Financial Times

Is our world for sale? and at what price?
By Random Access Memory (RAM)
The barmy army of English cricket fans who basked in the sun in Sri Lanka, in spite of the intermittent spells of year-end rains, will now return home to spend Christmas with their families. Many others are heading our way to get away from the dreary winters to experience the warmth of Sri Lanka and her people. Tourism is back on the front burners and indications are that it will stay that way, if we as a nation, do not decide to 'shoot ourselves in the foot' once again.

Earlier this month, as reported on the website ‘e-Turbo Tourism News’ a conference was held in Hanover, Germany on the topic "Tourism: Unfair practices and equitable options". Similar conferences were also held in Cancun in Mexico and in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania in the recent past. Organisations such as the 'International Institute for Peace through Tourism', 'Network for Sustainable Tourism Development' and the 'Rethinking Tourism Project' are all calling out for a deviation from the accepted conventional model of tourism to ensure that sound and fair practices are established with a strong community stakeholdership within international tourism.

The title of RAM's column, this week portrays the rallying cry of concerned activists from around the world, who were seeking and demanding that tourism changes its current ways, to truly benefit the countries and the communities it is supposed to serve.

In Sri Lanka, tourism has been identified as one of the most potent vehicles to realise the 'Regaining Sri Lanka' vision for employment, foreign exchange earnings and investment promotions. It is an area of activity that has been in the priority agenda of all governments in the midst of the twenty years of conflict, which hampered its growth in the past.

A resilient and determined private sector had kept the industry in Sri Lanka going for decades in spite of it all. Since the silencing of the guns and warring parties taking on the path of 'talks', once again, tourism now has been injected with a new sense of hope and vigour. In spite of the hiccups of the 'unwillingness to cohabitate’ scenario of our current leadership, this winter tourism season promises to be one of the best ever for Sri Lanka.

With one of the most exotic, diverse, compact natural and cultural settings available anywhere in the world and a peaceful environment in sight with a socially conscious community leadership at the grass roots, Sri Lanka qualifies to be a top-end candidate for sustainable tourism development in the future. Although we were plagued by the international tour operator led - low end all inclusive tour models - in the past, the cream of tourism operations; often called high end tourism, rests with the FIT or the free independent tourist option.

The Internet today offers a widespread of market reach opportunities to carry out targeted one-to-one customer development strategies. It offers, immense knowledge bases and models of best practises for us to learn from. As a tourist destination that has reached cross-roads in its development today, our tourism entrepreneurs need to take a strong look at themselves and the way in which they have been conducting business.

A few villas upgraded and pinning labels of ecotourism with plans and policies on paper may not get us anywhere. What we need as we cross the roads, is to rethink our strategies of how tourism will truly benefit the people of this country serving their aspirations and needs.

The age-old story of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs is very significant to tourism. If the biologically rich natural areas are not conserved, the traditional cultures not preserved and the true hospitality and the warmth of our people is lost, then no amount of good infrastructure, the upmarket villas, the highways, sea planes, hot air balloons and luxury cars can support and sustain our tourism for the future.

It would do well for policy makers and investors at all levels of tourism operations as they take on crossing new roads, to look at some of the alternative thinking that has emerged in the sphere of building a tourism that is sustainable. They will now need to look beyond the conventional thinking of 'providing jobs' to involve people in activities as true stakeholders.

A paper presented at the conference held in Hanover referred to earlier in the column with the title "Our World is for Sale: The disturbing implications of privatisation in the tourism trade" status thus; 'Indeed as far as tourism is concerned, our world is for sale; here we have it all: privatisation - commodification - standardisation - homogenisation - corporatisation - Disneyfication - industrialisation - denaturalisation - deculturalisation - dehumanisation'.

A barrage of jargon and clichés, but behind it all some good food for thought when we take our tourism through the cross-roads. The appeal is for policy makers, strategists, investors and tourism operators to please take note. There is certainly no need to take it all in the way the activists say, but only in a way that will help us ensure that we do not kill the goose that is laying the golden eggs.

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