Good news in tourism May 3 – 9, 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!

Import­ant “GT” stuff first: 

The expres­sion “an ele­phant in the room” means an uncom­fort­able truth we can­not ignore. With tour­ism cash flows stemmed, many Asi­an ele­phants and their mahouts in Thai­l­and and else­where are in deep trouble. New “GT” Friend Hol­lis Burb­ank-Ham­marlund of Work for Wild Life Inter­na­tion­al wrote about why that’s the case and how we can help.

In a fresh “GT” Insight pub­lished Wed­nes­day: Bangkok-based travel & hos­pit­al­ity entre­pren­eur and sus­tain­able tour­ism advoc­ate Willem Niemeijer sees an oppor­tun­ity in the SARS-CoV­‑2 crisis; an oppor­tun­ity to rebal­ance tour­ism with more sens­ible man­age­ment and less vis­it­or volume. But make your plans swiftly because Mr Niemeijer reck­ons recov­ery will be faster than many think!

As Mr Niemeijer con­cedes, the timeline for tourism’s recov­ery from this pan­dem­ic is anyone’s guess. In a webin­ar series organ­ised by the World Tour­ism Asso­ci­ation for Cul­ture & Her­it­age (WTACH) there are plenty of guesses and insights from smart people. The “GT” Insight Partner’s webin­ar series “Keep­ing the Dream Alive” is designed “to help the industry through the COVID-19 crisis”. Register here for upcom­ing instal­ments. And listen to pod­cast record­ings of epis­odes that have gone before.

COVID ops

As Aus­tralia and New Zea­l­and con­tin­ue to con­sider a trans-Tas­man travel bubble, the Tour­ism Min­is­ter of Greece, Har­ris Theo­har­is, has sug­ges­ted set­ting up a “corona cor­ridor” between Greece, Cyprus and Israel. This would allow Cyp­ri­ots and Israel­is access to Greek islands in the Aegean and Medi­ter­ranean in early July. 

From the same news report: “The Czech Repub­lic is said to be con­sid­er­ing a sim­il­ar plan with neigh­bor­ing Slov­akia and Croa­tia.” And tour­ism-reli­ant Medi­ter­ranean island nation Malta has also called for “safe corridors”.

Deny­ing reports to the con­trary, Italy’s Nation­al Tour­ist Board Pres­id­ent Gior­gio Palmucci says his des­tin­a­tion will not be closed to vis­it­ors for the whole of 2020. “Tour­ism in Italy will start again, with all pre­cau­tions and in max­im­um safety.”

Mary­ana Oleskiv leads Ukraine’s State Agency for Tour­ism Devel­op­ment, which is expec­ted to be fully oper­a­tion­al this month. Her first pri­or­ity will be to pre­vent tour­ism busi­nesses from going bank­rupt; second to get domest­ic tour­ism tick­ing. She pre­dicts big things for Ukrain­i­an tour­ism in the long term.

Accord­ing to China’s state-run news agency, inter­na­tion­al hos­pit­al­ity groups are gradu­ally resum­ing full oper­a­tions as the People’s Repub­lic enters a “reg­u­lar epi­dem­ic pre­ven­tion and con­trol” phase.

Because there is no tour­ism, the Macau SAR gov­ern­ment has scrapped plans for a tour­ist tax tack­ling over­tour­ism. Macau is instead look­ing at “eco­nom­ic recov­ery of the sec­tor through meas­ures such as tax reduc­tions and eco­nom­ic sup­port”.

Her­it­age Tour­ism Brands, a group of lux­ury hotel brands in Hong Kong SAR, has pro­duced a music video “show­cas­ing the city in all its beauty and diversity, to encour­age people to enjoy their home and appre­ci­ate what makes it unique”. 

Com­munity-based tour oper­at­ors in Kada­m­ai­an, Sabah state, Malay­sia are ready to resume wel­com­ing vis­it­ors as soon as the gov­ern­ment lifts restric­tions. Their rep­res­ent­at­ive, Wal­ter Duis Kanday­on, said that vil­la­gers con­tin­ue to “work togeth­er in rota­tion to main­tain exist­ing infra­struc­tures and clean­li­ness”. CBT in the area is only about five years old. For­tu­nately loc­al live­li­hoods have not yet become reli­ant on it. 

