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Top five picks for community-based tourism accommodation in sub-equatorial Africa

Nothing beats the experience of staying with locals and supporting their local communities. The WHL Group puts forward here five of its favourite community-based accommodation initiatives in Africa.

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WHL Group Supports Wild Asia’s 2010 Responsible Tourism Awards

The WHL Group is this year’s global media partner for Wild Asia’s 2010 Responsible Tourism Awards. Now in their fifth year, the Awards are part of Wild Asia’s Responsible Tourism Initiative

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whl.travel photo of the week: The Pentecost Jump, Vanuatu

Much has been written about the island of Pentecost (part of the Vanuatu archipelago) and its yearly ritual of death-defying land jumps performed in the south of the island in celebration of the yam harvest.

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OPINION: The Travel 3.0 Era

As I look at the evolution of travel, we are at the leading edge of what I would call Travel 3.0. Travel 1.0 was about the travel professionals and travel experts telling us about the great things to see and do.

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10 #whltravel Tweeps Twittering

Inspired by a post ‘10 #Travel Tweeps Twittering‘ published on the travelers notebook earlier in the month, we bring you another 10 photos of twitter users and their computers.

@Grayline_Cabo [shared]

@Grayline_Cabo [shared]

@GoLocalTravel

@whltravelblog

@TravelTbilisi

@BrisbaneDayTour

@lcordiner

@JenAston

@peterfabricius

@staycapetown

All #whltravel tweeters can be found in the whl.travel list.

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Tequila, Dia Cinco

NOTES FROM THE FIELD: The end of a busy working week in Tequila, Mexico.  Today was really more of a catch-up day. Catching up on other responsibilities I have within whl.travel and a recap on what we’ve learned in the week so far.

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Turning tourism development into a social enterprise

There’s a great chapter in ‘The Undercover Economist‘ by Tim Harford titled ‘Why Poor Countries Are Poor’. He talks about his visit to Douala, Cameroon, ‘the Armpit of Africa’ at the end of 2001, which in 1999 was listed by Transparency International as one of the most corrupt countries in the world.  He also talks about why development projects implemented by aid agencies can often fail, using Elinor Ostrom’s study of irrigation in Nepal as an example.

He explains why relying on business to pull countries like this out of poverty is of little use when corruption penetrates to the government level:

“There’s no point investing in a business because the government will not protect you against thieves. (So, you might as well become a thief.) There’s no point in paying your phone bill because nobody can successfully take you to court (so there’s no point being a phone company). There’s no point getting an education because jobs are handed out on merit (and in any case, you can’t borrow money for school fees because the bank cannot collect on the loan, and the government doesn’t provide good schools). There’s no point setting up an import business because customs officers will be the ones to benefit (and so there is little trade, and so the customs office is under-funded and looks even harder for bribes).”

Where businesses can function though, dealing with them as a business and providing them with a way that they can afford to invest in their own success and tap a new market seems like a far more effective approach for generating social change than simply instigating isolated donor funded projects.  This doesn’t mean giving them handouts, but an opportunity to enter the marketplace and purchase services.  It means that cash-rich countries are tasked with innovating new ways to do business with cash-poor countries.  An interesting article was written in the Guardian last week titled ‘Brain Food: Forget the Harvard MBA – learn from Africa‘.  In it Indian entrepreneur C.K. Prahalad is quoted as saying:

“If we stop thinking of the poor as victims and start recognising them as creative entrepreneurs and value-conscious consumers, a whole new world of opportunity will open up.”

I think this is an interesting approach, and is in fact one that WHL Consulting has recently taken with its latest tourism development initiative named Project:Exposure. Designed for small and medium sized tourism enterprises, the project takes room nights in exchange for services.

Small tourism business can afford to invest in their success

Overcoming obstacles / Photo by Stephen Chapman

Every participant gets a complete audit of their existing tourism products, professionally written content, photographs, marketing material, a completely spherical 360° immersive tour of the area and a website that has full online booking functionality. Participants are also given the opportunity to view first hand the benefits and effects of these services through seminars conducted by WHL Consulting on the dynamics and significance of the Internet and e-commerce.

