These case studies showcase individuals from diverse backgrounds who have achieved remarkable success in their respective fields, hailing from India, Afghanistan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.
#Outlook #ResponsibleTourism #Tourism #RTSummit2018 #Travel #India #Afghanistan #Nepal #SriLanka
#Outlook #ResponsibleTourism #Tourism #RTSummit2018 #Travel #India #Afghanistan #Nepal #SriLanka
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NewsTranscript
00:00 And speaking of getting it right,
00:02 there are a few examples and in fact wonderful examples
00:07 of people who have managed to get some of it right.
00:11 Examples from India, Afghanistan, Nepal, Bhutan, even Sri Lanka
00:19 and some of them, some of whom you'll hear before lunch and some after lunch.
00:25 And these are stories and case studies if you can call them, experiences
00:31 that we can all learn from and truly be inspired by as well.
00:36 So we start our first sharing if you can call it that,
00:42 our first experience with Sarmoli,
00:45 a small Himalayan village in Uttarakhand's Munsiyari tehsil.
00:50 Here lives a community which has really taken matters into their own hands
00:54 by creating additional livelihoods, empowering women and you know,
01:00 checking rural migration as well.
01:03 And representing Sarmoli will be the Sarpanch herself of the Sarmoli Jayanti Van Panchayat.
01:10 She's a mountaineer and a jury member of the Indian Responsible Tourism Awards as well.
01:16 Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Malika Verde.
01:21 (Applause)
01:29 Good morning, ma'am.
01:31 (Music)
01:39 Can we do something about that light? Thank you.
01:44 Good morning everybody.
01:45 It's been a pleasure to be here and to listen to a lot of eminent people.
01:51 With a lot of experience, people sitting in the driving seat.
01:54 A little bit about myself, I am the Sarpanch of a Van Panchayat.
02:00 Perhaps some of you are familiar with Uttarakhand
02:03 and how Uttarakhand manages its common pool resources,
02:07 something that Megan mentioned.
02:09 These are our forests and we have an elected body for that
02:13 and I've been elected for the second time.
02:19 We don't have any photographs to show you of Munsiyari.
02:22 We'll invite you there.
02:24 Leave something to your imagination and to the actual experience.
02:29 But I will start with a small... Thank you.
02:32 I'll start with a little story about the place where I'm standing right now.
02:38 I'd like to take you back to the 80s, early 80s when this was an open field
02:44 and I was a young woman living in SP Marg, daughter of a naval officer.
02:49 The flats are right behind the Moria Sheraton.
02:53 And I remember being befriended by two young kids.
02:58 It's really a homage to them. I don't even know whether they're alive.
03:03 Their names are Girija and Binaya.
03:06 They were children of migrant construction workers.
03:09 They built this hotel that we are sitting in.
03:13 And I remember once the hotel was ready, we became friends.
03:18 I thought it was only fair that when they were having their first Ramlila here
03:23 and they were going to burn the effigy,
03:27 that we as a group of young people, adults and kids, would come.
03:32 And typically, of course, the kids were not allowed to enter.
03:35 And that was my first lesson on what the tourism industry does to the community,
03:42 to people, to the people who build, who own landscapes.
03:49 The industry has been a little reluctant to accept communities that...
03:55 Well, actually not reluctant, that's being kind.
03:59 Actually, you invisibilize people who live on landscapes, own them, protect them,
04:06 sustain them, and in return get sustained.
04:11 Having said that, I feel that we should understand where this alienation stems from.
04:17 Why is it that the communities are invisible in tourist destinations?
04:23 Why is it that only now we are talking about inclusive tourism,
04:27 where both the benefit and the responsibility of making the industry work,
04:34 that you include the community.
04:38 Let's look at how wilderness is perceived.
04:42 Let's put aside tourism, let's just look at destinations.
04:46 In Europe, it's the grand playground.
04:49 You have mountains, you have people going for skiing, for mountaineering, there are rivers.
04:57 Look at United Kingdoms. It's rural rustic.
05:02 They haven't left any of their forests intact.
05:05 It's the hedgerows, where you go birding, look at small animals, hedgehogs.
05:10 It has its own charm.
05:13 In the West, in North America, and Megan, you could correct me if I'm wrong,
05:19 but a lot of the protected areas, the local inhabitants have been removed.
05:24 They've become national parks, inviolate spaces.
05:29 I'm talking from the point of view of conservation.
05:32 Unfortunately, you have a huge footfall of tourists.
05:35 That's not considered a violation, perhaps.
05:39 In India, the way space is used, and forests are used,
05:45 conservation and use has to go together.
05:48 This is a realization that has come upon the conservation community some two decades ago now.
05:56 You have to involve people, and that's where I come into the story.
06:01 I have been a resident of Munsiari now for the past 25 years.
06:06 When I went there as an urban person, I am now a farmer.
06:11 Initially, I remember talking really sharp and smart about conservation,
06:15 about what a beautiful place, and, "Hey, come on, this is our heritage," and what have you.
06:20 I soon realized that the pressure on the land is a very real one,
06:24 because these are communities that depend on the forest for their survival.
06:28 We're talking about subsistence. We're not talking about wealth creation.
