----- Tourism---- Human encounters towards a common humanity

1. -----Tourism---- Human encounters towards a common humanity

2. Our goalposts for this session— • Lets first scan the tourism arena. • Next, we shall look at what the ideals of tourism are • Then, we shall critique current policy and practice in tourism and its impacts on the countries of the South. • Finally, we will examine options/strategies for the YMCA to pursue in promoting patterns of tourism that will promote true human encounters and advance the ideal of a world built on mutuality, understanding, peace and justice for all.

3. Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent. 3.879 billion people (60% of the Worlds Peoples) live in Asia plus an estimated 35,426,995 people in Oceania in 2011 A welcoming attitude, food, breathtaking landscape, heritage sites, multiple religious and cultural expressions make Asia and the Pacific region a viable and attractive tourism region

4. 204 million tourist arrivals in Asia-Pacific in 2010. TOP TEN DESTINATIONS • 1China55.67 million • 2Malaysia24.58 million • 3Hong Kong, China20.09 million • 4Thailand15.84 million • 5Macau, China11.93 million • 6Singapore9.16 million • 7South Korea8.80 million • 8Japan8.61 million • 9Indonesia5.91 million • 10Australia5.89 million

5. 50 popular destinations in Asia Pattaya Lahore Delhi Boracay Island Ko Samui Melaka Karachi Bangalore Jaipur Islamabad Guangzhou Chiang Mai Kyoto Kolkata (Calcutta) New Delhi Phnom Penh Hat Yai Kathmandu Hyderabad Taipei Pulau Langkawi Kota Kinabalu Chennai (Madras) Osaka Johor Bahru Cebu City Makati Agra Tagaytay Baguio Kuta Bali Xi'an Krabi KuchingT Bangkok Singapore Kuala Lumpur Beijing Seoul Phuket Tokyo Manila Ho Chi Minh City Shanghai Mumbai Penang Goa Jakarta Hanoi

6. Tourism is rapidly growing • International tourism receipts are estimated to have reached US$ 919 billion worldwide (693 billion euros), up from US$ 851 billion (610 billion euros) in 2009, corresponding to an increase in real terms of 4.7%. • Asia-Pacific received more than $ 600 billion from tourism according to 2005 statistics. (Up from $ 2 billion in 1975) – a quantum leap. • Forecasts suggest that by 2020 some 500 or more million visitors will visit Asia. (Source UN-World Tourism organization)

7. Phenomenal growth towards 2020

8. Potentials of tourism to communities Tourism is one of the most effective ways of redistributing wealth, by moving money into local economies from other parts of the country and overseas. It brings income into a community that would otherwise not be earned.

9. Tourism brings in jobs and spending Employment may be in services such as tour guides, managerial positions; or in supporting industries like food production, street vending, or retail suppliers. Increased spending in the community generated from tourism businesses can directly and indirectly promote the viability of local businesses.

10. Economic diversification is a by-product of tourism Economic diversification is, for many communities, an insurance policy against hard times. By offering an additional means of income, tourism can support a community when a traditional industry is under financial pressure, particularly where that community relies heavily on a single industry.

11. Farmers markets • The popularity of farmers’ markets is increasing. Visits to farms and farmers’ markets, fruit picking and agricultural farm accommodation are important activities that prompt development in rural areas. • Farmer’s markets showcase local produce and products • Encourage visitors from other areas, provide distribution opportunities for small businesses • Economic development as money is spent locally

12. Tourism has added value Infrastructure including roads, parks, and other public spaces can be developed and improved both for visitors and local residents through increased tourism.

13. Social benefits Social benefits • Community identity and pride can be generated through tourism. A positive sense of community identity can be reinforced and tourism can encourage local communities to maintain their traditions and identity.

14. Environmental consciousness through tourism Providing financial or in-kind support for the conservation of the local environment and natural resources will enhance the reputation of any tourism business. Authentic ecotourism, can place value on the conservation of natural resources through Recognition of their importance to visitor experiences and their economic value to the local community.

15. Critiquing tourism practice Some questions • Who benefits from Tourism? • Are there negative impacts? Can these be reversed? • Who are the most vulnerable sections when a tourism enterprise gets started? • Is tourism smokeless!!?? Or, is it another pollutive industry? • Is the sacred for sale? • How can tourism promote prosperity while remaining sustainable? • How can human, social, and cultural rights be protected? • How can tourism serve the cause of promoting peace and prosperity? • Is another tourism possible?

