Good news in tourism April 5 – 11, 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!

Seriously. Are host communities the vaccine against overtourism?

If they are indeed taken ser­i­ously by poli­cy­makers then host com­munit­ies must surely offer pro­tec­tion against over­tour­ism and its asso­ci­ated ills. (Call­back: See this March 21 “GT” Insight.) In the news this week is even more anec­dot­al evid­ence for your correspondent’s assertion:

India’s sus­tain­able tour­ism busi­nesses are show­ing “why com­munity-first prac­tices must be the future of all tour­ism”. The art­icle includes men­tion of “GT” Friend Neha Arora of access­ible travel out­fit Plan­et Abled who has reportedly reached out to her net­work of dif­fer­ently-abled people to offer sup­port dur­ing coronavir­us lock­down: “If any­one needs a care­giver to vis­it them daily or needs essen­tials delivered, this counts as an essen­tial ser­vice and we can help get a pass issued.” (Call­back: Read Ms Aror­a’s “GT” Insight from June 2019.)

A former loc­al coun­cil­lor for tour­ism-reli­ant Queen­stown, New Zea­l­and is urging the town to use the coronavir­us moment to re-ima­gine a future in which tour­ism was not the focus. Kirsty Sharpe said: “We have been overly reli­ant on tour­ism […] I think the com­munity should be involved in how tour­ism looks here in the future”. She reck­ons the com­munity has been talk­ing about this since before the pan­dem­ic.

Tour­ism chiefs all along Aotearoa are seem­ingly of the same mind as Ms Sharpe, indic­at­ing their intent (under­tak­ing? / prom­ise?) to con­sult with com­munit­ies first as they pre­pare to “reboot” after COVID-19:

Tour­ism Min­is­ter Kelvin Dav­is, who expects a report from Tour­ism New Zea­l­and in the com­ing weeks, said: “This is an oppor­tun­ity to rethink the entire way we approach tour­ism to make sure we make New Zea­l­and more sus­tain­able, that we enrich the lives of New Zealanders”.

Tour­ism New Zea­l­and boss Steph­en Eng­land-Hall reportedly said that the shut­down was “a rare oppor­tun­ity to design the future of tour­ism with feed­back from communities”. 

Tour­ism Industry Aotearoa boss Chris Roberts said tour­ism in New Zea­l­and “can be the world’s most sus­tain­able tour­ism industry, the most envir­on­ment­ally-pro­tect­ive [and] the one that listens to its com­munit­ies bet­ter than any other”. 

In the country’s largest city, Steve Armit­age of Auck­land Tour­ism, Events & Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment said that “loc­al input would be vital for any future planning”.

Region­al Tour­ism Organ­isa­tions New Zea­l­and boss Charlie Ives poin­ted out that loc­al gov­ern­ments should have a big say on the recov­ery plan giv­en that they are the “largest investors in tour­ism at a loc­al level” in terms of the required infrastructure.

Mean­while, in the Neth­er­lands’ cap­it­al, Dav­id Veld­hoen said he was delighted when his city removed the icon­ic “I Ams­ter­dam” from the Museumplein in Decem­ber 2018. “The let­ters were for me a sym­bol of tour­ism,” he said. 

Many of the 850,000+ res­id­ents of Ams­ter­dam feel over­whelmed by the mil­lions of annu­al vis­it­ors; 17 mil­lion last year. But zero is worse. Loc­als hope Ams­ter­dam finds a “kinder, gentler” tour­ism industry as travel picks up after the COVID-19 crisis.

In neigh­bour­ing Bel­gi­um, the writers of the Shitty Guide Ant­werp reck­on over­tour­ism is ruin­ing Europe. With the clos­ure of some of the fea­tured places in their guide, there’s “a sad, hil­ari­ous irony” that isn’t lost on them. “Sar­castic­ally, they say they’ve become a vic­tim of their own success.” 

Haven’t we heard speak­ers at travel & tour­ism con­fer­ences say those words about des­tin­a­tions before? Over and over again? For dec­ades? Yet the vic­tims of tour­is­m’s suc­cess con­tin­ue to pile up. 

Be like medical professionals. Be brave and do your jobs.

“GT” rant alert. To skip, scroll down to the next subheading.

In this coronavir­us moment, it’s time for des­tin­a­tion man­agers to step up and hold the line for host com­munit­ies. It’s time for them to listen to loc­als, respect their wishes, and design des­tin­a­tions in which res­id­ents can feel at home and be proud. That’s not only a more “respons­ible” approach to tour­ism, it’s also likely to be a more “sus­tain­able” approach, because, you know … back­yards. Nobody wants nas­ties in their backyard!