06:33 How do you then get people to conserve, to leave a place beautiful,
06:40 to have tourists come and gasp at the sight of the Panchachuli Range?
06:45 It's actually quite a beautiful place, Munsiari.
06:49 We are blessed in terms of physical beauty.
06:52 But how do you then keep the place as it is?
06:56 As a Sarpanch, when I got elected, and actually it was really a challenge,
07:01 unlike the Gram Pradhan system, which is the village panchayat,
07:05 where there's a lot of development funds that come in,
07:08 and essentially it's not Panchayati Raj, actually it's Contractor Raj.
07:12 One panchayat doesn't have too much money, so there's not much competition.
07:16 So I got elected, and because we used to talk sharp and smart about conservation,
07:21 they said, "Well, let's see what you can do."
07:23 And that was the true challenge. How do you do conservation without looking at livelihoods?
07:29 That's when we brought in this whole notion of trying out community-owned tourism,
07:35 which we thought could be pitched as a non-extractive livelihood option,
07:41 where we both conserve and regulate use of our forests.
07:47 For that we did several things.
07:49 The first thing was, are you willing to take ownership back of your commons?
07:56 And perhaps some of you are familiar with what's been happening with India with our commons,
08:00 particularly in Uttarakhand, where they are being systematically dismantled,
08:05 which means that the Forest Department's role is increasing,
08:08 the state is now taking over management.
08:13 Actually, labeling people who've lived there and used and managed those forests
08:17 as beneficiaries of projects instead of owners.
08:21 So the challenge now for us is to reclaim our ownership.
08:26 For that, you have to be active, you've got to attend meetings,
08:30 you've got to come for shramdan, which is voluntary labor,
08:34 and nobody was interested.
08:36 Typically, like with our global commons, we all talk about climate change,
08:40 but it's not me who's responsible, what could I do?
08:44 So there's talk on one side, but there is, you own the commons,
08:48 but you don't want to do anything for it.
08:50 So that's when we thought, let's try homestays as something that brings in benefit,
08:57 broad-basing benefits from tourism,
09:00 not just going and getting grass or wood, both essential for subsistence,
09:05 but also a livelihood, bring in trekking,
09:10 bring in other activities that would be celebratory in nature,
09:14 that would draw tourists into our community,
09:17 using our own customs and what we actually live and do there.
09:22 From the income, we then put back a certain percentage into conservation work.
09:27 Very tentative, very slow to start.
09:31 We started in 2004, and now we are about 15 years on.
09:36 It has succeeded, and some of you in the hall I know have visited
09:40 and brought visitors as well.
09:43 It's an authentic experience.
09:45 We invite you into our world, we keep our farming seasons,
09:50 we don't see this as our only livelihood option,
09:54 we do not create a spectacle of rural life,
09:58 we do not dress up our homes,
10:01 people are aspirational, people are leaving their authentic sloping roofs
10:07 and opting for lintel roofs.
10:09 We talk about it, we talk about how you lose tourists because of something like that,
10:13 but we don't force them because it's real time, real life, real aspirations.
10:18 But we are seeing a shift now, with the preferences of tourists coming in,
10:23 for more aesthetically akin architecture to our region.
10:30 We also draw people in, we encourage people to experience not just the place,
10:40 but step into our homes with a gentle tread.
10:43 For example, people always ask us, send us photographs,
10:46 and we tell them, "Hang on, this is our home,
10:48 we don't want to have our homes displayed on the net.
10:52 Come discover our place, come a little tentatively,
10:56 have some wonder and curiosity, and then a little beyond.
11:00 Once they are with us, we also challenge them.
11:04 Because unfortunately what's happening in a rural region,
11:08 I mean, you all know what's happening with farming in India,
11:11 and the story in Uttarakhand is no different.
11:14 It's a depressed rural economy,
11:16 we were talking last evening about Pahadi men,
11:20 and a lot of people were saying, "Oh, Pahadi men are lazy,
11:23 they sit and drink, play carrom, play cards, it's the women who work."
11:29 But what would you do in a depressed economy as a young man?
11:33 You would use an 18-pound, what we call a gun, to break stone,
11:40 or you could be a dukandar, which is a small shopkeeper.
11:44 Your horizons are foreclosed on you, and there is a lot of out-migration.
11:50 For that, you have to take a more integrated approach.
11:54 If there is not a revival of the economy, of the rural economy,
11:57 this is what's going to happen.
12:00 So our attempt is to question what's happening
12:04 with the larger development paradigm in our country,
12:10 where it's big dams in our area that are ruining our place.
12:16 One of the conditions of being part of the homestay is to be a good citizen,
12:20 so we have this little formula, we call it the "duksuk" formula,
12:24 where we say that if "suk" is money, then "duk" is struggle, "sangharsh".
12:31 So if you love your home, which we all do,
12:34 then you're willing to stand up and fight for it.
12:37 You're not only going to take back ownership of your forest,
12:39 but we will also see to it that the kind of development that comes into our region
12:43 is one that protects the rural lifestyle,
12:46 where our ecological footprint actually is a very small one.
12:50 And when our guests come in, we do challenge them to think about cities
12:56 and the black holes that they are in terms of consumption,
13:00 the kind of electricity that's produced in valleys like ours,
13:04 actually killing rivers so that cities can overconsume.
