the way forward.”

Dr Adelle Thomas, writ­ing for the same out­let, took the cli­mate change angle: “We must diver­si­fy our tour­ism product, decrease cruise ship tour­ism that harms our nat­ur­al defences against cli­mate impacts, and pur­sue more respons­ible forms of tour­ism. We should also fur­ther our efforts to encour­age domest­ic tour­ism and reduce reli­ance on large num­bers of inter­na­tion­al guests.”

Chief Min­is­ter of Pen­ang state in Malay­sia, Chow Kon Yeow, told a vir­tu­al tour­ism roundtable that Pen­ang would adapt its “insti­tu­tions, eco­nomy and soci­ety” to reflect “the new nor­mal”. “Busi­ness as usu­al will not do any­more,” he reportedly said. “Please for­get about attract­ing crowds of people in the next three to six months if not longer. Not only Malay­sia is in a semi-lock­down, most of the gov­ern­ments in the world are ban­ning their cit­izens from trav­el­ling abroad.” He said the state was look­ing into waiv­ing hotel taxes for six months.

Accord­ing to com­mer­cial real estate con­sult­ant Alexel Chen, the coronavir­us pan­dem­ic is a remind­er to tour­ism stake­hold­ers in Sabah state, Malay­sia that more plan­ning needs to go into diver­si­fy­ing source mar­kets and products. China and South Korea have accoun­ted for more than two thirds of vis­it­ors to the Borneo island state, whose tour­ism industry is foun­ded on rich nat­ur­al and cul­tur­al assets. Sabah’s com­munity-based rur­al tour­ism, MICE, and med­ic­al travel sec­tors have emerged more recently. 

Don’t let a crisis go to waste

You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. Hint: To skip this oppor­tun­ity, simply scroll down to the next subheading …

How about reflect­ing on your achieve­ments, mis­takes, and les­sons learned; out­lining your vis­ion for the future of travel & tour­ism; telling the story of your “Good Tour­ism” jour­ney, and whatever “good” means to you; shar­ing your “Good Tour­ism” Insights? ← That’s an oppor­tun­ity, no?

Can’t write? Non­sense! Of course you can. And your cor­res­pond­ent will help you by proof-read­ing and lightly edit­ing your “GT” Insight to ensure your hap­pi­ness before it goes live. It’s all part of the “GT” ser­vice for “GT” Friends. ← ↑ Opportunity!

⇈ OPPORTUNITY! ⇈

Sub­scribe to “GT’s” weekly e‑news (it’s free) and fol­low “GT’s” vari­ous socials, such as its Linked­In page. And if you find “GT” inspir­ing, inter­est­ing, some­what amus­ing, or at least dif­fer­ent then surely it’s worth a little some­thing to you. So please …

It would mean a big some­thing to “GT”! 

COVID ops

There were lots of news items related to coronavir­us-related oper­a­tions and recov­ery plans. Here are a ran­dom few:

As the restric­tions on tour­ism begin to relax, Exper­i­ence Kissim­mee (EK) in Flor­ida, USA knows to focus on mar­kets close to home first. Intrastate drivers from nearby cit­ies such as Tampa, Jack­son­ville, St Peters­burg and Miami will be the first tar­get of tour­ism pro­mo­tions, accord­ing to EK Pres­id­ent DT Minich. The next will be inter­state fly­ers from New York, Phil­adelphia, Chica­go, Min­neapol­is and Dal­las. And EK’s online strategy will be “very nimble” and easy to change, he reckons.

“GT” Insight Part­ner WTACH says it is “very pleas­ing” that Canada is com­mit­ting CAD 306.8 mil­lion (USD 218 mil­lion) in stim­u­lus fund­ing to help 6,000 small-to-medi­um Indi­gen­ous busi­nesses make it through the COVID-19 pandemic. 

eTh­ek­wini Muni­cip­al­ity in South Africa, which has the city of Durb­an at its centre has announced its Eco­nom­ic Recov­ery Plan, key ele­ments of which include new tour­ism pack­ages “appro­pri­ate to a post-coronavir­us world” and the doub­ling of fund­ing for “Com­munity Tour­ism Organisations”.

The Shang­hai Cul­ture and Tour­ism Admin­is­tra­tion in China launched an “e‑passport” offer­ing dis­count coupons, reward points and sales pro­mo­tions at “more than 100 cul­tur­al and tour­ism products of over 200 busi­nesses”: accom­mod­a­tion, food, attrac­tions, tours, and shops. It’s “part of the city’s efforts to revital­ize a mar­ket badly hit by the coronavir­us epi­dem­ic”.

Reality check

“GT” rant alert. A long one. Scroll down to the next sub­head­ing to skip.