Des­tin­a­tion man­agers need to start doing their jobs. First and fore­most they need to be brave enough to stand up to cor­por­ate and polit­ic­al power struc­tures that make doing their jobs dif­fi­cult. To that end they should imme­di­ately stop listen­ing to expens­ive con­sult­ants who spout new-age woo-woo non­sense or mis­ap­pro­pri­ated tri­bal spiritualism. 

What exactly do these con­sult­ants help des­tin­a­tion man­agers achieve, any­way? A few days in a meet­ing room sans paper­work? A few fancy lunches? The real answer is that they help achieve noth­ing that powers-that-be can­’t simply snig­ger at and dis­miss. And rightly so. A man­date from the people is far more influ­en­tial than the fluff and fantasy of gurus. Com­mon sense must surely trump nonsense.

A man­date from the people is far more influ­en­tial than the fluff and fantasy of gurus. Com­mon sense must surely trump nonsense.

Yes, des­tin­a­tion man­agers need to start doing their jobs. There are no new-fangled buzz-phrases and pretty paradigms required; only old-fash­ioned hard work and a back­bone. Your cor­res­pond­ent isn’t a des­tin­a­tion man­ager, but even he knows the tools at any des­tin­a­tion manager’s dis­pos­al: Com­munity con­sulta­tions, sur­veys, and car­ry­ing capa­city stud­ies (from right here). Case stud­ies (from else­where). Com­mon sense (pre­sum­ably). Cour­age (hope­fully). 

To do their jobs, i.e. to do good by the host com­munit­ies to whom they should answer and the des­tin­a­tions for which they are respons­ible, des­tin­a­tion man­agers need to ask the former what they envi­sion for the lat­ter and then fig­ure out how to deliv­er the answer. Backed by a clear com­munity man­date, des­tin­a­tion man­agers will be bet­ter placed to stand up to whatever cor­por­ate or polit­ic­al power struc­ture that gets in their way. 

Even in fail­ure des­tin­a­tion man­agers who put people first will have at least earned the respect of host com­munit­ies. And to the extent des­tin­a­tion man­agers can suc­cess­fully har­ness the power of grass­roots demo­cracy to deliv­er cross-cut­ting pos­it­ive change, tour­ism may even rise to become a prized port­fo­lio at the highest levels of gov­ern­ment. And wouldn’t that be something!? 

Des­tin­a­tion man­agers, your cor­res­pond­ent implores you to fol­low the example med­ic­al pro­fes­sion­als are set­ting right now: Be brave and do your jobs!

Call­back: In Feb­ru­ary 2019, Chris Flynn of “GT” Insight Part­ner the World Tour­ism Asso­ci­ation for Cul­ture & Her­it­age (WTACH) wrote about the per­verse incent­ives that inev­it­ably lead to over­tour­ism and its asso­ci­ated ills and releg­ate tour­ism to the status of mid­dling step­ping stone for ambi­tious politicians.

Keeping calm and carrying on

Two self-help groups under the Kot­toor Eco-tour­ism Devel­op­ment Com­mit­tee (EDC) are man­u­fac­tur­ing face masks and pick­ling veget­ables for tri­bal people in remote vil­lages; to help them cope with the coronavir­us situ­ation. Com­pris­ing loc­als, EDCs were formed by the forest depart­ment in Ker­ala, India to main­tain eco­tour­ism centres. In turn, self-help groups grew out of the need for EDC mem­bers to earn a liv­ing dur­ing tour­is­m’s low season.

In Vic­tor­ia, Aus­tralia, work to link Koon­drook town centre and Koon­drook Wharf on the Mur­ray River to the “Koon­drook Nature Based Tour­ism Hub pre­cinct” will con­tin­ue in April, des­pite COVID-19. Res­id­ents and vis­it­ors to the town are already bene­fit­ing from the first two stages, accord­ing to May­or Lor­raine Learmonth.

Sim­il­arly, con­struc­tion is pro­gress­ing apace in Two Rivers, Wis­con­sin, USA, includ­ing the expan­sion of a nature-based tour­ism facil­ity. Indeed 2020 could be “a ban­ner year” for devel­op­ment in the town des­pite SARS-CoV­‑2.

The drought in tour­ist arrivals due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic is a “rare oppor­tun­ity” to upgrade Malta’s tour­ism offer­ing, accord­ing to the island’s Tour­ism Min­is­ter Julia Far­ru­gia Por­telli. “It’s funny how just a month and a half ago I met with stake­hold­ers [and] we were talk­ing about how we should try and curb the ever-increas­ing num­ber of tour­ist arrivals and instead focus on attract­ing qual­ity tour­ists.”

