How will rural tourism in India survive the COVID crisis?

Social entre­pren­eur Kumar Anubhav writes about the exist­en­tial prob­lems facing rur­al tour­ism stake­hold­ers in India, and the sur­viv­al and sus­tain­ab­il­ity solu­tion he and his friends are rolling out as Pro­ject TraViv­al; the sub­ject of this “Good Tour­ism” Insight.

COVID-19 has not only changed the way we work, live, and think, but it has also changed people’s pri­or­it­ies, fears, per­cep­tions, and aspir­a­tions. Post-COV­ID-19, people will be much more aware of their travel exper­i­ence, wheth­er for work or leis­ure, and the con­sequences it might have on their health and well-being. 

In the new nor­mal, clean­li­ness, safety, and secur­ity will be more import­ant than lux­ury and con­veni­ence. In addi­tion, ensur­ing a sus­tain­able travel envir­on­ment across the coun­try will be very import­ant. We need to cre­ate guidelines for respons­ible travel for all stake­hold­ers. What was niche yes­ter­day is a neces­sity now. Pro­ject TraViv­al is cre­at­ing a spe­cial series along these lines for host com­munit­ies and travellers.

A communications problem

The travel & tour­ism industry has been most affected by the coronavir­us pan­dem­ic and sub­sequent lock­downs. In rur­al India, com­munit­ies that rely on the vis­it­or eco­nomy face twin threats; the evap­or­a­tion of their busi­ness and a vul­ner­ab­il­ity to the coronavirus. 

To mit­ig­ate the lat­ter, vari­ous gov­ern­ment­al and organ­isa­tion­al guidelines have been rolled out but they are often con­tra­dict­ory and are, in any case, dif­fi­cult for rur­al com­munit­ies to com­pre­hend and to imple­ment. Adding to the prob­lem, a lot of loc­ales do not have extens­ive access to the inter­net or social media to keep up with new inform­a­tion. The res­ult­ant lag in their under­stand­ing of the health and safety stand­ards required in the “new nor­mal” will sab­ot­age the sur­viv­al and reviv­al of their tour­ism businesses. 

It is with these prob­lems in mind and some ideas on how to solve them that Pro­ject TraViv­al was con­ceived; after con­duct­ing dozens of webinars with more than 2,000 com­munity mem­bers and about 50 organ­isa­tions from across 17 states in India.

Pro­ject TraViv­al aims to empower the rur­al com­munit­ies of India by impart­ing know­ledge and help­ing them become more tech­no­lo­gic­ally aware. All rur­al com­munit­ies deserve to under­stand the prob­lems cre­ated by COVID and so we are provid­ing them with an open-source online e‑learning plat­form to train them in ways that might help them revive their busi­nesses post-pandemic.

A community focus

The core focus of TraViv­al is rur­al com­munit­ies, includ­ing homestay own­ers, vil­lage pan­chay­ats (coun­cils), teach­ers and their stu­dents, women, and even trav­el­lers i.e. all the stake­hold­ers of rur­al tour­ism in India.

For these vast and diverse audi­ences we are pro­du­cing and will pub­lish online more than 200 videos in more than 20 region­al lan­guages. Divided into 12 mod­ules, the videos address the uncer­tain­ties sur­round­ing the future of travel & tour­ism, and provide clar­ity on the steps to be taken to revive tour­ism busi­nesses. Bey­ond COV­ID-spe­cif­ic guidelines, the top­ics of our videos also include, for example, the basics of oper­at­ing a homestay, and what com­munit­ies can do to help revive tourism. 

Integ­ral to Pro­ject TraViv­al are its train­ing, cer­ti­fic­a­tion, and audit pro­grams. To that end we will identi­fy loc­al “cham­pi­ons” and train them to be train­ers so that they can con­duct TraViv­al pro­grams with­in their com­munit­ies. With their help and the help of our 200+ videos we guide homestay own­ers and vil­lages to become more sus­tain­able tour­ism des­tin­a­tions; for sus­tain­ab­il­ity is the need of the hour. 

After the train­ing pro­grams, we will con­duct Q&A webinars to clear up any mis­un­der­stand­ings. And par­ti­cipants will receive cer­ti­fic­ates. To ensure that stake­hold­ers imple­ment guidelines in their respect­ive com­munit­ies, we will under­take audits. 

All of the Pro­ject TraViv­al out­puts, from the videos to train­ing aids, will be online, open-source, and free of any cost so that they have every chance of reach­ing all of the grass­roots com­munit­ies of India.

The power of people

Many of the people involved in our pro­ject have long exper­i­ence work­ing at the grass­roots level. They under­stand the poten­tial prob­lems these com­munit­ies will face. We have also picked up vari­ous sub­ject mat­ter experts so that dif­fer­ent per­spect­ives can be taken into consideration. 

Our team con­sists of emin­ent people too, such as Raj Basu, founder of Help Tour­ism and a rur­al tour­ism advisor with the Gov­ern­ment of Arunach­al Pra­desh; Rupesh Kumar, state coordin­at­or of the Respons­ible Tour­ism Mis­sion, Gov­ern­ment of Ker­ala; Dr Arun Chandan, region­al dir­ect­or at the Nation­al Medi­cin­al Plants Board, Gov­ern­ment of India; and Sachin Kumar who is an expert in impact eval­u­ation and green live­li­hoods and who has rep­res­en­ted India at the United Nations. 

My col­leagues and I are excited to see how this pro­ject pans out. At min­im­um we expect the videos will spread aware­ness among rur­al com­munit­ies about the steps to be taken for rur­al homestays to sur­vive the new nor­mal. And we hope that the basic prin­ciples of sus­tain­ab­il­ity will fil­ter out across India so that one day we will see that Pro­ject TraViv­al has had a pos­it­ive impact on sus­tain­ab­il­ity met­rics at the nation­al level.

What do you think? Share a short anec­dote or com­ment below. Or write a deep­er “GT” Insight. The “Good Tour­ism” Blog wel­comes diversity of opin­ion and per­spect­ive about travel & tour­ism because travel & tour­ism is everyone’s business.

Fea­tured image (top of post): India tea plant­a­tion. By 12019 (CC0) via Pixabay.

About the author

Kumar Anubhav is a cer­ti­fied moun­tain­eer and a social act­iv­ist with a pas­sion for pur­pose­ful travel. He has trav­elled extens­ively across India and around the world, includ­ing as an exped­i­tion team mem­ber in Antarctica. 

In Feb­ru­ary 2016, Kumar quit his well-paid 11-year cor­por­ate career in big data ana­lyt­ics to make his life “more mean­ing­ful”; to bring pos­it­ive change to the lives of Indi­a’s farm­ers by cre­at­ing sus­tain­able altern­at­ive live­li­hoods for them. He star­ted with a single house by the side of a river some­where that is today rated one of Indi­a’s top AirB­nB stays. 

Thus the concept of NotOn­Map was born. Lever­aging digit­al plat­forms, NotOn­Map presents the unique cul­tures, life­styles, and land­scapes of rur­al com­munit­ies as attrac­tions for dis­cern­ing trav­el­lers who seek truly authen­t­ic exper­i­ences. NotOn­Map has since been glob­ally-acclaimed and awarded. 

Befit­ting his pre­vi­ous career, Kumar holds an engin­eer­ing degree in elec­tron­ics & com­mu­nic­a­tion from Del­hi Col­lege of Engineering.