13:10 And when we talk about responsibility and responsible tourism,
13:15 of course it starts with the individual.
13:18 It is about individual choice, but that's only the first step.
13:23 I don't know how many of you are aware of,
13:25 must have read Derek Jensen's book, Endgame, in which he says,
13:31 "Personal choice does not equate to political change."
13:35 It could be the first step.
13:37 And I do agree with a lot of the speakers before, and Megan, what you said,
13:41 that tourism also is about politics.
13:45 It's about resource use. It's about prioritizing.
13:49 And this is where I come back to where I started,
13:52 that you cannot invisibilize communities that depend on landscapes
13:57 that have become tourist destinations.
14:00 As a community representative, we have innovated ways
14:04 in which we can engage with the tourist population that comes in.
14:08 We invite them in. It brings in much-needed cash economy.
14:12 But for us, the priority is subsistence.
14:16 The priority is survival in those very beautiful and fragile landscapes.
14:23 And again, to go back to--
14:26 I mean, there's a song by Dire Straits in which they say,
14:31 "You don't miss your water till your well runs dry."
14:34 And I think something like that is happening with the beautiful places on our Earth,
14:40 places where people still live.
14:43 It's not inviolate. It's not out there. It's not exotic.
14:47 It's very real.
14:49 And till we can also bring responsibility to how we use resources--
14:54 you talked about water, you talked about waste,
14:57 we talk about electricity generation and at what cost--
15:01 that's where communities like us will stand our ground.
15:06 I'm an outsider to the industry, but I've stepped in,
15:11 and stepped in in the faith that perhaps communities can also drive
15:15 the direction in which tourism is headed.
15:18 Thank you.
15:20 (applause)
15:24 (music)
15:26 What a powerful story. Thank you, Ms. Virdi, for sharing it with us.
15:30 Well, next we have a success story all the way from Afghanistan.
15:37 The Bamyan Eco-Tourism Program by the Aga Khan Development Network.
15:42 It's a story of reviving tourism in a conflict zone,
15:46 of mending the fabrics of local culture, of communities' livelihoods,
15:51 as well as the environment.
15:54 And I'd like to welcome on stage Mr. Fazal Ahmed
15:58 from the Aga Khan Foundation's Economic Inclusion Wing in Afghanistan.
16:02 And he'll be talking about, well, this great story from Bamyan.
16:07 (applause)
16:11 (music)
16:18 Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.
16:20 And thank you very much from Outlook Group that provided us a chance
16:24 to present our case study here in this forum,
16:30 and to discuss what kind of experience we have
16:33 in terms of tourism development in a kind of conflict zone.
16:39 So many of you have heard about Afghanistan.
16:44 The first thing you hear about Afghanistan is all about conflict, violence, and conflict.
16:53 So here I would like to present this case study
16:57 and also give you a kind of message that--
17:00 so that's one side of the coin,
17:03 and the other side is like we have normal life there,
17:07 and we have development there, it's all happening.
17:14 So the case study is basically about tourism in a small province of Afghanistan.
17:28 So just to give you a quick overview of the geography of the province, which is Bamyan.
17:36 Bamyan is located in the central highlands of Afghanistan,
17:41 and it's a quite mountainous area.
17:45 And agriculture and livestock is the main source of livelihoods for the people.
17:52 And also it's a historical and cultural center for ethnic group of Hazaras, of Afghans.
18:04 So why tourism development in Bamyan province?
18:08 As you know, we have lots of tourism potential in overall country,
18:12 and why we selected Bamyan?
18:15 There are many reasons for that.
18:17 First, Bamyan is one of the cultural landscapes and one of the world's healthiest centers.
18:30 With different historical amendments we have there.
18:35 So we have Budonets, many of you have heard about it,
18:39 and historical cities we have there.
18:43 And natural beauties, we have the first national park of Afghanistan in Bamyan,
18:50 and the picture you see on the Amir Lake, which is the first national park of the country.
18:55 And winter tourism, so there are lots of potential for skiing and skating.
19:02 And adventure tourism, as it's a mountainous area,
19:07 there are lots of potential for promoting tourism for hiking and trekking.
19:16 And historically, before the war, during 1970s and 1960s,
19:20 Bamyan used to be a famous tourism destination in the region.
19:25 So annually, hundreds of thousands of people were visiting the area annually.
19:32 And lastly, it's one of the peaceful provinces in the country,
19:39 while we have lots of conflict in other parts of the country,
19:42 but this province is quite peaceful.
19:49 Just a quick overview about the project.
19:54 So the overall goal of the project was to promote tourism for local livelihoods.
20:03 And the specific objectives were to develop the industry as a source of income for local people,
20:15 and also preserve the niche cultural heritage we have in the province.
20:22 It was a six-year program, and it was funded by New Zealand and Norway governments.
20:29 Aohon Foundation, which is an agency of the Aohon Development Network, was implemented,
20:35 and our partners were Ministry of Culture and Information,
20:40 which tourism is also part of that ministry,
20:43 and the local government of Bamyan.
20:51 So we had different components and interventions under this project.
20:57 The first one was in terms of capacity building.
21:01 As I said earlier, we used to have a good tourism industry in the past,
21:06 but everything was destroyed,
21:08 and the capacity of the locals was one of the issues.
