Good news in tourism May 31 to Jun 6, 2020

… because it’s every­one’s business! 

As the pre­dict­able plat­it­udes pop­u­lated news feeds on World Envir­on­ment Day, “GT” found real news from real places in the real world and stayed pos­it­ive … Pub­lished every Sunday, “Good news in tour­ism” is the per­fect pick-me-up for the start of a new week in travel & tourism. 

This week in “Good news …”:

• Ran­dom reopenings
• Recov­ery strategies
• Let’s go wild
• Odds & ends

It’s “Good Tour­ism”. And go!

Import­ant “GT” news first:

“GT” Friend Kev­in Phun of new “GT” Part­ner the Centre for Respons­ible Tour­ism Singa­pore (CRTS) has developed a series of short online courses for aspir­ing respons­ible tour­ism prac­ti­tion­ers — or any­one inter­ested in the sub­ject — to estab­lish a found­a­tion of basic know­ledge and a frame­work for think­ing about vari­ous aspects of RT. And there is no bet­ter deal avail­able than that offered by the GTB-20-OFF coupon code.

“GT” Insight Part­ner SUNx — Strong Uni­ver­sal Net­work has launched a cam­paign called “Bend Our Trend” to help travel & tour­ism stake­hold­ers “cre­ate Cli­mate Neut­ral Ambi­tion Plans, which fit the Par­is 1.5° low car­bon tra­ject­ory, reflect the SDGs, and meet the tar­gets of the Green New Deal”.

Random reopenings

With­in an hour of open­ing a register of interest, some 140 people indic­ated that they would like to fly from Aus­tralia’s cap­it­al Can­berra to New Zea­l­and’s cap­it­al Wel­ling­ton on July 1; the pro­posed date for reopen­ing trans-Tas­man travel without quar­ant­ine. Accord­ing to Can­berra Air­port boss Steph­en Byron, who set up the register, the two gov­ern­ments plus Qantas and Air New Zea­l­and were talk­ing about it.

June 15 will see theatres, con­cert halls, cinemas, and out­door enter­tain­ment spaces reopen in Italy. Gov­ern­ment guid­ance on phys­ic­al dis­tan­cing must be adhered to. Out­door shows will be allowed a max­im­um of 1,000 spec­tat­ors; 200 indoor. A gradu­al reopen­ing of Italy’s pub­lic spaces began on May 18.

Croa­tia has posi­tioned itself as a “safe and desir­able tour­ist des­tin­a­tion” due to its “excel­lent epi­demi­olo­gic­al situ­ation”. That’s why the nation’s skies and air­ports are reopen­ing, with plenty of flights con­nect­ing European mar­kets being announced from mid-June. Croa­tia Air­lines, for example, will con­nect Zagreb with Brus­sels, Munich, Sara­jevo, Lon­don, and Rome from June 15.

Rantham­bore Nation­al Park, Sar­iska Tiger Reserve, and oth­er wild­life and nature-based tour­ism attrac­tions in Rajastan, India reopened for tour­ists from June 1; as did the state’s her­it­age sites, includ­ing Amer Fort and Nahargarh Fort. There are phys­ic­al dis­tan­cing guidelines and a cap on the num­ber of tour­ists allowed in at any one time. 

Gues­t­houses and res­taur­ants are gradu­ally reopen­ing in Siem Reap province, Cam­bod­ia, home to Angkor Wat. Pro­vin­cial tour­ism depart­ment boss Ngov Sen­gkak said author­it­ies were work­ing hard to pro­mote domest­ic tour­ism.

Busi­nesses in Brit­ish Columbia, Canada have the green light to reopen. And res­taur­ants, pubs, brew­er­ies, and winer­ies can apply to tem­por­ar­ily expand the space they can use to serve cli­ents while meet­ing phys­ic­al dis­tan­cing pro­to­cols. But tour­ism stake­hold­ers on the Dis­cov­ery Islands off the coast of BC are tak­ing a more cau­tious approach.

Por­tugal’s Madeira Island will reopen for inter­na­tion­al vis­it­ors from July 1. Trav­el­lers will be wel­comed with a free COVID-19 test upon arrival … Yay.

Are you a Good Partner?

To skip this SPECIAL DEAL, scroll down to the next subheading.

