I met Lucia and Gabriel from Solimar and the Chocó Community Tourism Alliance during my first stay here in Medellín, Colombia, at the beginning of 2014. I was very interested in the goal of a community-based ecotourism project that would support local communities at the Pacific Coast, one of the poorest regions in Colombia. This is why I decided to apply for an internship with Solimar and luckily I was accepted. For logistical and practical reasons, particularly to better cooperate with Palenque Tours, a Medellín-based tour operator and commercial representative of the Alliance, I did my internship in Medellín.

I was responsible for marketing the destination Chocó, Colombia, and activating the Alliance brand “Visit Chocó.”

My work in Chocó

During my internship I was in charge of all the social media channels used, publishing interesting content and beautiful photos daily on Facebook, Google+ and Twitter, to attract tourists to visit Chocó. I also interacted with similar pages promoting community-based tourism in South America to get inspired by new ideas and topics, and retweeted or shared their posts. Moreover, I published a blog about Chocó twice a week in both English and Spanish on Visit Chocó. Additionally, I managed the Visit Chocó website content to optimize it for best search engines results and make it easier to find for agencies and visitors.

Another aspect of my work was to do trade outreach to North American tour operators since North American travelers have been defined as the target market of the Chocó Community Tourism Alliance. The proximity and relatively quick flight to Medellín makes it a great destination for North American travelers. Therefore, I followed an outreach strategy whereby I evaluated a database of hundreds of tourism agencies in the US and Canada, sent them informational introduction emails and followed up via phone calls with at least half of them.

On September 3rd, Solimar, together with Palenque Tours, hosted a webinar for the agencies who had expressed interest in Chocó to provide more details about the Alliance and how to include Alliance tours into their existing itineraries. There will be other webinars held on December 3rd for both North American and European agencies.

In the last few weeks, I started to reach out to a number of distribution channels- guidebooks as well as travel affinity groups. Palenque Tours will continue this outreach in the next months and years, as they were chosen as the official sales and marketing representative by the Alliance. For this purpose a Travel Trade Portal was created on the website, which includes sales and marketing kits in English, Spanish, and German. The sales kit includes: (1) a destination guide with detailed information on Chocó including its people, wildlife, etc.; (2) a fact sheet about the Alliance and community-based tourism; (3) a travel guide with useful tips to answer clients’ questions; and (4) a detailed list of Visit Choco’s products. The marketing kit provides our partners with royalty free marketing material for download including a blog post, 10 Facebook posts, and 10 twitter posts, which are uploaded monthly.

What I learned

Apart from these tasks I was in continuous communication with Palenque Tours and Solimar in Washington, D.C. I received training from them and exchanged ideas and updates about program activities. All in all, I learned a lot about online marketing during my e-internship with Solimar International. In fact, I decided to write my Bachelor’s thesis about community-based ecotourism presenting the Chocó Community Tourism Alliance as a case study. This experience was a great opportunity to get closer insight into the project.

A great business plan and strategy are important first steps in developing sustainable tourism in an area, but real results are a direct reflection of the operations and management on the ground. Take for example, Solimar’s work in the Pearl Cays region of Nicaragua or Big Bend-Rio Bravo, Mexico. Both of these projects, which started in 2012, required developing sustainable tourism strategies that empowered conservation efforts—among these, in both destinations, was protecting sea turtles.

But how does a destination go about implementing the strategy to ensure the protection of sea turtles?

The destination will develop operating guidelines or a ‘code of conduct’. These operating guidelines will build off regulations that may already exist in the protected area and incorporate further regulation with scientific input to mitigate the negative effects of tourism. It is also extremely important to successfully develop and promote these operating guidelines before a destination becomes popular. Operating guidelines will be more difficult to implement and much less effective if the destination is already a popular tourist spot.

Educate Visitors

One strategy to optimize the effectiveness of those operating guidelines is promoting them to your visitors. When visitors know the sustainable guidelines, they become empowered to make sound judgments and decisions when visiting the natural areas.

In the cases of Pearl Cays and Big Bend-Rio Bravo, the code of conduct addressed restrictions of flash photography, group size, waste management, and visitor behavior around the turtles. You can promote these operating guidelines through 4 main avenues:

1. Guided Interpretation – Local guides are the most effective strategy in promoting your code of conduct, because they have a deep knowledge and appreciation for the destination. The effectiveness of guided interpretation relies heavily on educating and training the tour guide. In Pearl Cays and Big Bend-Rio Bravo, Solimar conducted a one-day guide and tourism training workshop to community members and provided a “Tourism Toolkit” for future trainings.
2. Interpretive Signage – Because beaches where the sea turtles lay their eggs are typically unmanned and open, visual signs are essential to reaching visitors. Signs should be in all languages common in the area, and provide interesting information in addition to restrictions.
3. Signed Statements of Understanding – The code of conduct may also be presented to visitors on a document that requires them to review and sign, acknowledging their understanding of the code.
4. Promotional Materials – Websites, brochures, and other promotional material are platforms to display your code of conduct as well. Displaying the code of conduct on these materials not only prepares visitors by exposing them to the code, but also appeals to potential eco-savvy clients.