21:13 How to build the capacity that can provide better services to the people who visit the province.
21:21 We provided trainings for hoteliers, for local hoteliers, restaurants, and guest houses,
21:29 on different topics of hospitality management.
21:34 We also trained local youth as local tour guides in terms of hiking and skiing.
21:43 Also, we provided trainings and exposure visits to local government officials to visit different areas,
21:54 and how in other countries the government and private sector work together.
22:00 In the last picture you see, we took a group of local government officials to Nepal,
22:07 where they sat and discussed with government officials in Nepal,
22:15 to see what kind of policies they have, how they work with the private sector and local communities.
22:22 Institutional building.
22:29 Under this program, we developed or established the Bamiyan Tourism Association,
22:36 which consists of private sector people and local communities.
22:41 This is a kind of platform to initiate initiatives regarding tourism development,
22:47 and basically lobby with government for better tourism policy initiatives.
22:53 We also supported Bamiyan University, which is a government university, to establish a tourism faculty.
23:01 This was the first tourism faculty in the country.
23:06 Marketing, or promotion of Bamiyan as a tourism destination.
23:17 Here we had a series of interventions.
23:21 First, we developed the Bamiyan Eco-tourism website, which attracted lots of visitors.
23:30 We published the ISKI guidebook, and published Bamiyan photo booklet,
23:42 which talks about different tourism destinations or attraction sites of the province.
23:49 There is a copy outside, if you are interested you can look at that.
23:55 We also facilitated national and international media journalists to come to the province,
24:03 and publish and write about tourism destinations in the province.
24:11 Component 4 was more about cultural promotion.
24:19 We started a couple of festivals there. The first one was the Nowruz festival, which is a New Year festival.
24:28 It starts in the month of March.
24:31 And the Silk Road festival, because Bamiyan used to be one of the destinations in the past for Silk Road.
24:41 As I said, when we had a good tourism industry in the past, the only visitors were coming to Bamiyan in the summer season.
24:56 The idea was how to make it a diverse product for tourism, in order to attract more people to visit Bamiyan.
25:05 There were opportunities because we had lots of snow there, and for the first time we started ISKI as one of the tourism products for the province.
25:17 Then we organized a couple of tourism challenges with participation of local and international skiers,
25:26 and also we trained locals how to ISKI.
25:31 Lastly, there were cycling events promoting as one of the other products for tourism, which was by the name of Tour de Bamiyan.
25:52 The last part of the project was cultural and environmental protection.
26:00 Here we had different kinds of interventions and awareness with local communities and other institutions.
26:09 We trained 20 community councils who were living near cultural and historical sites on preservation of tourism and the role of tourism on the livelihoods of local people.
26:26 Once they acknowledge and recognize this importance, they will contribute a lot in terms of preservation and protection.
26:35 Teachers and children of 17 schools received training and awareness on the importance of tourism and cultural preservation.
26:48 There were lots of performances in different areas to explain to the people how important tourism is.
27:00 We also published a textbook for schoolchildren on topics of cultural preservation and tourism.
27:14 After 8 years of implementing this project, the key results we achieved were a remarkable increase in the number of people visiting Bamiyan,
27:27 and there was a decline in the number of international tourists because of insecurity, which was sorted after 2012.
27:38 But the number of local visitors and tourists is increasing.
27:44 As you can see, the number is more than six times.
27:49 This has created livelihood and income generation opportunities for more than 6,500 people in different services, from hotels to home estates, tour guides, handicraft production, and transport.
28:08 We also attracted a total investment of $11 million in the province from the private sector.
28:18 When we started this program, accommodation was one of the challenges, but now there is a lot of investment in accommodation and hotels.
28:27 Recently, a five-star hotel was constructed by a private sector company in Bamiyan.
28:35 Bamiyan University sorted the tourism faculty.
28:40 As I mentioned earlier, this is the first tourism faculty in the country, which not only provides human resources for the province, but also for the whole country.
28:52 All the promotion events, like cultural festivals, we mentioned, are handed over to local stakeholders.
29:01 Once the program is ended, all these kinds of events are organized by local stakeholders.
29:10 In 2015, when a delegation of SORC visited the province, they saw the potential of the province.
29:21 So it was declared as a cultural capital of SORC.
29:25 There are still some challenges for the industry.
29:35 The province itself is very safe and there is no security issue, but reaching the province or Bamiyan is a challenge.
29:46 The highways connecting this province to the cities are quite insecure, particularly in tourism seasons.
29:56 Infrastructure is another problem.
29:59 There are lots of tourism destinations, but reaching those destinations is a challenge.
30:09 Lastly, there is no appropriate tourism policy.
30:16 We have a tourism policy, but it has not been updated since decades.
30:21 That is one of the challenges for the industry.
30:25 As of now, tourism is not really in the priority of the government.
30:30 We are pushing for that. This project was one model we presented to the government,
30:35 how tourism can generate economic benefits for the local.
30:41 The lessons learned from this program are that the first thing is that in a conflict zone,
30:52 to promote tourism, domestic tourists are more resilient to cope with insecurity situations.
31:03 Initially, when we started this program, the idea was to attract more international tourists,
31:10 but later on we observed that this is something that doesn't work in our context,
31:15 because of insecurity issues and many other challenges.
