EU congratulate our sustainable tourism project in Thailand

After the completion of our Thai-EU cooperation project on Sustainable Tourism in Thailand, the team receive very positive feedback, namely from the EU officer in charge of the funding programme. Very encouraging!

As we are finalising our reports to EU (whose SPF facility funded 75% of our Sustainable Tourism project in Thailand), we have received a highly rewarding message from the officer in charge of the SPF in Bangkok. Here it is:

“I was very pleased and interested in reading the report and outcomes of this project. I was impressed with the large number of stakeholders involved, the participatory approach utilised to discuss experiences, develop and disseminate information and results of the project, and with the high quality of the final products (in particular the two publications, but also the website and the linkages developed between Thai and European tourism related organisations).
I would like to share with you some of the positive comments reported in the recent final evaluation regarding your project. The project was considered to be highly relevant, and very efficiently managed; a good example of value-for-money, with concrete outputs, full realisation of the stated objectives and a very positive impact on the target groups and beneficiaries (about 150 tourism enterprises) and that able to strengthen the collaboration and mutual awareness between EU and Thailand. The two main implementers, ERIC and BKF (editor’s note: the Environmental Research Institute of Chulalongkorn University and the Bumi Kita Foundation), were complemented for their project management skills and the use of guidelines from leading international tourism organisations and lessons from sustainable tourism certification initiatives. The project also was recognised to have greatly contributed to increase EU visibility and increased awareness on EU standards and best practices in Thailand.”

Waow! It gives us a lot of energy to keep organising these projects around the world!

Available online: the directory of 150 Best Practices tourism operators in Thailand.

Back from Reisepavillon, Stuttgart, Jan 18-20

It was a very positive experience to meet sustainable tourism professionals at the Reisepavillon fair in Stuttgart. Exhibitors were mostly small and medium size tour operators who do their best to preserve the environment and to work in symbiosis with the inhabitants of the countries they lead us to. They gave a warm welcome to The Natural Guide to Thailand, the latest guidebook of the series as well as very interesting feedback on Drop The Guide.
We will soon post more details about the people and organisations we met there.

For those of you who are interested in the Good Practices guide “Sustainable Tourism Management in Thailand”, it is available for download here.

From responsible travel to positive tourism

The word travel went through ups and downs. Way back in the 1970s, it conjured images of adventure and self-discovery. This is when famous guide books for backpackers were created, from Lonely Planet in Australia to Guide du Routard in France. Cheaper airfares turned the luxury of tourism into something widely accessible. Mass tourism was born, and it was praised as something democratic, fair, good, which would allow everyone to travel, enjoy, learn, grow. And which would bring foreign exchange and new jobs into developing countries.

Ooops. Nearly 40 years later, mass tourism has become a dirty word. It may allow travellers to enjoy, but forget about learning : you’re not going to discover much about Spanish architecture or food while eating a BigMac under the sky-scrapers of Benidorm or Marbella. As for the locals, they are left with poorly-paid jobs, acculturation, deforestation, pollution, floods and storms linked to global warming, when they are not just kicked out of their own land by foreign “investors”. And we have not even started to talk about child trafficking and prostitution !

So the motto of the day is responsible travel and sustainable tourism. Right. We all agree on this : be a good traveller, leave only footsteps, take nothing but pictures… And yes, tourism development needs to care about its social and environmental impact. But lets’ be frank, the words “reponsible” and “travel” sound weird together. The combination is not appealing. It sounds like a wagging index, when travelling should be about freedom, joy, spontaneity.

We think that travelling should just be a positive experience for everyone. To be positive for the tourist, it needs to be about discovery, new experiences that challenge the way you see the world. New encounters with local people, in an authentic atmosphere. And to be positive for the locals, it needs to be about respect and care. Caring for nature, respecting the local culture, the communities. This is what we tried to foster when we created The Natural Guide books.

Well, let’s call it positive tourism… a tourism which is positive for the traveller, the locals and the environment. A tourism that creates quality jobs for the local community, revives the local culture rather than destroying it, and encourages the protection and restoration of the environment. A tourism, which is part of a Positive Economy. A natural way of travelling for the 21st century. You believe it’s possible? You don’t? Well, share your views on us… and above us, give us examples, share your experiences, tell us where you’ve been and whether it was positive or not!

Who are the authors? Get me Eleonore!