COVID ops in the USA

Believe it or not the United States of Amer­ica isn’t the tra­gi­com­ic pan­to­mime that the cor­por­ate media dis­tract us with; y’know, the very bad orange man in the West Wing versus the tone-deaf hypo­crites who oppose him. (Yet smart people, includ­ing some of our tour­ism industry col­leagues, seem to take great joy in bar­rack­ing for one cor­rupt side or the oth­er as if they were the only options avail­able. Don’t play their rigged game!)

As is evid­enced by months of “Good news in tour­ism” items from the USA, there are plenty of pos­it­ive, pro­act­ive, inter­est­ing, and innov­at­ive things hap­pen­ing in Amer­ic­an com­munit­ies — in red states and in blue — as repor­ted by a healthy loc­al media. (Yet some of our industry col­leagues ques­tion why your cor­res­pond­ent puts more faith in host com­munit­ies than in out­siders to determ­ine what’s best for tourism.)

Here are sev­er­al more “Good news …” items from Amer­ica this week:

From an op-ed in The Natchez Demo­crat, Mis­sis­sippi, about a pro­posed new river cruise dock­ing facil­ity on the Mis­sis­sippi River: “In Natchez, the pur­suit of pro­gress and the pre­ser­va­tion of the past are often caught in a game of tug of war. […] If there is a sil­ver lin­ing to the cur­rent state of tour­ism, it may be that the pan­dem­ic gives lead­ers ample time to make plans that seek pro­gress and pre­serve the past.”

Ketchi­k­an in Alaska stands to lose more than US$140 mil­lion in vis­it­or spend­ing from cruise can­cel­la­tions, which is why the Ketchi­k­an City Coun­cil is con­sid­er­ing form­ing a con­sor­ti­um of south­east­ern Alaskan cruise ports to “work togeth­er on a set of safe cruis­ing stand­ards”.

In Ken­tucky, Louis­ville Tour­ism chief Kar­en Wil­li­ams has reached out to city res­id­ents with a plea to “become a tour­ist in your homet­own”. Her per­son­al mes­sage is accom­pan­ied by a video star­ring the hos­pit­al­ity work­ers of the city and the hasht­ag #Louis­vil­leL­ove.

The boss of Vis­it SLO CAL — San Luis Obispo County in Cali­for­nia — Chuck Dav­is­on remains optim­ist­ic, encour­aging pro­spect­ive vis­it­ors to dream via social media: “We’re teach­ing people how to do things. We had a cock­tail craft­ing class. We had a gelato mak­ing class […] it’s really encour­aging people to exper­i­ence the des­tin­a­tion virtually.”

Sim­il­arly, Costa Mesa, Cali­for­nia is try­ing to stay “top of mind” with online cam­paigns offer­ing “Zoom back­grounds, vir­tu­al art walks and a life­style blog with tips on everything from med­it­a­tion to mak­ing craft cock­tails”. One hoteli­er in the region is see­ing a pick-up in short-term occu­pancy on week­ends. “I think people are get­ting a little stir crazy …”

Loc­als in six US states and many muni­cip­al­it­ies have been explor­ing their sec­tions of the Civil War Trails — a sys­tem of open-air walk­ing and driv­ing tours that take vis­it­ors through sites of his­tor­ic sig­ni­fic­ance. Exec­ut­ive Dir­ect­or of the Trails, Drew Gruber, said: “Our sites are out­side and mostly access­ible in a very socially respons­ible way.”

Acts of kind­ness by the tour­ism & hos­pit­al­ity industry are cel­eb­rated in this feel-good news item from Ore­gon. They include “Grate­ful Bread” donat­ing to the “Beaver Food Pantry” … cute, eh!? “Gen­er­os­ity and kind­ness have always been a hall­mark of the hos­pit­al­ity and tour­ism industry,” Nan Devlin, boss of Vis­it Tillamook Coast, said. “That remains true here in Tillamook County.” 