Bills don’t pay them­selves … so here’s a pitch: 

“GT” is pack­aging a Good Part­ner but­ton (125 x 125 pixels) for a whole year with two sponsored posts to be used any time dur­ing that peri­od for … 😲…  US$365 … 😅 … That’s chea- inex­pens­ive! …  😃… It’s a great deal in anyone’s lan­guage. And it’s yours if you want it! Sponsored posts can be about your news, event, place or product without the edit­or­i­al con­straints of a “GT” Insight. And as a “GT” Part­ner you will enjoy all the “Good news” advant­ages of “GT” Part­ner­ship, includ­ing links to your news. 

More inform­a­tion about “GT” Part­ner­ship | Buy the “Good Part­ner” but­ton now.

Recovery strategies

Stake­hold­ers in Malay­sia reck­on Sabah’s tour­ism restart tem­plate sets an example for oth­ers. While the state can lever­age its nat­ur­al assets to attract tour­ists and keep COVID-19 in check, for oth­er des­tin­a­tions “the import­ant thing is not hav­ing crowds”, accord­ing to Malay­si­an Inbound Tour­ism Asso­ci­ation pres­id­ent Uzaidi Udanis.

“There are no restric­tions on plan­ning, organ­ising, and con­duct­ing tours by the private sec­tor,” Iran’s Deputy Tour­ism Min­is­ter Vali Tey­mouri said. This pre­sum­ably frees up tour oper­at­ors to be cre­at­ive in their tour design secure in the under­stand­ing that each ele­ment — trans­port, accom­mod­a­tion, attrac­tion, res­taur­ant, even the tour guide — is already fol­low­ing the “smart” travel pro­to­cols developed by the tour­ism and health min­is­tries in May.

Vis­it Chey­enne in Wyom­ing, USA has taken a “road trip-cent­ric approach to its mar­ket­ing”. On its web­site are four new themed “Legendary Road Trip” itin­er­ar­ies: “Arts Afi­cion­ado,” “Out­door Enthu­si­ast,” “Food Con­nois­seur” and “His­tory Buff.” Vis­it Chey­enne chief Domin­ic Bravo and his team are also work­ing with stake­hold­ers to pro­duce sum­mer events to help make up for the can­cel­la­tion of “the daddy of ’em all”, Chey­enne Fron­ti­er Days 2020.

Friends in need are friends indeed

As lock­downs lengthen, more tins rattle … Here are fun­draisers well worth con­sid­er­ing due to the involve­ment of “GT” Friends. (This con­tent has appeared in “Good news in tour­ism” before so scroll down to the next sub­head­ing if you want to skip.)

“GT” Insight Part­ner Second Look World­wide is endors­ing a worthy fun­draiser organ­ised by “GT” Friend James Nadi­ope, who said: “Since Uganda went into quar­ant­ine with total lock­down fol­lowed by curfew many fam­il­ies where we work go empty stom­ach with no food to eat. I would like to appeal to all well-wish­ers for fin­an­cial dona­tions to help these vul­ner­able fam­il­ies.” [Call­back: In Janu­ary, Mr Nadi­ope con­trib­uted a “GT” Insight into “How bees, trees, & tour­ism reduce human-wild­life con­flict in Uganda”.]

The tem­por­ary clos­ure of Car­damom Ten­ted Camp due to the COVID-19 shut­down has meant that forest patrols by Wild­life Alli­ance rangers in Botum Sakor Nation­al Park in south­w­est Cam­bod­ia may have to be sus­pen­ded. The rangers’ equip­ment, food and wages are provided in entirety by the Golden Tri­angle Asi­an Ele­phant Found­a­tion (GTAEF) and Car­damom both of which depend on tour­ism. And there is no tour­ism. An emer­gency fun­drais­ing page to keep rangers employed and adequately sup­plied is live … and worthy. [“GT” Friends Willem Niemeijer and John Roberts are asso­ci­ated with the fun­draiser via Car­damom and GTAEF respectively.]

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. “GT” Friend Hol­lis Burb­ank-Ham­marlund of Work for Wild Life Inter­na­tion­al wrote about why that’s the case and how we can help.

Not a fun­draiser as such, but an idea for accom­mod­a­tion pro­viders: “GT” Friend 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.

Let’s go wild

Eco­tour­ism can raise com­munity sup­port for the pro­tec­tion of tar­get spe­cies and their respect­ive hab­it­ats by chan­ging loc­al atti­tudes and beha­viours towards them. This is accord­ing to research­ers who found that this was indeed the case for whale sharks at tour­ism sites in the Phil­ip­pines. 

