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| The Ecotourism
Emerging Industry Forum (November 1-18, 2005) reviewed priorities
for funding and investment decisions for sustainable tourism
in developing countries.
The event was organized by Planeta.com and EplerWood
International and focused on small and medium enterprise (SME)
priorities for funding and investment decisions for sustainable
tourism in developing countries. The online e-forum attracted
more than 200 participants, more than 30 of whom chose "active"
status and posted more 250 messages.
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HIGHLIGHTS
For those who want to learn more about the nuts
and bolts of practical ecotourism, the forum provided a rich
dialogue and a launchpad for some challenging proposals. Here
are some of the key comments delivered in the forum:
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- There are some real technical and cultural issues that need
to be addressed, in order to allow communities to become truly
empowered in a competitive and technically complex world.
- I'd like to reiterate the importance of interpretation to
the ecotourism industry. There are few destinations in the world
that offer anything unique or individual. I mean, just how many
howler monkeys do you need to see in a lifetime? How many beaches?
How many rainforest trails? However, a good interpreter will
weave the story of the place into the overall message of the
necessity for conservation and support of the local communities.
Training is necessary so that your guides and interpretation
are accurate, interesting and above all, fun -- no one takes
a vacation so that they have to take a college course in biology.
- I would like to make a formal request to development assistance
agencies and donors that they fund not website creation, but
website participation. Make it incumbent on the grantee that
they participate in at least two independent forums. Grants
should include adequate communication training, which includes
but is not limited to the Web.
- An over-arching theme the last week has been the need for
an "alliance" of businesses that provide for the
motor for increasing market reach for the ecotourism industry.
This alliance might also work in the areas of product development
and support for start-ups.
- Ecotourism businesses face greater challenges because their
business models are more complex since they depend upon a sophisticated
international tourism marketplace where competition is local,
regional and international. Therefore lending or investing in
these businesses presents greater risk than for the average
business. Micro credit organizations have found a way to manage
the risk associated with lending to small businesses. Is there
a model that could be developed to assist ecotourism SMEs?
- Does anyone know the current status of the Inter American
Development Bank's project on Ethnotourism in MesoAmerica? I
had considered bidding on the project during the summer of 2005,
but in the end decided not to do so. I'm curious to know if
it has rolled ahead or not, and if so, how much indigenous community
involvement there is in the project.
- For small community ecotourism projects, web site development
and management is an important and challenging issue. It is
an issue that will become even more important over time. The
dual challenge is to develop local web capacity and have a professional
web presence that effectively generates sales.
- I completely disagree that a small business shouldn't compete
with the "big boys." A SME just needs to pick the
areas were it can compete with the big boys, and do it better.
- I understand that there are different segments within the
'backpacker' label, and that 'upscale backpackers' (or what
ever the appropriate term should be), can be a very lucrative
market niche, and one relatively easily reached via internet
marketing.
- What we saw in Chicago
is that even as the ecotourism market was supposedly growing,
attendance to the show was flat and finally declining. We felt
this was because of the type of person who chooses adventure/eco
trips; these highly-motivated people are now internet-savvy,
they have proven that they are adventurous, and they do their
research online, rather than waste a day driving downtown, paying
inflated parking and food costs and strutting the floor.
- From my point of view, it is really not advisable to use an
NGO structure to manage ecotourism. While it is not impossible,
I was struck by how very, very sophisticated the business plan
would have to be to make boundaries clear.
- In the Sierra Juarez (Oaxaca, Mexico), there have been a number of guide
training programs. But without marketing, many of the guides
have taken other jobs. Colleagues complain that it's easier
to find a bird watching guide at the water bottling plant than
at the 'ecotourism' office.
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| - The one core concept
that just leaps out at me in moments of lucidity within my daily,
weekly, and yearly labor in marketing of sales of ecotourism
is that if you are consistent with basically any reasonably
well-thought out marketing effort, it will be successful. This
applies to everything from continuing consistent meetings among
the members of a marketing cooperative/alliance, to getting
out that newsletter the first of every month, to constantly
updating your online content.
- Any successful community-based tourism plan must have broad
support and buy-in. Too often government agencies and NGOs try
to impose tourism as a favorable form of economic development
on communities, an approach that rarely works well.
- The sad fact seems to be that guides are generally poorly
paid and underappreciated at least until after the fact. People
love the guide and maybe they give great tips, but would they
pay more in advance for a good guide? My initial response is
no, but maybe that's just because we have never really promoted
guides like we have other professional servers like say restaurant
chefs. Maybe we need to start nature guide critics like restaurant
critics or movie critics.
- Recently, at the STEP (Sustainable Tourism for Poverty Elimination)
seminar of WTO in Nicaragua, GTZ gave a very interesting presentation
on a research they did among resorts in the Caribbean. For me
it was amazing that for example in a Nicaraguan resort more
than 95% of the employees were recruited from Nicaragua and
about 90% of the goods were locally provided and, last bur not
least, the amount of training provided to the employees is considerable
higher than tourism employees of the same level receive in this
country. It was not exactly a corporate responsibility investigation
(and the research was not complete because a possible profit
leakage was not investigated) but the positive influence of
the resort on local economy and employment is much bigger than
I could imagine. Anyone knows researches or figures on some
corporate responsibility items of mega businesses like resorts?
- Not only can resorts do a lot for sustainability, particularly
generating jobs in poor regions and contributing to resource
management, but the scale they can take makes all efforts extremely
relevant. While at UNEP, we prepared a report on general sustainability
of the tourism industry that can still be seen at http://tinyurl.com/78xrv
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- I have recently considered partnering
with a local college that has an Ecotourism Program and is interested
in having a practical, real-life experience for the students
and graduates.
- Planeta.com has launched the Sustainable
Tourism Bank Watch (STBW) to bring together multiple stakeholders
-- including donors, communities, operators and media -- to
review current financing of sustainable travel and ecotourism.
- I agree with many who have emphasized in different ways, the
need to understand communities´ existing social systems
and ways of organizing themselves (of making a living, and of
making communal decisions, resolving conflicts, etc.) It seems
to me that more often than not this important but time consuming
and complicated step is not taken. Instead, I've seen even NGOs
(who ostensibly should have been doing 'community development')
take the easier road (and avoid opening the 'can of worms')
by working primarily with a few of the most outgoing and entrepreneurial
community members, who basically dominated the community decision-making
process. I've sat in on more than one ´community participation´
meeting in which the 'right answers' were obviously worked out
ahead of time and spoon-fed to the rest of the group.
- I do agree that there will always be natural leaders and followers
in communities as well as in any other arena. The problem comes
when there is no mechanism to ensure that these leaders and
entrepreneurs truly represent and protect the interests of the
community as a whole. So I absolutely agree that one should
sit in on at least one assembly go and ¨talk to different
people on different times¨.- The Inuit in Nunavut, as in
the beginning some 24 years ago, are interested in tourism as
a form of economic development and employment, but they are
also still concerned with community control to minimize the
intrusive nature of tourism. There is a need, and a very significant
opportunity for the Inuit to be further involved in the tourism
supply chain, as most tourists coming into the territory are
being packaged by southern companies.
- A WTO Business Council report in 2000 revealed that experience
in private-public sector cooperation around the world was rather
limited except in the specific area of marketing and promotion,
as well as some areas of product development and education training.
- In countries which are transforming from more central economic
control (e.g old communist states) to more open economies, there
is a trend where stakeholders are recognizing that public-sector
led marketing organizations are often less entrepreneurial and
less effective in very competitive international marketplaces
than one managed or led by industry itself – or as a collaboration
between government and industry.
- I have found that in general, it is not the organic vegetable
buying consumer who is buying my product. It is people I would
describe as active, curious, experienced travellers. Usually
well educated. Most seem to be quite independent and individualistic.
Hard as hell to pin into any sort of identifiable "target".
Most are glad that I promote sustainable programs, but that
is rarely the reason they take my trip. They have usually already
chosen an activity and destination and we just happen to have
the most suitable means of getting them the experience they
seek. If we can do it more sustainably at a competitive price,
so much the better. But if not, they will still go, whether
we supply it or not.
- Could one of our outputs for the conference be to develop
a variety of proposed "boiler plate" solutions for
donors to draw from that can be incorporated into projects?
I just got off the phone with someone from USAID, and new money
for sustainable tourism as a separate mechanism is really not
in the offing. It will continue to be part of other categories.
There are other donors of course who are increasing assistance
directly in our category. But we will have to remain very lean
and effective for the most part.
- Let's start thinking on regional and national schemas where
corridors, green ways and green cities will link to hubs, crossing
cities, regions and country's urban and rural parks.
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What is the
Ecotourism Emerging Industry Forum? -- The forum
is an ambitious and innovative global dialogue that will yield
professionally moderated, up-to-date results on small and medium
enterprise (SME) priorities for funding and investment decisions
for sustainable tourism in developing countries. The forum is
organized by Planeta.com and EplerWood International.
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