16. Modern day tourism as the story of distorted life-styles Lets dispassionately consider how: • Tourism is often about abused hospitality by travellers • Tourism is often about unscrupulous people/profiteers whose only goal is to make profits • Tourism is often about disregard for vulnerable women, young girls and boys forced into prostitution because the alternative may simply be poverty or hunger. • Tourism is often the unconscionable invasion of nature reserves, protected areas, wild life habitats, rain forests, bird sanctuaries.

17. Modern day tourism as the story of dehumanizing others • Tourism is often the story of people deceived by drugs, gambling, consumerism, unrestrained and ruthless competition, and the eventual sense of powerlessness of the victims. • Tourism is often the venal displacement of farmers, fisher folk, indigenous persons only to make way for the arrival of a tourist enterprise which could take the form of a five-star hotel, a golf course, or a new amusement park. • Tourism is often the question of overworked, underpaid workers.

18. Why is tourism an important arena for the YMCA mission? “Shorter working hours are becoming the general rule everywhere and provide greater opportunities for large number of people. This leisure time must be properly employed to refresh the spirit and improve the health of mind and body...by means of travel to broaden and enrich people’s minds by learning from others.” (Second Vatican Council)

19. Seeking an ethics of leisure • In 1969, at a World Consultation on Tourism. Professor James Glasse, called for Christians to address issues of tourism and posed the challenge of evolving an ‘ethics of leisure’ and underlined how it was pertinent to draw up the parameters of a ‘leisure ethic’ just as much as there is the demand for a work ethic. He asserted that all human energies exist to serve God and celebrate God’s gifts of life to humankind. Leisure activities including tourism must similarly be subject to God’s rules and ways.

20. Another tourism is possible- Another tourism is an imperative!! • Tourism is like the sheep you see in this picture. It is as white as it is black! • It is human beings who design and create the architecture of tourism. • Transforming tourism is our responsibility.

21. Responsible Tourism – A question and arena for mission?? As a Christian Movement committed to transformatory processes that favour justice in social relations, the YMCA must act decisively, creatively, and urgently to bring in new patterns of tourism which seek the ideal of fostering global citizenship. Imagine a tourism that sets as its goal a ‘one world-different people’ – the celebration of diversity and uniqueness of the human community. Each with distinct gifts to offer to a common humanity.

22. Responsible tourism is not only desirable but possible when: • The traveller and the host meet on equal terms each valuing the other’s role with respect and mutuality • The traveller sets out to understand and absorb positive facets of his/her host’s culture, religion, and traditions • The traveller celebrates discovering the unknown • The traveller shares resources (as in an authentic pro-poor tourism approach) which affirm that it is an unjust world and the poverty is often a result of affluence. • Host communities shape the tourism product and benefit from the activity Responsible tourism applies standards and ethics that are reliably sustainable, and protective of peoples and community rights.

23. The YMCA enters the arena of tourism with a massive tally of social capital • We are a global network and are inter-connected – we do not need to go anywhere to make connections. They are there for the asking. • Our members are travellers who can fairly easily be prompted to make the shift from self-satisfying leisure tourism to responsible tourism within the precincts or under the aegis of the YMCA. • Many YMCAs have the infrastructure required for tour operations • Most YMCAs possess the capacities to organize the ‘tours less taken’- creative encounter oriented alternative tours. • YMCAs have access to grassroots communities and identify options which open up new/alternate spaces and ways of seeing and experiencing reality • YMCAs, in general, can mobilize a wide array of stakeholders in the community to become involved in creating new spaces for a community-based, people-oriented experience • YMCAs have a public image and a brand name that can compete in the market.

24. Strategic Choices New Frontiers-New strategies!! Creating Alternatives-in-Tourism The YMCA should pattern a constructive and proactive profile of tourism through actively working to model tourism initiatives that are community based, just, participatory, culturally sensitive, gender just, child friendly, protective of human rights and ecologically sustainable.

25. Being the mediator between the tourist with the community The YMCA’s strategy would depend on an appraisal on a SWOT analysis – knowing what YMCA’s strengths and possibilities are. The next step is to harness the social and institutional assets and: • Identify areas in which the YMCA can engage • Develop capacities to ensure it handles the role in a professional manner.