Egypt’s Pres­id­ent Abdel Fat­tah Al-Sisi asked his nation’s Cent­ral Bank to offer tour­ism facil­ity oper­at­ors low-interest loans to help them get through the coronavir­us pan­dem­ic. He reck­ons Egypt’s tour­ism infra­struc­ture should be ready to go when the crisis ends.

Iran’s Pres­id­ent Has­san Rohani asked his nation’s Min­istry of Cul­tur­al Her­it­age, Tour­ism and Han­di­crafts to ease the bur­den on investors hold­ing leases for her­it­age sites shut down over coronavir­us fears. The Min­istry had leased out “his­tor­ic­al places and monu­ments” for use as “eco-lodges, tra­di­tion­al res­taur­ants or oth­er prof­it­able niches”, pre­sum­ably on the under­stand­ing that lease­hold­ers would main­tain the sites.

Don’t let a crisis go to waste

And now a word from your cor­res­pond­ent, Dav­id Gill­banks, writ­ing in the first per­son … hmm, unusu­al for a “GT” post from him. It’s self-indul­gent, self-serving stuff but it includes an oppor­tun­ity for you. If you don’t care for it, then please scroll down to the next sub­head­ing “Elec­tric aviation”.

Happy East­er to all who cel­eb­rate it!

When writ­ing for “GT” I nor­mally refer to myself in the third per­son as “your cor­res­pond­ent”. I star­ted writ­ing this seg­ment from that per­spect­ive. As it got longer, it got increas­ingly awk­ward and ridicu­lous. So here I am writ­ing in the first person …

To the extent that you want to or are forced to abide by them, how are you cop­ing with coronavir­us-related lock­down and social dis­tan­cing rules? For me — a dis­agree­able intro­vert at the best of times — not a lot has changed. Apart from mild frus­tra­tion at being unable to escape the south­ern hemi­sphere winter to catch up with the bet­ter half of a long-dis­tance rela­tion­ship, phys­ic­al dis­tan­cing and social isol­a­tion is hardly a bur­den for the likes of moi!

I am for­tu­nate. Bil­lions are worse off. Nev­er­the­less, the stay-at-home dir­ect­ive has com­pelled me to tem­por­ar­ily aban­don my fish­ing-for-food hobby. Recre­ation­al fish­ing hasn’t been crim­in­al­ised here in West­ern Aus­tralia (at writ­ing) but the strong sug­ges­tion from rel­ev­ant author­it­ies is that if your fish­ing isn’t an essen­tial activ­ity, then don’t do it. This is a down­er because fish­ing helps ground me in nature and place, yet my self-absorp­tion doesn’t quite extend to claim­ing an essen­tial men­tal health reas­on to con­tin­ue. And I’m not (yet) so poor that I have to rely on my fish­ing skills for protein. 

I have had to find new dis­trac­tions to main­tain my san­ity. I’m learn­ing how to do oth­er things that shunt me in the dir­ec­tion of more groun­ded self-reliance. 

I am indeed for­tu­nate. I am holed up in a house with a back­yard and space for a veget­able garden. Thus veget­able garden­ing is a ground­ing thing I am try­ing. And after only a few weeks of a little daily pot­ter­ing, my pre­vi­ously pale and pink point­ers may be acquir­ing a tinge of green. Seed­lings are sprout­ing from sandy soils; snow peas, broad beans, wom­bok (Chinese cab­bage), and oth­ers soon I hope. A rose­mary sprig poked into the ground weeks ago looks healthy against long odds. A more delib­er­ate oregano trans­plant is only just hanging on des­pite short odds. (Pests seem to love it. I don’t blame them.) And I’ve got­ten the root end of a store-bought onion to re-sprout. So proud!

Yes, I am very for­tu­nate. The house in which I reside has a kit­chen equipped with gas oven that allows me to dabble in bread­mak­ing; the so-lazy, no-knead vari­ety; noth­ing too exact. On my first attempt I may have stumbled across the basic for­mu­la­tion for crum­pet; crunchy crust, chewy crumb, barely bread but bril­liant as buttered toast. After the minor advances of a scrump­tious crum­pet-bread hybrid in v2.0, I exper­i­mented with a dif­fer­ent flour for­mu­la­tion and warm spices for v3.0. The inside was a little more like reg­u­lar bread while retain­ing that crazy-good crust. It could have used more of the powdered cin­na­mon-nut­meg-all­spice mix, though. And I may try adding sul­tanas and brown sug­ar to my next effort to cre­ate an East­er-appro­pri­ate v4.0 sans cross … [Update: Loaf v4.0 was the best yet!]