31:19 We observed that local and domestic tourists and visitors are more resilient,
31:28 they have local contacts, and the insecurity situation doesn't affect them very much.
31:37 The other lesson learned was, particularly in our context,
31:42 tourism is considered mainly as a tool for socio-economic development,
31:49 but also it contributes a lot to peace building.
31:53 We have experiences where we had three or four decades of war,
31:59 and communities fought each other in many ways.
32:03 But once people from other provinces visited Bamyan,
32:08 they had a wrong perception about people, like they are dangerous people,
32:13 in the past we have fought with them,
32:15 but once they visited Bamyan, they found it very different from what they were thinking.
32:21 Next year they came with their families, with their children to the province.
32:26 Our experience shows that tourism can also be a good instrument for promoting peace and reconciliation.
32:37 Thank you very much, this was all about IHELM.
32:54 Thank you so much Mr. Ahmed, we wish you and the people of Bamyan all the very best.
32:59 Well, from Afghanistan we move to Nepal.
33:04 We've got a short case study presentation by Raj, that's how he likes to call himself.
33:11 He's the founder and director of Social Tours Nepal,
33:15 and he'll be speaking on implementing responsible models in the fragile ecosystem of the Himalayas.
33:23 Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together for Raj.
33:27 Thank you very much.
33:38 Right, I'm from Nepal, and I don't have to say much to the people in the subcontinent,
33:45 but Namaste, which means I worship the God in you.
33:51 And hopefully the God within us today is all feeling, is trying to do good,
33:57 and that's where the sense of responsibility comes from.
34:00 And I think that is what will take us, whether we are policy makers, government, tour operators, travellers,
34:07 the good in us will probably do the responsible thing, and that's what I hope.
34:12 So, Nepal. Don't have to say much about it, we are the guardians of the Himalayas,
34:18 you know, got about 26 million people, between 70 meters to the top of the world in 250 kilometers,
34:26 one of the steepest countries in the world, and the air conditioning for the world.
34:31 Right. I was very confused, I must say. I'll talk about this slide a little bit.
34:39 I was very confused when I started off trying to develop this presentation for this gathering,
34:44 and I was always asking who the audience is, whether they are policy makers,
34:49 and it's so diverse that addressing one particular category is very difficult.
34:56 So I decided to go by actually using the chance for a case study in talking about the passion of what I've been doing in Nepal for several years,
35:08 and then it might relate to different categories in its own way.
35:11 So if people have questions on that later on, you know, over lunch or whatever, I'll be more than happy to deal with that.
35:17 So the story, my story, starts in 1998 with this. Cataracts are a very important problem in Nepal.
35:27 Because of the high altitude, the UV light creates cataracts and nobody wears glasses, so that's why you have a lot of cataracts.
35:35 In 1998, I was still, I was not in tourism. I was in trade, actually selling sweaters to H&M.
35:42 And during that time, my partner and I, my partner was British at that time, he brought in his school from the UK,
35:50 and we did a cost plus trip. Basically, they did trekking, rafting, they really enjoyed Nepal.
35:56 I think it cost around $1,200, and we charged them $1,400 and said $200 is going for a cataract camp.
36:03 So we raised about $5,000 and used one of the best facilities in Nepal, it's called Tilganga, it's now world class.
36:10 And we went to a village, did about a thousand checkups, did 250 cataract operations, all of them successful, for free.
36:20 Using that money. And when we did that, that was the inspiration for me to actually get into tourism.
36:29 That was the inspiration which told me that there is a power here. There's a power to do real good.
36:37 Real, real good.
36:41 So in 2002, what happened was around about 2000, I mean, Nepal was going through this whole conflict with the Maoists,
36:50 so the bottom was falling out of the manufacturing industry. The bottom had already fallen out of the tourism industry, forget that.
36:56 But the bottom was already falling out of the manufacturing industry, and so I decided to switch and move on into something else.
37:04 And then that thing that I had done before clicked in my mind.
37:09 So, something's not working here. Right.
37:15 So then it started as an experiment. I said, okay, here's an experiment. Let's give it a try.
37:20 We'll take social work and tourism and put it together as Social Tours.
37:26 And the word Social Tours was only chosen because I could get the website, but that's another thing.
37:30 But then we called it Social Tours. And then we had to cook. You got to cook. What are you going to do?
37:38 So we worked on an idea of a vision and mission. I applied Social Tours in 2002 to be probably one of the few companies in the world
37:47 that started off with responsible tourism in mind.
37:51 So what we did was we developed a, you know, it's pretty boring, but I've just marked out some of the elements which are very important to me.
37:58 One is a corporate concept of linked prosperity. So the prosperity cannot be just with one, the company alone.
38:06 It has to be shared. So linked prosperity became a very important one, whether it's guides, porters, drivers, communities, homestays, hotels, everything.
38:16 It's linked prosperity. So that's very important. But at the same time, it cannot be just activism.
38:22 It has to be memorable holidays. You cannot run a tourism business just on activism.
38:28 It has to be delivering fantastic products. And that's very important.
38:32 And then it had to improve the quality of life. And this is very three little pillars that we try to determine the value, the mission on.
