Click the image above to be taken directly to the survey

Against all expectations in our constantly squabbling tourism industry, a sort of consensus seems to be emerging about how ably the majority of tourism marketing organisations are representing their clients: not really all that well, especially when it comes to today’s swiftly changing travel climate and to representing the interests of local communities and travellers keen on interacting with them.

What do you think? Do you agree/disagree? We’re running a short (eight-question) survey about it and are very eager for your opinion.

My Opinion
Personally, I have to agree, especially as I sit in a curious place, a busy information juncture fed by multiple data streams involving the active and growing local-travel segment of the industry.

Directly relevant to – but distressingly absent from – almost everything in which I am engaged are all of the special entities officially charged with promoting destinations, whether a town, city, region or country. These include destination management/marketing organisations (DMOs), convention and visitors bureaus (CVBs) and private public relations agencies.

Continue reading this article on The Travel Word blog and then participate in the survey

Osa residents Carlos Villalobos and his sister Marta take iSeeiTravel on a lagoon tour in their 400-acre backyard as part of the push in the Osa to create a more robust tourism industry that benefits people in the region. Photo courtesy of iSeeiTravel.

When you travel, one of the easiest and most meaningful things you can do is meet the locals.  To the best of your ability – no matter what the language barriers – strike up a conversation. Find out their story, their culture, their way of life.

During our last trip to Costa Rica to film our debut documentary, called 2.5%, we befriended several of the locals and talked to them about how tourism has affected their lives. Tourism is a US$2-billion-per-year industry and employs 13 percent of the nation’s population; nearly every Tico (as Costa Ricans like to call themselves) is directly or indirectly impacted by this industry.

Didier Acevedo, a tour guide based in Guanacaste, spoke to us about some of the effects of the tourism industry in Tamarindo, a famous beach that is one of the country’s most popular tourist cities. Though tourism has undoubtedly brought many economic benefits, Acevedo spoke also of an increase in drugs and prostitution, escalating land prices, as well as not being able to afford eating in local restaurants.

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IMPORTANT: The video clip above is part of iSeeiTravel’s debut documentary project, called 2.5%. Visit them for more information and to support their fundraising campaign to promote conscious travel in Costa Rica.

Continue reading this article on The Travel Word blog

The idea of Local Heroes is to facilitate contact between travelers and local people and make it easier to go local when we travel. At Nomaders, we believe it is important to let the traveler know from first hand what’s the point of view of someone who lives there, because the best way to become aware of the place, is to do things with someone who lives there and wants to retain its charm and beauty for a long time.

We have found a movement that defends our same values, summarized as follows:

* The importance of connecting with local people before or during travel.
* Traveling in a way that respects the environment.
* Respecting the local culture and heritage during your trip.
* Spend our money locally, local businesses (crafts, food, etc …).

Continue reading this article on the Nomaders blog

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IN SPANISH / EN ESPAÑOL:

Los héroes locales son parte de Local Travel Movement

Como hemos estado comentando en varias ocasiones, la idea de los Héroes Locales, persigue facilitar el contacto entre viajeros y gente local con el fin de que sea más sencillo acceder a lo cotidiano cuando viajamos. En Nomaders creemos que es importante que el viajero conozca de primera mano cual es el punto de vista de alguien que vive allí, porque la mejor forma de tomar conciencia de cómo es el lugar es hacerlo con alguien que vive allí y quiere que conserve su encanto y belleza por largo tiempo.

En la red hemos conocido un movimiento que está muy en consonancia con los valores de los Nomaders Local Heroes, se trata de Local Travel Movement.

Un movimiento que defiende unos valores que compartimos y que se resumen en estos conceptos:

* La importancia de conectar con la gente local antes o durante el viaje.
* Viajar de una manera que respete el medio ambiente.
* Respetar el patrimonio y la cultura locales durante tu viaje.
* Esforzarse para invertir nuestro dinero localmente, en negocios locales (artesanía, gastronomía, etc…).