My nas­cent bak­ing career is a little like The “Good Tour­ism” Blog in that I have aban­doned any con­sid­er­a­tion of estab­lished recipes-for-suc­cess, pre­fer­ring instead to take iter­at­ive exper­i­ment­al risks. (And it may appear half-baked on occa­sion!) “GT” is an exper­i­ment in altern­at­ive industry media; a plat­form where long-form writ­ten opin­ions about any­thing tour­ism-related are wel­come. And they all matter. 

The biggest risk with “GT” is that I may offend people more power­ful and bet­ter con­nec­ted than me who will sud­denly decide to nev­er reply to my mes­sages again. And that has already happened! What those folk fail to under­stand, or simply don’t care about, is that I will hap­pily pub­lish their counter-argu­ments and con­struct­ive cri­ti­cisms. Diversity of thought is wel­come here. Yet appar­ently I’m too tox­ic to talk to; little ol’ cent­rist me. (!?)

What new skills are you learning? 

Here’s an oppor­tun­ity to try some­thing: 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, whatever “good” means to you; shar­ing your “Good Tour­ism” Insights?

This is also a con­tent mar­ket­ing, brand- and link-build­ing oppor­tun­ity for you and your organ­isa­tion. So, why not?

If you think you can­not write, you are wrong … Of course you can write! If you can speak, you can write. Simply write down what you would say out loud. And I am here to help you. (This is also a con­tent mar­ket­ing, brand- and link-build­ing oppor­tun­ity for you and your organ­isa­tion. So, why not?) It’s free-of-charge. How­ever, please take it ser­i­ously as it will be as much an invest­ment of my time pub­lish­ing and pro­mot­ing your ideas as it is an invest­ment of your time writ­ing them down.

Before I retreat back into third per­son, it would be remiss of me not to ask you to sub­scribe to “GT’s” weekly e‑news (it’s free) and fol­low “GT’s” vari­ous socials, such as Linked­In. And if you find “GT” inspir­ing, inter­est­ing, some­what amus­ing, or at least dif­fer­ent then surely it’s worth some­thing to you. So please …

It would mean a lot to me.

Electric aviation

A Los Angeles, USA firm plans to launch the world’s first com­mer­cial elec­tric urb­an air mobil­ity (UAM) net­work next year using small eCTOL (elec­tric con­ven­tion­al takeoff & land­ing) craft, which “oper­ate at a frac­tion of the cost of a sim­il­ar-sized airplane”.

An elec­tric sea­plane developer from Nor­way is the first Scand­inavi­an com­pany to enter Air Race E, the first all-elec­tric air­plane racing cham­pi­on­ship. Ten teams will com­pete includ­ing those from Canada, France, Ger­many, the Neth­er­lands, the USA and the UK.

Odds & ends

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

A Seni­or Fel­low at the School of Ori­ent­al and Afric­an Stud­ies, Uni­ver­sity of Lon­don, reck­ons sus­tain­able coastal and mar­ine tour­ism has “vast poten­tial” in the Middle East and North Africa as nations there seek to diver­si­fy their oil-based economies.

Dunga Beach used to be a source of pol­lu­tion for Lake Vic­tor­ia, Kenya. Two years ago, the Dunga Eco Tour­ism and Envir­on­ment­al Youth Group, with fin­an­cial sup­port from the French Embassy, determ­ined to clean up the loc­al marsh­land and turn it into a nature-based tour­ism site. Now a little museum and a board­walk attract domest­ic stu­dents and for­eign bird­watch­ers. And loc­al youth enjoy a source of income to sup­ple­ment their fishing.

Accord­ing to a 2018 sur­vey, more than 90% of the res­id­ents of Alberta province in Canada “believe that his­tor­ic­al resources are import­ant to their over­all qual­ity of life”; des­pite very little actu­al engage­ment with those resources. But at least one loc­al museum is see­ing an increase in loc­al vis­its thanks to innov­at­ive use of tech­no­logy and more pro­act­ive com­munity engage­ment.

Rur­al tour­ism is rap­idly catch­ing up to oth­er tour­ism trends in India.

Be healthy. Be happy. Have a good week!

Fea­tured image (top of post): Lake Waka­tipu, near Queen­stown New Zea­l­and. By Rex Boggs (CC BY-ND 2.0) via Flickr.

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! 🙂