38:42 And then, of course, the economic one, I need to make money. I want to go to a holiday in Hawaii. All those things are there.
38:48 And then I set up a principle of values because the idea was homes work on values.
38:56 Our houses are based on values. And if you work on values, you sort of trust that the sun does the right thing when they go out because they are based on certain values.
39:06 So similarly, we said the organization needs to be built on certain values. And we set very simple values, respect for every individual.
39:14 So whether it's the traveler, whether it's the guide, whether it's the guy who comes to deliver water into my office, everybody has to be respected.
39:23 The respect is a very important part. Honesty and integrity, because without that, you cannot go on for a very long term.
39:31 You can do very short things, but you can't do it for a very long term. Continued excellence that comes from our fact of wanting to deliver the memorable holiday.
39:40 And if you don't do that, you cannot market. If you don't continuously work on excellence.
39:46 We also decided and agreed that quality is never 100 percent. It's only a process of moving towards 100 percent.
39:54 And that was very important. The social responsibility of business was a pillar already because we knew that we are going to earn money because of society.
40:03 And we're going to sell products from society. So I have to give back one way or the other. It was very simple.
40:09 And then, of course, money is not the only goal. Actually, I always say this. And I had a huge fight with my accountant because I had money is not the goal.
40:18 And he said, you can't say that. So I said, OK, money is not the only goal. So he said, all right, it's OK. I'll accept that.
40:26 And then, of course, the importance of environmental conservation, because without that, a lot of times we don't have tourism.
40:31 It's very important that we conserve that. So those are the pillars. And we just worked on that.
40:36 And then the rest of it was all just focusing on that. Nothing else. It's a dog headed focus on just those values.
40:46 So the responsible tourism with the three pillars of just being environmentally sustainable, culturally sustainable and trying to contribute into the local economy.
40:55 The missions that we had and the values that we had and the rest of it is what I'm trying to preach today to the to everybody in this room is just practice, practice and practice.
41:08 Nothing else. Right. And now I'll talk a little bit about what we practice on the environment side.
41:16 We tried to set out some ground rules. We tried to set up ground rules for travelers.
41:21 So we said, you know, when you're trekking up in the mountains, don't rub it. Don't don't litter.
41:25 Back in the time in Nepal, there was a lot of problems with energy usage. So people were not allowed to shower.
41:31 They had to take their own water bottles. They still have to take their own water bottles. So all of those ground rules we set out for the for tourism.
41:37 So best practices, if you like, for travel. And then, of course, recycling.
41:42 I mean, if anybody takes my car today, it is actually a small little cycle within our own company.
41:47 We use paper, obviously, for printing on account for accounting or, you know, some stuff.
41:53 Then when we finish it, double sided use, we dump it in a tray. It goes to a recycling plant, comes back as visiting cards.
41:59 Right. So it's an own little cycle. So it's practice again. If you want to really go deep, you can practice.
42:04 And then zero plastic. We just try to make our office zero plastic, especially the non-recyclable plastics.
42:12 So that became very important. So these are just some of the examples.
42:16 I can go on and on and on and on about the different practices that we do.
42:19 But, you know, I'll just hit on some of the important ones. And then on the cultural side, because we said we wanted to be culturally sensitive,
42:28 we wanted to work in a different way. I mean, there's always ways to tell the traveler what to do, what not to do, and always like that.
42:35 But we worked on the demystification of it. So, for example, how does that relate into today's product base?
42:42 Is that we have a trip in Nepal, Kathmandu right now where you can debate Buddhism with a monk.
42:48 Right. So you can go there and debate, debate Buddhism with the monk. So you demystify it.
42:52 The way I like to put it is when somebody sees somebody with a robe, they think they can fly.
42:58 But they don't. They're just thinking of the next iPhone. Right.
43:01 So the idea is that if you have a conversation, you start understanding.
43:06 And I think this creates really important, memorable holidays. And it also works on the cultural side.
43:11 So you can really go deeper. Now, there are many products like that. I won't go into that.
43:15 But the basis of it is the demystification of culture because people travel to understand.
43:20 And if you give them a chance to understand, they will love it.
43:25 Then on the other side, we also started working on non-vertical, not vertically integrating.
43:31 I studied management in Anand and I went against everything I was taught.
43:38 So I said, if they said vertically integrate, you'll make more money.
43:42 And I'm saying, no, I don't want to vertically integrate. I still want to prove that I can make money.
43:46 So now we don't own cars. We don't own hotels. We don't own airlines. We're just a tour operator.
43:52 And we distribute the wealth. Right. That's what we do. And at the same time, we make money, obviously, somewhere on the side.
43:58 But we distribute the wealth and we try to distribute it as much as we can.
44:02 And therefore, we can spread the message. We can always influence others and try and really be a good influence. Right.
44:10 Now, the spread of the tourism dollar became very important. So we started even trying to do math on it and trying to tell travelers about it.
44:18 Because every time we are a tour operator, we are the bad guys, aren't we? We try to make money.
44:23 Everybody says, go local, go local, skip the tour operator. Right.
44:27 Because now we had to prove that we actually are doing the right thing.
44:30 So then we started plotting it out and trying to tell the traveler where your money goes.
44:36 So you see that, you know, the guide makes as much as us, for example.