Pandemic ponderings

Tour­ism experts and offi­cials in Indone­sia are con­sid­er­ing what the “new nor­mal” might look like post-pan­dem­ic. “The gov­ern­ment has been pro­mot­ing new des­tin­a­tions as altern­at­ives to Bali, includ­ing Lake Toba in North Sumatra, Man­da­lika in West Nusa Teng­gara, as well as Bangka Bel­i­tung Islands [and is] mulling plans to issue cer­ti­fic­a­tion as well as stand­ard oper­at­ing pro­ced­ures to ensure com­pli­ance of tour­ist des­tin­a­tions and accom­mod­a­tion pro­viders with health and hygiene standards.”

Are we Goa-ing back to the future? The Tour­ism Min­is­ter of Goa state in India, Man­o­har Ajgaonk­ar, reportedly said: “We have to recre­ate the Goa of the 1960s to kick­start our tour­ism again […] Goa was beau­ti­ful and now in 2020 it is very dif­fer­ent […] We have to start off from zero.” [Call­back from April 8, 2019: “What’s Goa-ing on? The past, present and future of tour­ism in Goa”, a “GT” Insight by Justine Calais.]

Writ­ing for The Daily Blog, Martyn Brad­bury reck­ons New Zea­l­and needs to shift “from hyper tour­ism to boutique tour­ism and appro­pri­ately price that exper­i­ence”. The prom­ise of a “plague-free hol­i­day” in Aotearoa means there is “no longer the tyranny of dis­tance, that dis­tance is our strength and selling point now”.

Don’t let a crisis go to waste

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Not a white man’s business

In a let­ter to Nam­i­bia’s New Era Live, Selma Amad­hila, a recent gradu­ate of tour­ism man­age­ment stud­ies, writes: “I urge my fel­low Nam­i­bi­an youth, espe­cially those of us employed in travel tour­ism and con­ser­va­tion to use this time dur­ing the lock-down, to read up and edu­cate ourselves of the real facts of the import­ance the tour­ism sec­tor has on our daily live­li­hoods and the eco­nomy of this beau­ti­ful nation. This is the time to edu­cate your com­munit­ies on the import­ance of con­serving and appre­ci­at­ing the Nam­i­bi­an wild­life and our envir­on­ment at large.

“I con­fid­ently want to say to every youth out there, tour­ism and con­ser­va­tion is not a “white man’s busi­ness” as ste­reo­types have painted it to be. Every single Nam­i­bi­an bene­fit from the fruits of tour­ism and con­ser­va­tion …”

Wildlife

Prim­ate expert Dr Rus­sell ­Mit­ter­mei­er reck­ons eco­tour­ism offers our endangered cous­ins the best hope for sur­viv­al. In the BBC series The Prim­ates he says: “Eco­tour­ism is the best solu­tion we have for ensur­ing the long term sur­viv­al of these creatures in their nat­ur­al ­hab­it­ats. We can save these spe­cies from extinction.”

Not neces­sar­ily good news, but here’s a shot of real­ity: It turns out that some of the cute vir­al news stor­ies of anim­als tak­ing over human spaces dur­ing pan­dem­ic lock­downs were fake or over­blown … The good news, of course, is that there are still journ­al­ists out there will­ing to check facts!

Odds & ends

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

France’s VoltAero hopes to start deliv­er­ing four‑, six‑, and 10-seat ver­sions of its Cassio 2 hybrid-elec­tric air­craft by the end of 2022. “A hybrid propul­sion is not as good as an all-elec­tric one, but it rep­res­ents the best, most prag­mat­ic way to reduce emis­sions right now.” This news from France is wel­come giv­en Air­bus E‑Fan X’s demise. 

The Macau SAR gov­ern­ment will coordin­ate foot­ball (soc­cer) exchanges between China and Por­tuguese-speak­ing coun­tries in 2021, the Sec­ret­ary for Social Affairs and Cul­ture reportedly said on Monday. Macau, of course, was a Por­tuguese colony. And Por­tuguese-speak­ing Brazil, a foot­balling giant, also hap­pens to be the B in BRICS.

Stay healthy, smile, and have a good week!

Fea­tured image (top of post): Greens Pool, Wil­li­am Bay Nation­al Park, Shire of Den­mark, West­ern Aus­tralia. Image by BaroBert (CC BY-SA 3.0) via Wiki­me­dia. “GT” cropped it.

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! 🙂