Whoever has met Eléonore Devillers is not likely to forget her… Tall and energetic, Eléonore is all passion, commitment and hardwork. To get her Masters in Agriculture and Sustainable Development at Institut National Agronomique Paris, this 27-year old woman spent 7 months in the hills of Northeast Thailand, sharing the daily lives (and the ants salads) of the poorest farmers of the Isan Plateau. “The best moment in travel is when a bright, sincere, warm smile shines on the face of local person you met“, she reckons. After this experience, Eleonore accepted the challenge of being the Editor of The Natural Guide to Thailand, the first guide book dedicated to responsible travel in the kingdom of Siam. “We worked with dozens of local writers, photographs, experts, NGO activists to give them a voice in the guide book. We also organized training in sustainable tourism management for local SMEs.” Back in Paris, Eleonore is in charge of organizing our worldwide community of writers and our partnerships.

Who are the authors? Get me Yvan!

Don’t get wrong about Yvan Wibaux. In front of his laptop, he may look like the computer geek and web 2.0 expert he also is… But start to talk to him about travel and he jumps to the occasion: “For me, travelling is not about visiting all the monuments in a guide book ! It is about having fun, meeting the locals, learning from them, sharing their life… and leaving something positive behind.” This is why this 24-year old engineer with a Master in Sciences and Entrepreneurship from Ecole Centrale Paris embarked on a World Tour of Water in 2005. Along with two other friends, they visited NGOs in Senegal, Peru, Cambodia and India to learn about water and sustainable development and support their projects. Yvan is now in charge of creating our community website dedicated to positive, responsible tourism.

Who are the authors? Get me Eric!

Our project needed someone coolheaded yet creative, who understands finance, marketing and can still get dreamy when you talk about trekking in Belize… This is 27 year-old Eric La Bonnardiere, a graduate of HEC Entrepreneur with a solid experience in strategic consulting. “I always wanted to create my own company. But I needed a project that makes sense, which is not just about making money – something positive for the world. Creating a web community for people who want to travel out of the beaten tracks, meet the locals and are concerned about sustainable tourism… well, now that makes sense.” Eric is charge of manageing our project and developing its business models.

Who are the authors? Get me Anne!

With ten ideas per minute, Anne Gouyon is a serial entrepreneur committed to making the world a better place for all. After getting her Masters in Agriculture and Sustainable Development at Institut National Agronomique of Paris, she worked ten years in research and got herself a PhD in Agricultural Economics (whatever that means). She decided then to create her own consulting company, working on sustainable agriculture and forestry in Asia and Africa. “I realized that the market is a powerful instrument of change… after working on FSC Forest certification, I decided to create The Natural Guide, the first series of responsible travel guide books.” This was in 2002. Two years earlier, she was also at the core of the creation of BeCitizen, a consulting company specializing in sustainable development, which created the concept of a Positive Economy. As such, she co-authored the best-seller Réparer la Planète, la Révolution de l’Économie Positive. She is in charge of helping developing the contents, the methodology, the network and the business models of the project.

TravelPix

Facebook is cool: not only you can meet your friends online and discover that your high school love is married with 2 kids, but you can show them on a map all the cool places you’ve been, from Venice City to Venice Beach, Lake Titicaca to Mount Lenine. And you can share with them your best photo albums with all the mountains you climbed, the lakes you swam, the beaches you combed and cities you painted red. But, hey, wouldn’t it be just simpler to ping all these cool photos directly on your travel map? So that your friends make the difference between you in Venice (beach) and you in Venice (city)? So that you can keep a memory of your trek through the Himalayas, step by step, valley after valley?

This is what TravelPix, a new Facebook application, will let you do : localize your travel pix on a map and share them with your friends. You want to know more ? Leave us a comment.

Drop The Guide

Have you ever felt like the best time of travelling is when you close your guide book, or escape the guide from your tour operator? Would you rather get your clues about Rome from a Roman than from a fellow british or french traveller?

Then “Drop the Guide” is for you. Our project is born from the meeting of 4 travellers : Eléonore Devillers, Anne Gouyon, Eric la Bonnardière, Yvan Wibaux. All of us believe that the real joy of travel comes from meeting the local people in an authentic setting – and that this can only be done with the values of care and respect at heart. Care for the environment, respect for the people: the values of a positive tourism.

Hence our project is to create a new community of travellers, directly connected to the local people of each city, each valley, each island… so you can learn from the people in Rome, in Koh-Samui, or in Marrakech all you need to create your own travel and discover the hidden life of each country, and drop the guide in your hotel room!

If you share this big dream, give us your thoughts, your ideas… Help us to create a new community website, which will grow on the ideals of The Natural Guide book series, and will enable travellers to create their own holidays in the spirit of positive tourism.

 

Bientôt le blog en français!

Le blog en français sortira mercredi 23 janvier (mercredi prochain!). Vous pouvez déjà visiter le blog en anglais : www.positive-tourisme.com, bonne visite!