Good news in tourism November 8 – 14, 2020

Because we’re stronger than dirt …

Pub­lished every Sunday, “Good news in tour­ism” is the per­fect pick-me-up for the start of a new week in travel & tour­ism … everyone’s business.

This week’s good travel & tourism news menu:

(Click / touch an item to go straight to it.)

• “Good Tour­ism” news
• COVID ops
• Eco­tour­ism, park­ing, & wildlife
• Tour­ism policy & governance
• Odds & ends

It’s “Good Tour­ism”. And go!

“Good Tourism” news

In a fresh “Good Tour­ism” Insight pub­lished Tues­day, Peter Richards, con­sult­ant to the Inter­na­tion­al Trade Centre’s Myan­mar Inclus­ive Tour­ism Pro­ject, describes the pre-pan­dem­ic prom­ise of new com­munity-based tour­ism products, their chal­lenges now, and how com­munit­ies are hand­ling COVID safety con­cerns as they con­sider reopening.

“A com­munity-based tour­ism dilemma: COVID’s ‘new nor­mal’ vs ‘back to normal’”

Hol­lis Burb­ank-Ham­marlund of “GT” Insight Part­ner Work for Wild Life Inter­na­tion­al reports that the Ele­phant Health­care Emer­gency Life­line Fund has expan­ded its reach and ser­vices. Launched in April 2020 to help keep ele­phant vets on the job in Thai­l­and, the Fund is now also help­ing ele­phant camps in India, Laos, and Nepal. And, in addi­tion to sup­port­ing ele­phant health­care in these places, the Fund is pay­ing mahout wages and secur­ing sup­plies of ele­phant food. 

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Friends indeed

“Friends indeed” are worthy travel & tour­ism industry fun­draisers and char­it­able causes. Please help if you can. Share the page with your social net­works. And link to it from your web­site or email signature.

COVID ops

Domin­ic­an Repub­lic is offer­ing free COVID-19 insur­ance to trav­el­lers arriv­ing on or before Decem­ber 31, 2020. The Carib­bean nation will cov­er 100% of the costs asso­ci­ated with con­tract­ing COVID-19 in the coun­try. The insur­ance under­scores author­it­ies’ con­fid­ence in their “broad port­fo­lio of world-class safety measures”.

More than 400,000 tour­ists have vis­ited Egypt since July without a single repor­ted case of coronavir­us, accord­ing to the country’s tour­ism min­istry. Min­is­ter of tour­ism & antiquit­ies Khaled El-Anany cred­ited COV­ID-safe meas­ures imple­men­ted in hotels, museums, archae­olo­gic­al sites, and oth­er tour­ism attractions.

Loc­al tour­ism busi­nesses, includ­ing homestays, are “boun­cing back” in Kozhikode dis­trict, Ker­ala, India. Vis­it­ors are flock­ing to rur­al and beach tour­ism des­tin­a­tions where “a strin­gent health pro­tocol is in place” and “many entre­pren­eurs have roped in pro­fes­sion­al dis­in­fec­tion ser­vice providers”.

Res­id­ents of Moab Val­ley, Utah, USA are wor­ried about over­tour­ism again … Bet­ter than no tourism!

High Point, North Car­o­lina, USA is see­ing an uptick in tour­ism activ­ity. While busi­ness travel is down, inter­state leis­ure travel is up. Vis­it High Point boss Melody Bur­nett reck­ons hotels are busier on the weekend. 

Busi­nesses in Snow­mass Vil­lage, Col­or­ado, USA have cashed in more than USD 81,000 of “Love a Loc­al” vouch­ers. The vouch­ers gave res­id­ents USD 25 to spend at par­ti­cip­at­ing mer­chants. Flex­ib­il­ity and sim­pli­city was the goal, tour­ism dir­ect­or Rose Abello said.

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The importance of good partnerships

Many com­ment­at­ors would like to see des­tin­a­tions recov­er from the COVID-19 depres­sion focused on qual­ity rather than quant­ity. That would be nice, of course, par­tic­u­larly if host com­munit­ies want that. How­ever, some or many extant tour­ism stake­hold­ers will likely go out of busi­ness. Don’t let one of those be you. 

Seek out good part­ner­ships with those who make you their pri­or­ity. 

“GT” is a good part­ner. Please veri­fy that with a “GT” Part­ner and then ask about part­ner­ship oppor­tun­it­ies. There’s a “GT” part­ner­ship oppor­tun­ity for every­one — big or small; pub­lic or private; com­mer­cial or not-for-profit — because travel & tour­ism is every­one’s busi­ness. All “GT” Part­ners not only get a “Good Part­ner” ban­ner and list­ing but also the out­stand­ing oppor­tun­ity every week to con­trib­ute pos­it­ive news & com­ments to these almost-fam­ous weekly “Good news in tour­ism” posts.

