Help Tourism

We (Help Tourism & ACT team) were in two minds before attending the ICRT conference, the second after the Cape Town conference in 2002. The reasons being:

• Fees & conveyance:
  With the amount that would be spent for attending the conference, would be almost equivalent to building three toilets for our recent community project called Dihing River Camp. The same is expected to be functional by October, 2008.
• Conference venue & delegate accommodation options:
  Our understanding of the principles of responsible tourism and the use of 5-star convention venue and also options for delegates to stay in the star hotels, whose responsible policy was not known, this was somewhat a question for us.

We decided to join the conference after several discussions realizing the fact that the East & Northeast India would go unrepresented in a declaration on responsible tourism being held in India. That several representatives from the Government of India, Department of Tourism and the state Governments would be attending the conference and we would influence them to draw a policy based on responsible tourism. The last but not the least, our presentation will help to influence the declaration on issues that we have been discussing locally.

We did gain something from the conference

• Network with delegates nationally & internationally who thought on the same lines like us
• Our presentation could influence the declaration through its acceptance of the fact that the community participation phenomenon was the core strength of the responsible tourism movement, and that travel warnings by tourist originating countries on host countries should be more responsible
• Contact people who were interested in our cross-border tourism & conservation issues
• The interaction with the South Africa team, where the 2002 or the first declaration took place on their views that: Policy to action is still far to go in their country, the policy should be considered from the community priority, i.e. bottom up policy

The outcome of the conference, the Kerala Declaration on Responsible Tourism sets a both promising and challenging framework for the way ahead. For the next conference hopefully we have already gone as far as to allow more ground practicioners sharing their experience – their knowledge is too valuable as to set them aside because participation would be too costly for them.

Tags: Conference

This entry was posted on Friday, March 28th, 2008 at 4:30 pm and is filed under About Help Tourism, ACT, ICRT India. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.