“Good Tourism” news from Asia

Here you will find news about The “Good Tour­ism” Blog’s Part­ners and friends in Asia (includ­ing the Middle East) — espe­cially their sus­tain­able tour­ism and/or respons­ible travel activ­it­ies — plus “Good news in tour­ism” and cov­er­age of Asi­an travel & tour­ism industry events to which “GT” is invited or oth­er­wise involved. Ad hoc sponsored news posts are also very welcome.

Before Decem­ber 2019, “GT” would sum­mar­ise under-repor­ted news stor­ies or thought-pro­vok­ing fea­ture art­icles about or of import­ance to Asia by non-industry media. The sources were well-attrib­uted and linked. Any con­tent repub­lished in full was avail­able rights-free for that pur­pose from the likes of The Con­ver­sa­tion or the Thom­son Reu­ters Found­a­tion.

Would Gorkhaland tourism be better for the Gorkhas?

June 27, 2017

Would Gorkhaland tourism benefit from independence? Pro-Gorkhaland independence posters, Darjeeling, West Bengal, India. By Adam Jones via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Tour­ism in the Dar­jeel­ing Hills and Dooars has the poten­tial to thrive under a “Gorkha­land” state admin­is­tra­tion, accord­ing to an art­icle by Jaideep Mazum­dar for Swa­ra­jya. These Indi­an ter­rit­or­ies, which are cur­rently under West Bengal state admin­is­tra­tion, are “richly endowed” with nat­ur­al beauty and bio­lo­gic­al diversity. With some con­trol over tour­ism devel­op­ment plan­ning and market […]

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APEC tourism ministers to “ensure sustainable and inclusive growth”

June 21, 2017

APEC tourism minister adopted a statement on sustainable tourism

The second of four pri­or­ity areas out­lined in a state­ment adop­ted by Asia-Pacific Eco­nom­ic Cooper­a­tion (APEC) tour­ism min­is­ters, June 19, is: “Ensure sus­tain­able and inclus­ive growth in the travel and tour­ism sec­tor by encour­aging socially and cul­tur­ally respons­ible tour­ism”. Adop­ted at the APEC High Level Policy Dia­logue on Sus­tain­able Tour­ism held in Quang Ninh province, […]

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Ownership, inclusion key to community-based tourism

June 17, 2017
One Comment

By Christopher Michel (https://www.flickr.com/photos/cmichel67/8273723151) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

The most import­ant factors influ­en­cing the suc­cess of com­munity-based tour­ism (CBT) pro­jects in Myan­mar are “com­munity organ­isa­tion and man­age­ment sup­port” fol­lowed by “tour­ism product devel­op­ment accord­ing to mar­ket needs”. The main reas­ons for fail­ure are “top-down approach by devel­op­ment part­ner and/or private sec­tor part­ner in which the needs and ideas of the com­munity are not taken […]

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Parayil: Kerala’s chief responsible tourism storyteller?

June 11, 2017

Gopinath Pariyal: The chief responsible tourism storyteller of Kerala?

A pion­eer of respons­ible tour­ism in Ker­ala, India, Gop­inath Paray­il thinks the act of being respons­ible is applic­able to all forms of tour­ism and that it is the only sus­tain­able way for­ward. Parayil’s respons­ible tour­ism jour­ney began in 2003 while sub­mer­ging the ashes of his fath­er in the Bhara­ta­puzha River. He real­ised that the river […]

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Sri Lanka & Thailand slapped on biodiversity day

June 6, 2017

Yala leopard. Source: Amila Tennakoon https://www.flickr.com/photos/lakpura/15654125258

The former Dir­ect­or-Gen­er­­al of Sri Lanka’s Depart­ment of Wild­life Con­ser­va­tion (DWC) ques­tioned wheth­er Yala Nation­al Park can sus­tain tour­ism num­bers skyrock­et­ing more than 1,000% in sev­en years – from 48,368 vis­it­ors in 2008 to 545,007 in 2015. Dr Sum­ith Pil­ap­itiya was tack­ling over-vis­it­a­­tion and its con­sequences on biod­iversity at an event to mark the Inter­na­tion­al Day for […]

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Why is Jammu & Kashmir failing to develop ecotourism?

June 1, 2017

A meadow in Bangus Valley, one of the areas identified by the Jammu & Kashmir Forest Department as holding strong ecotourism potential. Source: Wikimedia / Wasiq 9320

The Indi­an state of Jam­mu and Kash­mir (J&K) is allegedly fail­ing to walk the talk when it comes to devel­op­ing its eco­tour­ism poten­tial. “The much-talked-about pro­mo­tion of eco­tour­ism in J&K along the lines of Karnataka and oth­er states of India has remained con­fined to offi­cial state­ments of the PDP-BJP Coali­tion Gov­ern­ment,” accord­ing to a scathing […]

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