26. Re-gearing our options The mediatory role of the YMCA will need to have well defined goals/approaches: • To gain a comprehensive of ongoing practices in the tourist industry. • To identify niche markets that give the YMCA a distinct identity in it’s own tourism initiatives. • To identify and develop tourism products that are unique and special to what tourists offer. • To prepare local communities to be hosts – guides, food services, transportation services, etc. • To develop marketing strategies that make the YMCA known as another player in the tourism arena.

27. Knowing the market space • The YMCA must carefully study the ‘market spaces in tourism’ with a view to identify where it can intervene and make an impact. • Hence it is a question of: • Knowing the terrain we want to enter and creating innovative packages that can be used with some degree of flexibility for the particular group of travellers – a niche market. • Creating and developing a narrative that is analytical and expressive of the truth and, moreover which is challenging and exciting. • Developing the marketing tools and bringing into play the global network that the YMCA has.

28. Option 1 – YMCA as a Tourism Monitor The YMCA could serve as a ‘Tourism Monitor’ in destinations where the negative impacts are mediated and those who are victimized by tourism impacts are assisted through solidarity actions.

29. Option 2 – YMCA as Alternative Information Centre • YMCAs could serve as Information Centres where tourists can visit to be familiarised with and register for alternate tours. • It could be a centre where tourists are introduced to a Code of Ethics which the APAY can develop as a common set of guidelines. • It could be ‘alternative ‘information’ centre. It is important for the YMCA Centres to offer positive perspectives about the people and places they visit – a location where the facts and myths about the destination are differentiated. Such a centre may carry cultural literature which would interest a tourist.

30. Option 3 –Community Based Tourism models. This becomes crucial because the industry has taken away the face of the local host. It is important to organize communities to be able to offer home stays, small businesses, transport and food outlets, handicraft locations (manufacturing and marketing), promotion of local vegetables-dairy-poultry products and every other economic area which will enhance the conditions of the host. Strengthening the economic conditions of host communities will render them less vulnerable.

31. Option 4 –Combating the evils of sex tourism • Protection of women’s and child rights are Challenge 21 mandates. So, we have an obligation to do our part • Moreover, it is one organization which unites men and women in community service. • When men assume responsibility to work in solidarity with women, the movement against sex tourism would gain ground. So, the YMCA can well be cutting edge on this issue. • The YMCA can lobby to influence media images which reduce women and children to sex objects. • YMCA can work to take pre-emptive action by working on economic projects in the very locations from where women are recruited to come (often innocently) into tourism spaces and become sex work • The YMCA can lobby to influence media images which reduce women and children to sex objects.

32. Option 5 –Protecting children in tourism • Protecting the child in tourism must emerge as a priority. • Paedophilia has become an essential part of tourism and many travelers are in search of young girls and boys as sex partners. • The struggle against paedophilia, for example, requires people’s participation and even internationalising the cases in cooperation with organizations like ECPAT. • Fourth, the YMCA can lobby to influence media images which reduce women and children to sex objects. (The credentials of the YMCA are very suited to such work.)

33. Option 6 – Tourism and Ecology • Tourism is recreational in nature and water sports are so commonly advertised. Golf courses, for example, eat into resources much needed for cultivation, and common use by residents of towns and villages that host tourists. • 5-star hotel consumption standards are prohibitive and are always at the cost of local needs. Similarly, tourist rushes create heightened garbage problems and waste issues. • Major hotels are the biggest violators of environmental standards – in coastal areas; they inconsiderately spill sewage into nearby fields and into the sea. • In small islands and coastal areas, where ecology is extremely fragile, the mere spillage of solid and liquid waste can create higher seal levels over years and cause flooding and disasters. • The YMCA must work in concert with competent organizations to campaign against environmental abuse in tourism.

34. Roles of sending YMCAs

35. Role of host/mediating YMCAs

36. Advancing the tourism ideal • Tourism can promote authentic human and social development, thanks to the growing opportunity that it offers for sharing of goods, for rich cultural exchanges, for approaching natural artistic beauty, and for an undertaking of different traditions. • In order for this to be possible, a serious preparation is necessary - one that avoids improvisation and superficiality. It is important to develop a persuasive program of education for values of tourism in relation to and in defence of the communities and natural cultural goods of the hosts. Only then will the new marketplace of tourism and leisure become resource for true human enrichment for all.

37. Wisdom from China • “The farmer hopes for rain, the traveller for fine weather”! • The man on horseback knows nothing of the toil of the traveller on foot.

38. Thank you for your attention