Why Bhutan IS the First Conscious Travel Destination

I recently fulfilled a dream of 35+ years – to visit the Kingdom of Bhutan where its enlightened, conscious leader and 4th King had bravely pioneered the concept of “Gross National Happiness.” I was given the privilege of giving the opening keynote at PATA’s conference on Adventure Travel and Responsible Tourism – the speech is on slide share here.

As readers of this blog know, Conscious Travel is an embryonic, emerging concept still taking form. We are encouraging debate on the qualities and characteristics of Conscious Hosts who can attract Conscious Travelers – those visitors who are awake and aware of their impact on the destination and who are committed to maximizing net benefits to it. So the concept of what makes for a “Conscious Travel Destination” is still in its formative stages. (As it develops it will support and integrate the principles underlying responsible, sustainable, geo, eco, fair, good tourism). 

Even though Bhutan’s tourism economy is very young, it shines as a beacon of hope exemplifying what a Conscious Travel Destination could be and here’s why:

$65 of the daily tarriff goes to provide education & healthcare

1. Well-being. In Bhutan, tourism is recognized as one means towards achieving and sustaining the well-being of its citizens. As a consequence, tourism is not just about growing GDP, or increasing volume. All policies with respect to its development are viewed through the lens of 72 Gross National Happiness Indicators based on the four pillars of GNH (ecological balance; cultural vitality, sustainable, equitable economy and good governance). As Bhutan is still listed as one of the Less Developed Countries of the world, with an estimated 23% of its population living below the poverty line, it needs to develop its economy in order to improve its well-being and tourism is the fourth contributor to GDP. Despite these economic pressures, Bhutan is committed to pacing the growth of tourism to ensure that it doesn’t diminish cultural or environmental values.

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2. Place: The Bhutanese people and their leaders intrinsically recognize that Bhutan (like any other country, or region) is unique and its value lies in its location, geology, geography, landscape, history and living culture. Because they value themselves and the place they call home, they have never discounted its value and taken sensible steps to ensure that tourism is developed at a pace that doesn’t undermine its culture. 

Up until the early 1990s, a tourist quota was imposed in addition to a minimum daily tariff. All visitors are required to plan their travel with the assistance of a Bhutanese tour operator who arranges and supplies accommodation, food, transportation and guiding services for a minimum daily fee of US$250. Of this fee, a $65 royalty is paid directly to the Government to fund health and education. Every visitor has personal access to a trained, educated, English speaking guide whose intent and purpose is to ensure that the visitor experience is transformative. 

The daily tariff ( US$250 per day) has not only controlled the pace of growth but has shown visitors how their spending directly affects the quality of life experienced by their hosts. 

Bhutan’s recognition of the “power of place” and its commitment to expressing its unique spirit is perfectly reflected in their choice of branding “Bhutan – Happiness is a Place” – a tagline which is a truthful distillation of what Bhutan is all about and what the country means to its people.

3. Limits: Thanks to their love of their land and the spiritual values that shape their mindset and actions, the Bhutanese understand and respect the concept of limits. Built into their values is the notion of sufficiency, fairness and service. The Prime Minister of Bhutan, Lyonchhoen Jigmi Y. Thinley, defines happiness in the context of GNH as follows:

“We know that true abiding happiness cannot exist while others suffer, and comes only from serving others, and living in harmony with nature.”



No sane person would deny the right of the Bhutanese to lift their people out of poverty and increase the quality of their lives. Nor do westerners like me have any right to impose our nostalgia and grief at the loss of so much cultural diversity elsewhere in the world on the inhabitants of this little country. But the healthy sense of self worth exhibited by the Bhutanese suggest to me that this is a living, dynamic culture capable of balancing the need to both preserve, conserve and adapt.

Lonely Planet's Map of Bhutan

Located in between two of the most populous, fastest growing economies of the world (India and China), it would be tempting to open the gates and maximize visitor volume. Instead, Bhutan has increased the minimum daily tariff (from US$200 to US$250) and set itself a modest growth target of 100,000 visitors by 2015. Its first priority is to ensure that the existing, active 320 Bhutanese tour operators and 120 accommodation suppliers are operating healthy sustainable businesses and contributing to the vitality of its communities.
4. Value: Bhutan tries to give its guests good value while ensuring that tourism generates net value to its citizenry. The minimum daily tariff that all operators must adhere to makes it difficult, if not impossible, for price discounting to be used to gain market share. Instead, the inbound tour operators and suppliers of accommodation, transport and guiding services, must compete on the basis of service quality. Customer satisfaction, as expressed to the inbound tour operator, provides the “feedback loop” which determines which suppliers will be used the next time.
5. Local & Authentic: Visitors to Bhutan can be assured that their visit benefits locals as the inbound airline, all accommodation, and all inbound tour operations are locally owned and managed. Most of the food served is locally grown and prepared. (Bhutan intends and is working hard to ensure that its agricultural sector is 100% organic). Its attractions are primarily natural sites (trekking & wildlife viewing) and cultural/spiritual sites (monasteries, fortresses; memorials) or activities (Festivals) that are locally funded and managed. Bhutan is a living culture that invests in developing the artistic skills of its young.
6. A Place That Cares: for such a young country (Bhutan only switched from a theocracy to modern, parliamentary democracy in 2008), it demonstrates a remarkable maturity that reflects its cultural/spiritual values of service, compassion, personal responsibility and caring. Three examples support this observation.