Promoting the code to your visitors is only one possible avenue. Ideally, the promotion of your operating guidelines will take a multifaceted approach—promoting to visitors, through the travel industry, and through social media. How well you can promote these operating guidelines will directly impact how effectively you can reduce the negative impacts of tourism on species and habitats in a destination, and will be helpful when seeking sustainable tourism certifications.

Last week, 700 international delegates from various sectors of the tourism industry gathered in Killarney, Ireland for the 2014 Adventure Travel World Summit (ATWS). The Summit aimed to promote Ireland as an adventure travel destination, connect hundreds of like-minded travel leaders from around the globe, foster peer-to-peer exchanges on best practices and operational strategies, and promote business development.

Two of our staff members, Natasha Martin and Gabe Seder, represented Solimar at the four-day summit. I spoke with Natasha, a seasoned veteran of the Summit, and Gabe, a newcomer, about their ATWS 2014 experiences in more detail.

The growth of adventure travel made ATWS a must-attend for Solimar. “When we did the first study in 2010, it was worth $89 billion, and now its nearly $250 billion – so more people are choosing adventurous holidays – which is great news for Solimar because we work, nearly exclusively, in adventure destinations,” said Natasha. “Adventure tourism is a great segment for emerging markets because adventure tourists don’t care about developed infrastructure and fancy hotels– they want exceptional experiences.”

The Summit offered much more than just lectures and workshops. “Destinations compete to host world class events like ATWS because they create a unique opportunity to highlight the best of the destination to movers and shakers in all sectors of the tourism industry. Ireland made sure delegates got out of the conference center to go on a ‘Day of Adventure’—doing things like hiking, kayaking, climbing, etc. They also subsidize ‘pre-summit adventures’ for delegates to go on 3-4 day adventure tours around Ireland,” Gabe said. Therefore, said Natasha, “It’s a great networking opportunity as well as a chance to experience some adventure tourism.”

Natasha commented on the different experiences offered in this year’s host country, Ireland, and last year in Namibia, which she helped facilitate: “The Summit in Ireland was much different from that in Namibia — but equally as exciting, fun, and inspirational. The ATTA and Ireland team did a great job of organizing a seamless event and they brought together a great diversity of delegates from around the world.” And even as a newcomer, Gabe had a similar perspective on his first Summit experience this year, “This was my first time at ATWS. The bar for the event had been set really high because I’ve been hearing Natasha and other coworkers talk about the Summit for years, but it exceeded my expectations because everyone you meet is eager talk about their experience in adventure travel, discuss the industry, and learn about Solimar.”

A talk on conservation travel stood out to both Gabe and Natasha as particularly important for Solimar’s work,. “The session on Conservation Travel was particularly interesting – we discussed how tourism can be a type of insurance policy for conservation. In many types of tourism, visitors want to see wildlife, so it has an economic value,” said Natasha. “The ‘Conservation Travel’ session also spoke to Solimar’s approach of creating a business case for conservation by demonstrating the quantifiable value of wildlife preservation for a destination,” commented Gabe. Other highlights: “The session on ‘Going Head-to-Head with your Digital Future’ included a Q-and-A with representatives from Google, Facebook, and TripAdvisor, who advised tour operators and destinations on how to leverage the expanding reach of these platforms to engage and convert audiences around the globe,” said Gabe. “Several sessions discussed ideas on how to raise awareness of this type of tourism- I think it’s something we can bring into our work at Solimar,” commented Natasha.

Overall, the Summit was a great success, for our Solimar representatives as well as the rest of the adventure travel community. Solimar is excited for #ATWS2015 in Chile!

At Solimar we are often confronted with the question, “Why tourism?” How do our driving passions, sustainable economic development and conservation, fit with the tourism industry?

The answer is simple. Tourism is one of the largest and fastest-growing economic sectors in the world. When developed responsibly, tourism is a powerful tool for promoting economic and social development on local, national, and regional levels. World Tourism Day (WTD), sponsored by the UNWTO, is celebrated every year on September 27th to highlight this social, cultural, political, and economic value.

This year, official WTD celebrations are being held in Guadalajara, Mexico and focus on the theme of Tourism and Community Development—exploring the ability of tourism to empower local communities with skills and resources that create positive social change. For tourism to drive community development it must be done sustainably: economically, environmentally, and socio-culturally.