A real­ity check isn’t neces­sar­ily good news, although it can be inter­preted as such by those who prefer facts over fantasy. Here’s a real­ity check per­tain­ing to elec­tric avi­ation: It appears eco­nom­ic stress is the reas­on Air­bus and Rolls-Royce have axed the E‑FAN X pro­gramme only a year before the exper­i­ment­al hybrid-elec­tric air­craft was due to make its first flight. Why? Air­bus CTO Grazia Vit­tadini said her com­pany has to “nav­ig­ate the real­it­ies” of a world impacted by the coronavir­us crisis. 

When busi­nesses are stressed they pri­or­it­ise sur­viv­al over research & devel­op­ment. They lower their gaze to “nav­ig­ate the real­it­ies” of the here and now rather than look up to the skies for the sort of “moon-shot” that, for example, “GT” Insight Part­ner SUN^x thinks is required for avi­ation to be cli­mate-friendly. [Call­back Janu­ary 24, 2020: “SUN calls for “moon-shot” effort by avi­ation sec­tor to be zero-car­bon by 2050”.]

Of course there could be all sorts of reas­ons why Air­bus and Rolls might pull out of the E‑FAN X pro­ject. COVID-19 may simply offer the most con­veni­ent and self-serving one. How­ever that does­n’t change the fact that in “nor­mal” eco­nom­ic con­di­tions, organ­isa­tions that pull out of such endeav­ours leave the door wide open for oth­ers. But who has the con­fid­ence, capa­city, and resources to step in right now? 

So, until the eco­nomy turns around, so much for our cli­mate-friendly travel moon-shot … [But if the eco­nomy doesn’t turn around, the cli­mate won’t change any­way, so, yay!? … Well, the cli­mate will change as it has always changed; on its own terms … But it won’t kill us all in 12 years … It was unlikely to do that des­pite what alarm­ists said … If the Arc­tic farts out all its meth­ane one day it might kill us … And tomor­row a large rock could slam into the plan­et. Mean­while there are jobs and taxes and social safety nets in jeop­ardy. Oh, and by the way, this is what a sin­cere response to “cli­mate emer­gency” would look like; when all but essen­tial travel is shut down! Just look at the Vene­tian canals and Del­hi skies and Lop­buri mon­keys and Llandudno goats … SLAP!]

While there is much talk about the mer­its of dis­con­nect­ing from eco­nom­ic growth, the real­ity is that growth is import­ant. The tech­no­lo­gies we rely upon in the present — and the reas­on most of us don’t live the short, fear­ful, bru­tal lives our ancest­ors did — are both the products and drivers of eco­nom­ic growth. The sur­pluses gen­er­ated by pro­ductiv­ity growth sup­port the innov­at­ors; the sci­ent­ists and artists and thinkers and tinker­ers whose innov­a­tions in turn fuel more growth. Sure, new tech­no­lo­gies some­times put us in harm’s way but more often than not, as evid­enced by our very exist­ence, tech­no­logy helps us mit­ig­ate danger. Sur­pluses, and the innov­a­tions and tech­no­lo­gies and arts and cul­tures they give rise to, are the found­a­tion of human flour­ish­ing and will play a huge role in solv­ing our exist­en­tial prob­lems now and into the future; just as they helped our ancest­ors solve their problems. 

Some mis­an­thropes in our industry spout fant­ast­ic non­sense about Nature or Earth or Gaia deploy­ing SARS-CoV­‑2 in a delib­er­ate act of ven­geance against human­ity as if the nat­ur­al world has its own sen­tience set in oppos­i­tion to our own. Put­ting sin­cerely-held spir­itu­al and reli­gious beliefs aside so that they may be duly respec­ted in appro­pri­ate ven­ues, we should nev­er for­get that Homo sapi­ens is also of the nat­ur­al world. We don’t pos­sess some super­nat­ur­al prop­erty. Our spe­cies’ flour­ish­ing or fall­ing is as nat­ur­al as wind. That’s not to say we should not pro­gress with an evolved aware­ness of cause and effect. But for whom? Or for what? Not for nonsense.

So now we face eco­nom­ic reces­sion or, worse, eco­nom­ic depres­sion. These phe­nom­ena rep­res­ent a con­trac­tion in con­fid­ence, if not a reduc­tion in the pro­duc­tion of bare essen­tials. With less to go around the nat­ur­al instinct of self-pre­ser­va­tion kicks in a lot harder than dur­ing good times. Under such con­di­tions, people and organ­isa­tions and com­munit­ies and nation states more jeal­ously guard what they have. Without sur­plus there is less to redis­trib­ute to those who have little. Without sur­plus there is little to offer the innov­at­ors; the sci­ent­ists and artists and thinkers and tinker­ers who helped bring us those good times we so sorely miss now. Without sur­plus there are few­er moon-shot attempts. 