44:42 You know, or, you know, if you combine the admin and the guide and the pottery guy in a pottery tour, they're making the same amount as us.
44:49 And that's kind of interesting when people start seeing that. And that becomes a very educative tool on how tourism functions.
44:55 And also, it's a good inward thinking for us to see how it works.
45:01 And then, of course, focus on experiential. You know, make sure that your product base is always fun, hands on touch, sight, taste, smell, everything.
45:14 And I think we made the right choice. And this was way back. Right now, everybody is only talking about experiential travel.
45:20 You see data upon data of people saying experience is the latest Google search word.
45:25 So experiential travel became important. So we decided to divide the categories of products into go local, be active, be immersed, be involved and go broad.
45:35 And the first four are pretty self-explanatory. You know, if you go local, be active, be immersed, be involved, go broad was about the region.
45:45 So India, Bhutan, Tibet. So trying to go slightly broader and trying to spread that.
45:50 Now, the product base, you know, I mean, I can go on. There's a lot of products.
45:55 But if you look at it in the go local series, an interesting one is rise of the artisan.
46:00 And rise of the artisan started after the earthquake of 2015, when we realized very quickly that every 80 years in Nepal, artisans rise because the heritage comes down.
46:11 So it became a very good opportunity to focus on artisans to showcase to the world how good they were and how a stupa that has fallen down that was 2000 years old could be rebuilt in Nepal today.
46:24 And, you know, the skills are still alive. And that is an amazing, amazing achievement.
46:28 So rise of the artisan is a very interesting day trip that we have in Kathmandu. In the active category, we went offbeat.
46:35 You know, everybody talks about Everest Base Camp track, Annapurna, Lantang, you know, the typical ones.
46:41 And we're saying, no, we want to do a community lodge track. So we started going offbeat, trying to push people away from the regular.
46:49 The be immersed section took people deeper. Dancing with shamans is actually a shaman full moon festival in August, where shamans go to a high altitude lake to dance the night away as a ritual to turn into full shamans.
47:04 So that became like a really immersive journey into learning about shamanism.
47:09 I mean, interesting story. If people didn't know the gibberish that shamans say when they are when they are chanting is actually a journey, a spiritual journey.
47:21 And we are now trying to find out if this actual locations can be plotted and we can do the journey, the gibberish that they are talking about. Right.
47:30 And this is quite interesting. And then, of course, a festival of light, a focus on food. We're just diversifying the tourism pie because, you know, typically and, you know, we heard talk about, you know, six destinations, you know, monuments, you know, being people going to is because the pie is so small and every tour operator is trying to go into that pie.
47:49 And who's going to make money? Nobody's going to make money. You expand the pie. Then everybody has a little cut. Right.
47:55 So we did that. Then, of course, the social responsibility of business comes in. This is benefiting the community.
48:03 You know, this is the Kathmandu Kora cycling challenge that I that we conduct every year since 2011.
48:09 And until now, we every year we have about 3000 riders riding 50 kilometers, 75 and 100 kilometers around Kathmandu for charity.
48:19 On that one day in August, we cycle twice around the world and for every every cyclist, you know, raises some money for charity until now, until 2017, we've done up to fifty five thousand dollars.
48:35 And that goes into the community. And some of it has been to.
48:40 Thank you very much. It has been to work on prenatal care, on postnatal care. Now we are doing cycling trails around, you know, developing a cycling destination before it was into education.
48:52 So we're just showing the power of tourism and of activity of people who are really thinking well.
48:58 And this is what it can be achieved. It's very simple, actually.
49:03 The other big movement that we did, we did was after the earthquake was supporting the industry, you know, trying to demonstrate to the industry and coming out in the industry and showing them what can be done.
49:13 After the earthquake of 2015 in June, I started this campaign called I'm in Nepal now where travelers could just hold up a little card and say I'm in Nepal now just to prove that they are in Nepal.
49:26 And this viral online into half a million views on Facebook and made the Bangkok Post, you know, everything.
49:33 And now the government took it up so that, you know, the government took it up and Nepal Tourism Board is currently running a Nepal now or website, which is actually talking about better stories from Nepal, working on trying to mitigate problems of that result from disasters for tourism.
49:51 Right. So we have a huge backlash when a disaster happens. And interestingly, the success story from Nepal has now been was taken in Ecuador with I'm in Ecuador now is now currently running in Bali with I'm in Bali now.
50:06 Myanmar is taking up because of the Rohingya crisis affecting tourism. So I'm in Myanmar now.
50:12 And, you know, it's being taken around around the world. So being an example was actually quite simple.
50:17 It actually started with my wife, who is Austrian. I told her to hold it up because she looks like a tourist.
50:25 That's how it started. So, you know, I mean, it doesn't have to be big. You know, I mean, the ideas don't have to be big. It's just about practice.
50:32 The other part of it is the team. It's very important. Actually, I wanted to present a video today was shot yesterday in Kathmandu, but they wouldn't finish the edit.
50:40 So I could not show that to you about how our team functions in the office. But this is a part of the team.
50:47 I mean, and, you know, the idea is keep them happy, keep them happy, keep it non-hierarchical.
50:53 We don't have any titles in the company. I'm supposedly in charge of the future of the company.