For those reas­ons, eco­tour­ism is among award-win­ning con­ser­va­tion­ist Yoky­ok “Yoki” Hadiprakarsa’s plans to save Indone­sia’s crit­ic­ally-endangered helmeted horn­bills.

Tur­key’s Gen­er­al Dir­ect­or­ate of Forestry is work­ing to devel­op 19 new eco­tour­ism sites across the coun­try. Dir­ect­or­ate boss Bekir Karacabey said: “Demand for eco­tour­ism has been on the rise around the globe over the past years because of cli­mate change and drought and this is par­tic­u­larly the case this year because of the [coronavir­us] outbreak.”

To attract vis­it­ors to the world’s largest man­grove forest, the Bangladesh gov­ern­ment will con­struct an eco­tour­ism centre in the Sundar­bans at a cost of BDT 279.5 mil­lion (USD 3.3 mil­lion) as well as devel­op four new tour­ism spots to reduce the pres­sure on the cur­rent sev­en. The Sundar­bans man­groves grow in the delta formed by the rivers Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Meghna in the Bay of Bengal. The area spans from the Hooghly River in West Bengal, India to the Baleswar River in Bangladesh.

Super­in­tend­ent Niki Nich­olas of Big South Fork Nation­al River & Recre­ation Area reck­ons sum­mer 2020 could be the busiest ever. The nation­al park straddles the USA’s Ken­tucky and Ten­ness­ee states and is “with­in a day’s drive of most of the US pop­u­la­tion”. She hopes people will take phys­ic­al dis­tan­cing pre­cau­tions as they explore the park’s 125,000 acres (50586 hectares). 

Follow, flatter, finance

To skip, simply scroll down to the next subheading …

If you like “GT” and you don’t want to miss a thing, then sub­scribe to “GT’s” weekly e‑news — it’s free — and fol­low “GT’s” vari­ous socials, such as its Linked­In page. 

Join the con­ver­sa­tion. With­in reas­on — leg­al­ity, top­ic­al­ity, decency, and good faith — all points of view are wel­come … espe­cially flat­ter­ing ones, of course! 😎

And if you find “GT” inspir­ing, inter­est­ing, some­what amus­ing, or at least dif­fer­ent — because diversity is good, yeah? — then surely it’s worth a little some­thing to you …

It would mean a big some­thing to “GT”! 

Thank you very much to those who have donated. 😍 

Odds & ends

Good news bits ‘n pieces that don’t eas­ily fit into this week’s arbit­rary clusters:

Des­pite the United Nations World Tour­ism Organization’s (UNWTO’s) grand declar­a­tion of its vis­ion for a sus­tain­able “new nor­mal” on World Envir­on­ment Day, the Tour­ism Author­ity of Thai­l­and announced — on the same day — a part­ner­ship with the UN Devel­op­ment Pro­gramme to “make sus­tain­able, inclus­ive and com­munity-based tour­ism the ‘new nor­mal’” in the King­dom. And there was no men­tion of UNWTO at all. Hmm …

Greece’s Tour­ism Min­is­ter Har­is Theo­har­is has made access­ible tour­ism a pri­or­ity issue. He said he would estab­lish an access­ible tour­ism com­mit­tee to identi­fy issues that need address­ing as well as devel­op a web­site about access­ible accom­mod­a­tion and ser­vices for people with disabilities.

A high-speed long-range elec­tric ver­tic­al take-off & land­ing (eVTOL) air­craft may be a pos­sib­il­ity if a USA com­pany’s hydro­gen fuel cell design works in real life as they claim it does in the lab. HyPo­int says its “turbo air-cooled” fuel cell can deliv­er three times the power and four times the lifespan of a reg­u­lar fuel cell while using much cheap­er “dirty” hydro­gen. The Cali­for­nia-based com­pany plans to build a prototype.

The Fed­er­al Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment Ini­ti­at­ive for North­ern Ontario, Canada is sup­port­ing 36 muni­cip­al­it­ies with CAD 7.6 mil­lion (USD 5.6 mil­lion) for pro­jects, includ­ing for com­munity revital­isa­tion, tour­ism infra­struc­ture devel­op­ment, and tour­ism mar­ket­ing.

Stay healthy, smile, and have a good week!

Fea­tured image (top of post): Travel plan­ning! By Rawpixel Ltd (CC0) via Flickr.

Donations, diversity, disclaimers

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! 😍

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. And you will be sup­port­ing an inde­pend­ent pub­lish­er with your ori­gin­al content.

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! 🙂