Ecotourism, parking, & wildlife

Des­pite COVID, Cam­bod­ia’s eco­tour­ism sec­tor has per­formed bet­ter this year than it did in 2018 and 2019 as Cam­bod­i­ans explore their own backyard. 

Res­id­ents of Río Ibáñez, Chile are seek­ing Pro­tec­ted Nation­al Asset status for the El Avel­lano Moun­tain Range. The loc­al gov­ern­ment has agreed to sup­port the nation­al-level request. Loc­als want to pre­serve biod­iversity, cul­tur­al his­tory, and tra­di­tions, as they pre­pare for an increase in tour­ism.

In India, the Maha­rashtra State Forest Depart­ment has recog­nised a group of women for their com­munity-led eco­tour­ism mod­el. The Swamini has been organ­ising “man­grove safar­is” in Sindhu­durg since 2017.

This section’s title is not a typo. The Snow­do­nia Nation­al Park Author­ity in Wales is con­sid­er­ing how to address “chron­ic park­ing prob­lems” after “chaot­ic” scenes over sum­mer. It may lead to restrict­ing private car access to the most pop­u­lar sites in the nation­al park and offer­ing alternatives.

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Tourism policy & governance

Uganda Tour­ism Board and the Stand­ard Bank-linked Stan­bic Busi­ness Incub­at­or will provide fin­an­cial lit­er­acy sup­port to start-ups and SMEs in Uganda’s tour­ism sec­tor to help with “the devel­op­ment and sus­tain­ab­il­ity of their businesses”.

Goa in India is put­ting togeth­er its new tour­ism board after the state cab­in­et last month approved a 25-year tour­ism mas­ter plan. The plan’s imple­ment­a­tion will com­mence by the start of the “next tour­ism season”.

In South Africa, the uMlalazi muni­cip­al­ity in KwaZulu-Nat­al province has approved “a tour­ism strategy and devel­op­ment plan focus­ing on com­munity tour­ism oper­at­ors form­ing a ‘Des­tin­a­tion Mar­ket­ing Organ­isa­tion’ “.

Res­id­ents of Vic­tor­ia, Texas, USA may apply to serve on a new Tour­ism Advis­ory Board. The Board will advise the City of Vic­tor­ia Con­ven­tion & Vis­it­ors Bur­eau on “mat­ters related to the tour­ism industry and the alloc­a­tion of hostel occu­pancy tax funds”.

Pulaski County, Vir­gin­ia, USA looks set to have its first tour­ism depart­ment, which will be fun­ded through lodging taxes. 

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Sustainable tourism & responsible travel is everyone’s business

Free­dom of move­ment is a basic human right. And the travel & tour­ism industry is everyone’s busi­ness. “Every­one” includes not only those who earn a liv­ing from the travel & tour­ism industry, but also people who travel, and people who live in places trav­elled to and through. EVERYONE. Please share “Good news in tour­ism” with your friends and col­leagues. And dive deep­er into “Good Tour­ism” Insights for ideas on how to make sus­tain­able tour­ism and respons­ible travel bet­ter … for you, for your people, and for your place. For they are your people. And it is your place.

Odds & ends

Bits ‘n pieces that don’t neces­sar­ily fit into this week’s arbit­rary clusters:

North Somer­set Coun­cil in Eng­land is seek­ing pub­lic com­ment on its Draft Act­ive Travel Strategy, a 10-year plan that places walk­ing and cyc­ling infra­struc­ture “at the centre of trans­port plan­ning”.

Astyp­alea Island in Greece will work with Volk­swa­gen to con­vert its entire trans­port sys­tem to elec­tric.

A “bat­tle­field park and her­it­age tour­ism des­tin­a­tion” is planned at Eutaw Springs, South Car­o­lina, USA. To that end, three organ­isa­tions have acquired 10 acres (4 ha) of the site where, dur­ing the war of inde­pend­ence, the revolu­tion­ar­ies “broke the Brit­ish arc of back­coun­try out­posts” and con­fined the red­coats to coastal lowlands. 

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Stay healthy, smile, have a good week … And when you can travel again, remember:

It’s not ‘no’. It’s ‘know’.

Gotta go? Then go!
If you’ve time, go slow
If you don’t, try low
Do what you know is good
And know there is more to know

Fea­tured image (top of post): Hill­top Lookout, Wal­pole Nor­na­lup Nation­al Park, West­ern Aus­tralia. Image by Dav­id Gill­banks (CC BY 4.0).

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 for “GT” bring­ing it to your atten­tion for you to set the record straight, you’re wel­come! 🙂