Continúe leyendo este artículo en el blog de Nomaders

With a view to becoming the largest and most trusted holiday clearinghouse on the web, Your Holiday Promotion, a new service for special travel deals and offers, now connects local travel- and leisure-sector merchants directly with travel agents and independent travelers.

Unlike most travel sites, Your Holiday Promotion is not a commission-earning middleman, but a true clearinghouse that targets travel agents and the traveling public wishing to shop directly from suppliers. Your Holiday Promotion, is owned and operated by a team of travel professionals from North America and Asia, in partnership with the WHL Group, the largest local-travel company in the world.

The brainchild of Wahid Ghazal, a successful travel professional with more than 30 years of experience, the new company was established in response to the high volume of email traffic from travel service providers blasting out advertising specials. Through Your Holiday Promotions, local merchants can instead display special travel product in a central marketplace where anyone can review their offers, still with no middlemen or transaction fees.

Reaching locals through the WHL Group
Your Holiday Promotion has also joined forces with the WHL Group, the largest local-travel company in the world. Already having worked with Ghazal and his team for many years, the WHL Group jumped at the idea of assisting small local suppliers, an ethic in keeping with everything the WHL Group does, and adding a new channel to market for them.

“Wahid Ghazal and his team have an amazing knowledge of running travel businesses and have always been extremely professional in the way they do things, a level of diligence we know they will bring to Your Holiday Promotion,” remarked Len Cordiner, CEO of the WHL Group. “When they asked if we would like to team up with them on this idea, we liked it so much that we have taken some equity in the company and will work with them as one of the WHL Group companies, providing both technical and marketing support.”

“In our experience in the travel industry, every day we see interesting promotions coming in from local suppliers all around the world,” concluded Ghazal. “These are not the big multinational tour operators and travel wholesalers/retailers who dominate the airwaves, but smaller local providers who, in many cases, are suppliers to the bigger groups but earn very little from them. Your Holiday Promotion offers these local suppliers a chance to sell directly to travelers, without the middlemen, so that you get great deals and they earn a little more themselves. It’s win-win… unless you are one of the large middlemen of course!”

Read the complete post on WHL Group’s The Travel Word blog

The Sacred Valley of Cusco, Peru. Photo courtesy of Jessica Festa

During a trip to Cusco in Peru, I was lucky enough to take an Urban Adventure tour with Intrepid Travel. Their Sacred Valley Tour takes you to the famous area and allows you to have a very local experience – visiting a market, tasting Chicha beer, trying local village activities, and eating typical foods. In fact, Chocla con Queso – a corn on the cob with enormous kernals and topped with cheese and chili sauce – is my new favorite food.

Sacred Valley, or Wilma Mayu as the Incas called it in catchua, is named after its Sacred Valley River. Driving through, you’ll see beautiful mountain landscapes with colorful crops and terrace farming, which the Incas invented due to their high elevation. Because of this, the major crops are corn, potatoes, and quinoa, which come in many varieties and can be sampled on the tour in many ways.

The first stop of the tour was the Pisaq Market, the biggest market in Cusco. People come from hours away on Sundays to attend church and buy and sell goods. Our guide, Hermando, led us around and showed us the different handicrafts, foods, herbs, and spices. We got to sample mana, a local corn-based cereal, and see a demonstration of mineralized colors being used to paint and dye wool. You can also see locals dressed in authentic dress for the Sunday church procession.

Continue reading this post on the Jessie on a Journey blog

This month we were inspired to learn that the residents of a remote Swiss valley community have voted against receiving tens of millions of pounds each in favour of preserving their cultural heritage and environment.

The incredible vote was cast by the valley’s 450 inhabitants in April (2012) after it was discovered that their area was sitting on a goldmine worth at least $1.2 billion.

Whilst some locals were less convinced by the decision, the majority of folk in the Medel Valley voted against the retirement-plans-changing sum of money in favour of regional conservation.

“The money would have been nice,” said 17-year-old Nicole Venzin. “But what sort of future would we have if we ruined the environment?”

Well said, Nicole.