The idea is to work with a local sponsor so that Project:Exposure can deliver essential e-commerce tools and training to the small and medium sized tourism enterprises with little knowledge, experience or presence in this area.  The services are all offered to businesses at a significantly subsidized rate by working with a local sponsor or donor agency. Participants are not asked to pay cash for the services, but instead a newly developed Tourism Development Bank has been created to take their payment in room nights, which will be sold through the WHL Group network.

The WHL Group made its first transition from development work into the social enterprise field way back in 2006 when whl.travel was transformed from a World Bank project to a private company by a visionary CEO, Len Cordiner; and more recently it has continued along that path with its ongoing tourism development work conducted by WHL Consulting, led by CEO Zachary Rozga.

Supporting the World Heritage Site of Tequila, Mexico

Project:Exposure has already been rolled out in 4 destinations in South Africa with the support of the South African Business Trust, and is now being made available to small businesses in the World Heritage Site of Tequila, Mexico through the support of the Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF), a fund administered by the Inter-American Development Bank.

The recent rise of social enterprise is all about stimulating fresh thinking, new ideas and solutions to the world’s problems from anyone dynamic, creative and highly motivated enough to make something happen. There have been some incredible success stories and Project:Exposure looks set to be another one.

Our Contributing Editor Michelle Rodrigues will be in Tequila, Mexico to help with the roll out of this project.  We look forward to receiving some updates from the field as things progress.

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In memory of Chrystel Cancel

On 8 February, the body of Chrystel Cancel was positively identified, nearly a month after the devastating earthquakes in Haiti levelled the Hotel Montana on top of her. She had only had just arrived in Port-au-Prince.

Chrystel Cancel

Chrystel Cancel grew up in Toulouse, France. After earning both a Bachelors and Masters degree in Business Administration from the University of Toulouse, Chrystel graduated from the University of Paris in 1999 with another Masters in Political Science, specialising in developing countries. A passion for travel, adventure and international development led her to Washington, DC, where she obtained a Masters in Tourism Administration from the George Washington University in 2006.

Chrystel spent the majority of her career as a dedicated sustainable tourism consultant leaving her lasting legacy on a variety of projects around the world.

We will never be able to give voice to the thousands of people Chrystel touched, both directly and indirectly. We hope that a few short remarks from some of the people with whom she worked will impart a sense of her spirit, her character… and the empty space we now feel in her absence.

See below for short tributes to Chrystel from:

• Len Cordiner, CEO of the WHL Group
• Zachary Rozga, CEO of WHL Consulting
• Simon Jones, Vice President of Solimar International
• Sandrine-Pia Casto, General Manager of Tucaya Panama

Chrsytel leaves behind her parents, a brother and her fiancé. Shortly after the earthquake and loss of contact with Chrystel, her fiancé travelled to Haiti to add his hands to the search for her, a heartbreaking story told in an interview with NPR.

George Washington University has devoted a special page to the memory of Chrystel.

Chrystel’s friends have also created a Facebook page through which feelings, thoughts, memories and pictures of her can be shared.

Chrystel’s remains, now back in France, will be interred in Pamiers cemetery of the village of Escosse on 13 February at 4pm local time.

From Len Cordiner, CEO of the WHL Group, on behalf of the extended WHL Group network:

My first contact with Chrystel was a coffee we arranged in Washington, DC, late one afternoon around three years ago. Chrystel was doing some work for the World Bank at the time and was keen to learn more about the WHL Group, having had an introduction through Zachary Rozga and Jodi McKeeman to our consulting activities in Africa.