50:59 The finance guy calls himself the number man. The IT guy calls himself Spider-Man.
51:06 You know, they just do whatever they want with their titles. It doesn't really matter what is in the title anyways.
51:11 What roles we play is very important. That keeps us all equal and makes it very lively and dynamic.
51:16 And that is very important. And I think that part of it is a very important message that I wanted to give as well.
51:23 And then, of course, along with that, if you have a lot of passion and you keep on doing things and practice, practice, practice, practice, a little bit of recognition does come along.
51:31 And for that, of course, in 2006, we started getting the RT award nominations in the UK.
51:38 For about four or five years, we got the nomination, sometimes shortlisted, sometimes not, but never won it.
51:44 Mostly because we couldn't be bothered to write reports very well.
51:48 And so we never actually reached anywhere with that. But we did get nominated.
51:55 Harold is here. He's going to speak next. And Jennifer is here as well.
51:58 We collaborated in 2009 to do the first ever RT audit.
52:05 So we managed to do, you know, we did a big exercise to audit our own practices to start looking inwards into what we were doing at every aspect,
52:14 whether it was environment, culture, the payments we're making to the guides, the charity that we were doing, everything.
52:21 And that was a very interesting exercise, I must say.
52:25 And then in 2015, we became the first travel tour operator in Asia to get the Travel Life certification.
52:33 I was mildly amused, actually, because I'm not much of a certification person.
52:38 But when we did it, I didn't realize we were the first in Asia.
52:42 Of course, now there are many more who have got the Travel Life certification.
52:47 And the future. OK, I'll just quickly touch on the future.
52:50 We still have time. Yeah. All right.
52:53 So a little bit on the future. So where are we going from here?
52:57 The next movement that I'm trying to make is actually looking at compassion, the Buddhist principle of compassion,
53:04 rejoicing in the joy of others and using it in tourism and trying to see if that is a principle that can be taken forward
53:12 and using mindfulness, which is getting very popular now, as the practice part of it,
53:18 that everybody becomes mindful, whether it's the destination, the communities, everybody involved in the process,
53:23 whether it's government, everybody becomes mindful. And that can be quite an interesting exercise.
53:28 And then the idea of a benevolent private sector, which is actually helping development instead of just fleecing off,
53:35 would be ideal, obviously. So that's the future that I'm working on.
53:39 A little bit of also is trying to work on this whole idea of a travel corner store instead of a mall.
53:46 So we become the place where people come because of the stories that we have to tell and they come because we are slightly specialized.
53:53 So I'm not the idea that tourism does not have to own the world. We don't need to be the world's biggest company.
53:59 We don't need to have all the business in the world. So it's not about scaling up, but it's more about doing it just right.
54:05 And of course, you need to make money. But then, you know, if you just keep on scaling, it gets scary after a while.
54:10 So you don't want to do that. So being the corner store. And I think that is a bit of a boutique sort of concept.
54:15 It's quite fun. And then keeping it dynamic and fun, which is always difficult when you're a company 15 years old.
54:20 Things start to get a bit stale. So you need to keep on reinventing stuff and keeping on new things.
54:24 So that's the future. And of course, spreading the practice, which is what I'm doing here, which I do when I consult, you know,
54:31 and when I do consultancy works, that's what we're trying to do. Spread the word, spread the word, spread the word.
54:36 So that more and more people start doing it. Then we reach critical mass. Then hopefully the world becomes responsible. Right.
54:42 So the critical mass is the aim out there. And there's also another future.
54:47 This is actually Norway. And in the whole game of spreading the word, I'm also working in Norway right now,
54:56 trying to develop a product which is actually looking at how a country that was only about pillage and plunder,
55:04 in small little boats, turned into one of the most livable countries in the world.
55:10 Was it only oil? Was it the people? Was it practices? Was it policy?
55:15 All these things coming together in a tourism product. Why does Norway have the policy of a right to travel anywhere?
55:23 You can pitch a tent anywhere in Norway. They don't have any restrictions. It's a very interesting thing.
55:29 And I think a lot of travelers would be very interested to know that. So we're working on things like that in Norway
55:35 with a company that I'm also associated with. It's called Ethical Travel Portal.
55:39 And it is working again, in terms of trying to spread, in many countries. Right.
55:45 In many, many different countries. And we're working with very interesting projects.
55:50 To name a few, I think Ukraine, we are working with women who are making statues out of cheese.
55:56 It's quite interesting. And to try and understand why they do that, and how to preserve that, and all that stuff.
56:01 It's very interesting. In China, we actually go into Tibetan villages off Chengdu,
56:05 which is the only places where you can actually see Tibetan culture in real life.
56:09 You can't see that in Tibet. So it's quite interesting to do that as well.
56:13 And so there are many, many little examples from here that is quite interesting in the future.
56:18 So, the tagline that we made for the company right at the start,
56:23 right at the start, when I started off, was "Be Inspired".
56:28 So that's what we wanted to get people to do, is to be inspired.
56:32 In travel, as a company, as people who are trying to spread the news, be inspired.
56:38 So that's it with my presentation. That's me down there.
56:42 I'm a bit pompous with my Twitter handle, but yeah, the company is just social to us.
56:48 Thank you very much.
56:50 (audience applauding)