According to the WTD website:

With the special focus on the community, WTD 2014 highlights how tourism can be conducive to advancing sustainable development from the grassroots level. Community based tourism involves the local population in the decision making process according to local priorities. The opportunity to become part of the tourism value chain actively involves host communities in the development process. Tourism thus becomes a catalyst of social cohesion, going beyond the immediate impact of job creation and its positive economic consequences and enhances, for instance, local governance capabilities which multiply the tourism impact even further.

You may be wondering how large the tourism sector actually is. Take a look at some of the figures:

The sector is growing in all regions of the world,

‘International tourist arrivals increased by 5% worldwide in 2013, reaching 1087 million’

• Myanmar’s tourist arrivals increased by 52%
• Peru’s tourist arrivals increased by 11%
• Morocco became the 1^st African country to have surpassed 10 million international arrivals

This growth is especially evident in developing countries.

‘The market share of emerging economies is expected to reach 57% by 2030, equivalent to over 1 billion international tourist arrivals.’

Tourism is the leading export in over half of the Least Developed Countries (LDCs). No other industry commands this kind of impact. Sustainable community-based tourism presents a unique and lucrative way to tackle incredibly difficult development goals in LDCs. Tourism is a labor-intensive industry, which means job creation in areas where tourism is being developed. Sustainable tourism also creates economic value for wildlife, culture, and natural resources which, in turn, incentivizes their protection. Job creation means reduced migration (from rural to urban areas) which contributes to overall political stability in an area.

The full potential of tourism’s transformative power can only be reached with everyone’s participation. The conscious traveler must be a sustainable one.Tourism’s major role in economic, social, and sustainable development gives us all important parts to play. That’s why we do what we do.

Solimar wishes everyone a happy World Tourism Day!

On September 24^th, Solimar International Chairman Don Hawkins was a panel speaker at the first Myanmar Investment Outreach Business & Investment Forum, held in New York City. The event, which was headed by Myanmar Minister at the President’s Office U Soe Thane, was organized to promote and encourage foreign direct investment in the Southeast Asian country, which is undergoing significant political and economic reform. The panel convened to discuss a myriad of topics across all sectors of the Myanmar economy.

Dr. Hawkins’ panel was asked about Myanmar’s tourism sector. After opening its doors in recent years for the first time in decades, Myanmar shows promise in becoming a major tourism destination. The Minister of Hotels and Tourism, Htay Aung, announced foreign tourist numbers have been steadily rising, up from 800,000 in 2011 to about 2 million in 2013. Such a surge in visitors has put a blatant strain on the industry, which suffers from a lack of development and infrastructure.

With such great potential, how can the sector become a pillar of the economy?

Dr. Hawkins emphasized investment. Myanmar’s international visitor arrivals are growing at about 46% a year, and in the first five months of 2014 tourism generated US$ 552 million. This figure is expected to easily surpass $1 billion by the end of the year. This is fast growing tax base which should be used to finance investment in health, education, and infrastructure, Dr. Hawkins explained.

Another important aspect Don pointed out was the industry’s high labor intensity. The tourism sector is forecasted to create over 1 million new jobs in Myanmar by 2020. The sector’s growth is poised for success, Dr. Hawkins explained, because of its foundation. The Ministry of Hotels and Tourism is one of the few ministries to have prepared a sector master plan, which lays out strategies and actions focusing on poverty alleviation, community involvement, environmental protection and good governance.

How does the country implement sustainable tourism, retaining the profits while adding value for the international players involved?

In addressing the development of sustainable tourism, Dr. Hawkins was keen to call attention to the Smithsonian Institution’s involvement in Myanmar. The Smithsonian Institution has joined the Ministry of Environmental Conservation & Forestry (MOECAF), UNDP, and Green Economy Green Growth Myanmar (GEGG) to organize a stakeholders workshop—“Building the Foundation for Natural Resources Stewardship for Sustainable, Inclusive and Equitable Development: Towards a Ten-year Strategy Framework (2015-2025)”. This workshop, which brought together Myanmar environmental NGOs and international NGOs, aims to develop a national plan for natural resource management and begin a targeted program for expanding and managing protected land and seascapes. This workshop is just one of many that are being held with regional and international stakeholders in the pursuit of sustainable development.

Over 350 people participated in the Myanmar Investment Forum, almost 150 more than expected. Such turn out reflects the promise and buzz around Myanmar’s potential.  Phyo Wai Yar Zar, chairman of the Myanmar Tourism Marketing and joint secretary of the Myanmar Tourism Federation, recently announced the possibility of a “Visit Myanmar” promotion year in 2016. The tourism sector is growing rapidly and shows no signs of slowing down. Sustainable development of the sector will be of utmost importance moving forward to ensure continued success.