The Host as Change Agent.

There is growing recognition of the role that business can and must play in achieving well-being. Karma Tshiteem, Secretary of the GNH Commission highlighted at a recent ‘Happiness & Economic Development’ conference that



“It is an urgent need that we engage the profit-driven business sector, and that we make the GNH discussion relevant to this sector. Otherwise, we’ll have a very powerful force working against us.”

The tourism community in Bhutan has not been slow to respond. At the time of Karma Tshiteem’s statement, two of Bhutan’s more innovative tourism companies, Yanpghel Adventure Travel and Hotel Zhiwa Ling, had already embarked on a GNH in Business project. This program:

Lobby of the Zhiwa Ling Hotel

“offers a tool to bring sane and responsible behaviors into the business sector, which are driven by a genuine intention among the leadership of a business. A GNH Business is nothing less than a powerful change agent within its community with a genuine commitment to serve others…These companies are able to answer clearly and confidently three key questions: 1) What is enough profit for the owners and/or shareholders?; 2) What do we do with the rest?; and 3) How do we spend the rest to increase genuine happiness among our stakeholders?”………

“incorporates everything that a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program would do, plus two important additional components. Firstly, a GNH business not only requires a company to do things better in its relationships with external and internal stakeholders, with their environment and communities – it also requires each individual within a business to become a more evolved human being that can experience and share true and lasting happiness. This means that the key element of GNH that is not normally addressed in CSR programs is a recognition that a transformation is required on an individual level by all the people that make up a business starting from the owners/shareholders to management and general staff.”



The work undertaken by Zhiwa Ling and Yangphel is truly inspiring – fortunately they have also documented their experience in an excellent case study available here.

An Overhaul of the Education System and Focus on Youth
Bhutan is in the third year of a country wide program designed to completely overhaul its education system to ensure the principles and values of community-wide wellbeing i.e., “gross national happiness” are applied. After another international conference that pulled together leading thinkers and practitioners in the field of education, Bhutan defined the kind of citizen they needed as being able to:

• See clearly the interconnected nature of reality
• Understand the full benefits and costs of their actions
• Care deeply for others and their natural world.

When asked in an interview what kind of education he wanted to see ten years later, the Prime Minister responded:

“an education system that is quite different from the conventional factory where specific knowledge and skills are imported to turn out economic animals, thinking only of themselves and working only for themselves. …It would produce graduates who are human beings, that give importance to relationships; students who are eco-literate, analytical in the way they approach issues; people who know their needs and are neither excessive or greedy; who recognize that success is not about the acquisition of wealth but a state of being that comes from giving happiness and well-being to others.”

Since it is the graduates of this education system who will be running Bhutan’s tourism economy in the future, I have every confidence that the country will sustain its position as first Conscious Travel Destination!!

Environmental Care
Bhutan is also committed to maintaining the pristine nature of its natural habitat through careful forestry practices (a permit has to be obtained to cut down a tree and 8 have to be planted in the place of one); 70% of the land area is untouched; and all food production will be organic.

7. Pull not Push: the hallmark of a Conscious Travel Destination is its ability to attract the right customer – the visitor whose values match those of the host. Bhutan isn’t for everybody. Bhutan is for the visitor seeking a unique, and some would say, exotic experience of a vibrant culture expressed in a pristine setting. The Bhutanese appear very comfortable in their own skins; they know who they are and what they value and this comes through in all the media now available to express that identity.

For a country that only got TV and the Internet in 2006, its tourism operators are proving remarkably competent and gifted in digital marketing. 

Because an understanding that all sentient beings are connected and interdependent is an integral to Bhutanese philosophy, the concept of social business or social marketing comes naturally. The Bhutanese tourism community has both the mindset and the social intelligence to operate as a social business and I see no reason why they won’t become leaders in this aspect of tourism management as well.

This post is not meant to imply that all is perfect in Bhutan. The moniker “Shangri-La” will likely do more harm than good. Like many developing countries its population is rising faster than the economy can expand to develop sufficient jobs and unemployment rates among the young are on the increase. Young people are leaving the remote rural villages for the main centre Thimphu leaving the villages and agricultural production to an aging population. The visa/ tariff requirement does not apply to Indian nationals and Indian tour operators are keen to exploit destinations that would appeal to its growing middle class. Even though licenses are required to open a hotel or operate an inbound tour business, their number and capacity currently exceeds current demand so these operations are operating at low levels of occupancy and efficiency. The challenge will be to resist pressure to lower the tariff (institutionalized discounting) or allow construction of attractions and facilities not in keeping with the unique essence of the place.

Given these characteristics, Bhutan is a perfect destination for many “conscious travelers” many of whom are more likely to discover the country through stories about its pursuit of Gross National Happiness than through the traditional wholesaler/retailer channels.

As many of my readers are likely Conscious Travellers, I can thoroughly recommend a vist. So to plan your trip here are some places to start:

Association of Bhutanese Tour Operators

Bhutan Tourism Council

Zhiwa Ling Hotel, Paro

Drukair – the national airline

Patagonia Shows How To Future Proof Your Brand While Being Contrarian

I am pleased to announce that in this blog I have acted sustainably – I have reused, recycled and reduced two excellent blog posts by Marc Stoiber. The first is titled  Business in a Post-Green World  and the second Patagonia Building a Strong Brand Out of Old Clothes.

In the first post. