|
Last Updated
|
Winners announced for 2010 Indigenous Tourism and Biodiversity
Website Award
Publication date: May 2010
|
 |
| Oregon
Ecotourism Conference hosts the 2010 Indigenous Tourism
and Biodiversity Website Award ceremony.
The Indigenous
Tourism and Biodiversity Website Award competition highlights
the contribution of indigenous operators to biological and cultural
diversity, and comprised applicants from 10 countries around
the world (Australia, Bolivia, Canada, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Mexico,
Micronesia, New Zealand, Pakistan and Sweden). More than 400
people cast their vote, carefully examining all 14 websites
that fit the ambitious criteria set on Planeta.com's wiki site
planeta.wikispaces.com/itbw.
Additionally, a jury composed of six internationally recognized
experts in indigenous and sustainable tourism picked their choice
using the same criteria.
Winners will receive technical support and access to a workshop
on innovative Social Web tools for marketing and communications, facilitated
by Planeta.com founder Ron
Mader. A publication on the award, its nominees and winners
and the lessons learned, will be distributed.
Winners
The winner of the judged 2010 Indigenous Tourism and Biodiversity
Website Award is Nutti Sami Siida,
which features reindeer sled trips. Owners Nils Torbjörn
Nutti and Carina Pingi are both Sami from Gabna Sameby, Sweden.
The winner of the popular count 2010 ITBW Award is TIME
Unlimited Tours from New Zealand, operated by the Maori-European
couple Ceillhe Tewhare Teneti Hema Sperath and Néill
Sperath, and providing personalised and interactive Auckland
and Maori Indigenous Cultural Tours.
Finalists
Brambuk National Park and
Cultural Centre introduces visitors to the Grampians National
Park (Gariwerd) in Victoria, Australia.
Kakadu Culture Camp
is owned and operated by Fred and Jenny Hunter, Aboriginal people
from Australia's Kakadu National Park.
Chalalan Ecolodge is 100%
run and owned by the indigenous community in Bolivia.
Squamish Lil'wat Cultural Centre
shares the cultures of two distinct indigenous cultures in a
visionary partnership on shared traditional territories in Canada.
Te Urewera Treks
strives to operate in a sustainable manner in accord with Maori
principles and values in New Zealand.
Xe Pian National Protected Area
features tours and accommodation owned and managed by local
communities in Xe Pian NPA,southern Lao PDR.
|
ABOUT THE AWARD
The Indigenous Tourism and Biodiversity Website Award is a
collaborative effort between the Secretariat
of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the
leading ecotourism / responsible travel web portal Planeta.com
with the generous support of the Heidehof
Foundation. Plans are ongoing for an expanded 2012 award.
The award is aimed at private tourism services, owned and operated
by indigenous and local communities embodying traditional lifestyles,
and its main objectives are to motivate candidates to improve
their online communication on biological and cultural diversity,
to highlight their best practices in managing tourism and to
raise operators and public awareness on biodiversity.
|
| Winners were to receive the award
in April 2010 at the Reisepavillon
in Berlin, Germany.
A cloud of
volcanic ash got in the way!
|
 |
JUDGES
Kurt Ackermann is a long-standing champion
of responsible tourism, he has written RT standards for destinations,
co-developed the sustainability action plan for the 2010 FIFA
Soccer World Cup, completed World Bank-funded feasibility studies
for RT product development by a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, and
helped launch a local cultural tour operator, among other projects.
Kurt maintains his own blog Afrika
T and lives in Cape Town, South Africa."
Sylvie Blangy
is a European scholar who has worked with Canadian Inuit and
Cree communities. She completed her PhD on Ecotourism, indigenous
communities, land management and conservation of biodiversity
and has published a guide book on Indigenous tourism in French.
Willie Gordon
is a Nugal-warra story-keeper who keeps his ancestral rock art
alive by sharing its stories with guests near Cooktown, Queensland.
Winner of the juried 2009 ITBW Award, Willie runs Guurrbi
Tours.
Deborah
McLaren is a sustainable tourism consultant based
in Minnesota where she assisted the start-up of a Journeys with
First Nations Green Route initiative with tribal communities.
She is the former director of Indigenous Tourism Rights International
(ITRI), has served as a consultant with the UNDP, Government
of Bhutan and several foundations.
Steven Schipani is Manager of the Ecotourism
Spotlight Award winning Ecotourism
Laos website. Steven also directs Sustainable
Tourism Development Project in Laos.
John Scott is a descendant of the Iningai people
of central Queensland, Australia (Barcaldine area) and since
2004 has served as the Programme Officer for Traditional Knowledge
for the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity.
|
QUOTES
El haber participado me dejó una muy buéna experiencia
misma que me servirá en el futuro para poder contender
con un poco de mas conocimiento del medio. También es
buéno reconocer a las empresas ganadoras: Nutti Sami
Siida y Time Unlimited Tours, se lo merecían.
- Pedro Martínez
2009
Last years' winners were:
Guurrbi Tours (Australia),
run by Nugal-warra story-keeper Willie Gordon who keeps his
ancestral rock art alive by sharing its stories with guests
near Cooktown, Queensland.
Indigenous Trails (New
Zealand) holds strategic alliances with other Maori tourism
operators, providing cultural travel experiences that are out
of reach for most visitors to Aotearoa. |
|
|
|