The coffee stretched out to becoming a dinner as Chrystel explored possibilities for doing more business together. Subsequently I met Chrystel on several DC trips, where each time she briefed me on what she was up to and introduced me to people she thought would be interested in what we were doing. Not only did Chrystel share our vision for a more sustainable future for travel, she wanted to be part of the journey. Before long she teamed up with her friend Sandrine-Pia Casto to become Tucaya Panama, the whl.travel franchisee in Panama. Not long after launching this site, Chrystel and Sandrine had their first blog article up highlighting the special work being doneSupporting Local and Responsible Travel on Panama’s Gobernadora Island.

The last time I met with Chrystel was in August 2009 in Brazil at the WHL Group regional meeting for the Americas. As always, Chrystel was busy networking and bring to my attention all those franchisees she felt were doing exceptional things, as well as ideas she had for how we could do things better.

In fact after that meeting she started working actively to build a new program in the whl.travel network, where we would give more prominence to the local community and environmental projects our franchisees were driving. She was very keen to run a competition amongst franchisees in the whl.travel network to surface the best examples of local social entrepreneurship. In her last communication to the project team in December, she wanted to get things underway but said she was going to be busy in Haiti in January… so it would have to wait.

We will all miss her very much.

From Zachary Rozga, CEO of WHL Consulting

Chrystel was a good friend and an important colleague to WHL Consulting. Jodi McKeeman and I, cofounders of WHL Consulting, first met Chrystel while in graduate school at George Washington University, where we all studied sustainable tourism development together.

After graduation, Jodi and I left for Africa and Chrystel made her way to London, but we remained in touch. In January 2008, WHL Consulting landed a project with the government of Lesotho, which was the nexus of the Market Access Program. The problem was that none of the materials that were promised for the Market Access Training Seminars had been developed. So Jodi and I convinced Chrystel to come help us create material and then deliver the courses in Lesotho.

Those two months that Chrystel spent with us in Africa were some of the most random and wild months we had in our entire 3.5 years in Africa. Just a few of the highlights: we got stuck on a plane with the Prime Minister of Lesotho, Jodi and Chrystel danced with the King and Queen and we were invited for a VIP wine tasting in the laboratory with the owner of the largest wine farm in the Cape Winelands. More recently Chrystel was slated to begin working with WHL Consulting on the rollout of our pilot program with the MIF IDB.

She will be sorely missed. Every time we run a Market Access Training Seminar, we will most definitely pay tribute to Chrystel Cancel.

From Simon Jones, Vice President of Solimar International on behalf of the whole Solimar family

During 2009, Chrystel tirelessly led Solimar’s initiative to develop the Bocas Sustainable Tourism Alliance in Panama, a destination management organization and tourism information center dedicated to promoting Bocas del Toro’s natural and cultural attractions and an organization that will promote Chrystel’s passion for community-run sustainable tourism long into the future.

In January 2010, Chrystel was part of a team deployed to Haiti to assess the tourism opportunities and needs in the north of the country in an effort to promote greater economic opportunities for Haitians. She died dedicated to improving the lives of others and making this world a better place for us all.

Chrystel resided in Panama City, Panama, and was a valuable member and friend of the Solimar team. Her legacy will be remembered, but she will be missed by all that knew her.

From Sandrine-Pia Casto, General Manager of Tucaya Panama

One of the Tucayettes is not physically with us anymore. A passionate, restless worker, persevering and patient – all those things could be said about Chrystel Cancel. The projects she was involved with and those she wanted to pursue make this world a better place. The last thing we need is to let lights like her extinguish. We will try our best to carry on her legacy and with the spirit she has left at Bocas and Gobernadora Island. Chrystel, you won’t be forgotten.

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South Africa tourism development with a long term view

The world’s biggest sporting event will kick off in Johannesburg, South Africa on 11 June 2010. The FIFA World Cup will attract international travellers from all around the globe to the Rainbow Nation.

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Urban Adventures Open a Whole New World

On 1 October 2009, Urban Adventures opened a whole new world to travellers yearning to unlock the secrets of some of their favourite urban centres. A global range of city-based tours, Urban Adventures is a franchise-based network of local tour operators specialising in high-quality experiential tour and activity services.