Read the original article on the Much Better Adventures blog

British walkers at the Beyazit homestay explore a new path in Turkey

The first British walkers have returned from exploring over 110 kilometres of the Abraham’s Path segment just opened in Turkey. They stayed in homes that have never before welcomed international visitors and followed the path through remote Kurdish and Arabic villages to the oldest religious sites in the world.

The 105-mile (170-kilometre) walking route has been set up by local people in the region, under the guidance of Abraham’s Path Initiative. It takes the walker to ancient sites, such as the recently excavated Gobekli Tepe, Sogmatar and the Shrine of Jethro and ends in Sanliurfa (Urfa), a town legendary as the birthplace of Abraham and once part of the famous Silk Route on the border of the Roman and Persian empires. On the way it passes through remote rural villages some of which are opening their doors for the first time to western visitors.

The five Britons, from London and Leeds, experienced a way of life little changed since biblical times and the earliest agricultural settlements of man.

“This was a pioneering experience for everyone involved,” said Alison Tanik, the inspiration behind the new path and the village home-stays. Originally from Burton-on-Trent, Alison now lives with her two young children in the Kurdish village of Yuvacali from where she runs a local tourism business to encourage visitors to her adopted homeland.

“We have established home-stays here in Yuvacali but this new walk extends our activities over a much wider area. We are looking forward to hearing how guests and hosts alike responded to the experience.”

See the original article on the UK Friends of Abraham’s Path website

[Editor's note: This impressive slideshow touches on a lot that is at the heart of Local Travel, especially the Local Travel values.]

Welcome to the Marae in Te Papa, Wellington, New Zealand. Photo courtesy of Anna Pollock

While I also subscribe to the importance of the journey and, where possible, would prefer to travel slowly and savour the transition from the familiar to the unknown, most times I have to fly.

Then I stop being a traveler and, instead, become a producer of air passenger miles and carbon; a unit of yield as far as the airline is concerned; and a human piece of baggage that doesn’t have the benefit of being placed on a conveyor belt!

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The biggest tragedy of modern, mass industrial tourism is that it has completely missed the point – the essence of travel is about being changed by our experience of unique places – yet, in our earnest attempts to standardize, homogenize, and render efficient or convenient, we have sucked the life blood, the juice, and, worse still, the mystery out of places.

An indigenous person will tell you that the land on which you stand is sacred. Their individual identity is shaped by their relationship with all aspects of the place they call home: the relationship they treasure with their ancestors and, in turn, the relationship those ancestors had with the place. Their presence also changed the place because all beings – whether perceived as sentient or not – are in a dialogue, a dance of vibration. So your presence will also affect this place and, if you are awake, aware and alert, you will let it change you.

Hence my assertion: all travel is local. Despite the act of getting there, all travelers do eventually arrive at a locality and experience its uniqueness.

And if all travel is local, then ideally all hosts should be indigenous in the deepest sense of the word….

Continue reading this article on the Conscious.Travel website

The Earth Day Network has once again taken on the ambitious goal of registering one billion environmentally friendly actions throughout the globe.

Since the very first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, over 20 million Americans from all walks of life have contributed to major environmental accomplishments, such as pressuring government leaders for the passage of the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act and many other groundbreaking environmental laws.

Today, the Earth Day Network is thriving with over 22,000 partners in 192 countries to broaden, diversify and mobilize the environmental movement. Each year, over 1 billion people participate in Earth Day activities, making it the largest civic observance in the world.

For 2012, the Earth Day Network is again hosting “A Billion Acts of Green®” with the ambitious goal of registering another one billion environmentally friendly actions in preparation for the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development happening in Rio de Janeiro in June, 2012 (Rio+20).

At the event, the Earth Day Network plans to show world leaders that people are willing to stand up and be counted for the sake of our planet and the longevity of our species.

The Earth Day Network will also participate in helping to secure political commitment for more sustainable development, assess progress toward internationally agreed commitments and continue to address new and unforeseen challenges.

Continue reading this article at TerraCurve.com on their blog