And without sur­plus there is no such thing as dis­cre­tion­ary travel & tour­ism. Except for those who have sav­ings. Unspent earn­ings from a paycheck are sav­ings. Unspent taxes are sav­ings. But what are sav­ings if not sur­pluses? What are debts? The sav­ings of oth­ers to be spent in the present at the expense of future surpluses.

In anoth­er con­text anoth­er name for a sur­plus is “profit”. Dirty word? Maybe. But, who cares? PROFIT! Our travel & tour­ism live­li­hoods depend upon it. Even ten­ured tour­ism aca­dem­ics in their ivory towers rely on insti­tu­tion­al (not-for-)profits, or taxes (on profits), for their paychecks. And the jet-set­ter tour­ism con­sult­ants with their woo-woo witch­craft don’t do their trick­ster­ing for char­ity, do they? No. They are often paid in taxes too.

Over the course of human his­tory, dis­cre­tion­ary travel & tour­ism has been a rare and extraordin­ary lux­ury reli­ant on the profit or sav­ings of those who engage in it. Yet some in our industry claim that after the pan­dem­ic tour­ism oppor­tun­it­ies will be self­lessly giv­en up by the “haves” to be shared among the “have-nots”. Appar­ently a social­ist uto­pia will magic­ally emerge! That is likely true at the fam­ily or friend­ship group level where com­mun­al shar­ing is nat­ur­al in good times and in bad, maybe even at the small com­munity level, but at the scale of soci­et­ies filled with strangers the real­ity is that selfish incent­ives dom­in­ate. The Chinese “Com­mun­ist” Party figured that out dec­ades ago. That’s why they lever­age free mar­kets to gen­er­ate sur­pluses. And the CCP has profited.

To any­one in a mar­ket-based lib­er­al demo­cracy call­ing for “sys­tem change” for the sake of sus­tain­able travel & tour­ism, please be care­ful what you wish for. You might regret what you get. Be spe­cif­ic about what you want and engage in the mar­ket­place of ideas. Both sides: The demand side by con­tinu­ing to com­mu­nic­ate with trav­el­lers about how they can choose to be more respons­ible, to pare back, to con­serve, to save; or how they can use their indi­vidu­al liberty for good. (Because reas­on helps make the world a bet­ter place. Doesn’t it?) And the sup­ply side by shar­ing best prac­tices with tour­ism stake­hold­ers and by advoc­at­ing for great­er host com­munity involve­ment in des­tin­a­tion plan­ning, man­age­ment, and mar­ket­ing; or how des­tin­a­tion man­agers can use demo­cracy for good. (Because nobody wants nas­ties in their back­yard. Do they?)

If you are lucky enough to live in a mar­ket-based lib­er­al demo­cracy — and you are not wal­low­ing in the polit­ics of iden­tity and vic­tim­hood and his­tor­ic­al oppres­sion on behalf of your­self or oth­ers, which, iron­ic­ally, you are allowed to because the sys­tem you com­plain about is in fact exceed­ingly, unpre­ced­en­tedly, tol­er­ant — then do your­self and oth­ers the favour of lever­aging the rights and respons­ib­il­it­ies at your dis­pos­al to be the change you wish to see in the world; as Mohan­das Gandhi is cred­ited as say­ing (but may not have).

Any­thing more author­it­ari­an than that risks becom­ing tyr­an­nic­al. And tyranny ain’t good. 

But what would your cor­res­pond­ent know? 

Odds & ends

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

In India “there are great examples of how wild­life is thriv­ing because of respons­ible com­munity-based tour­ism mod­els” wrote Aly Rashid for Out­look Trav­el­ler. “Wheth­er it is snow leo­pards in Ladakh, or red pan­das in Dar­jeel­ing or the rhi­nos in Kazir­anga or the lions in Gujar­at; their exist­ence is being boos­ted primar­ily by great con­ser­va­tion efforts by our forest depart­ment and also by the loc­al eco­nom­ies that have been formed by respons­ible wild­life tourism.”

Be healthy. Be happy. Have a good week!

Fea­tured image (top of post): Life’s a beach. By Kev­in Phil­lips (CC0) via pub­lic­do­main­pic­tures.

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

You are a tour­ism stake­hold­er — yes, YOU! — so what’s your view? Do you dis­agree with any­thing you have read on “GT”? Join the con­ver­sa­tion. Com­ment below or share your “Good Tour­ism” Insights. Diversity of thought is wel­come on The “Good Tour­ism” Blog. 

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! 🙂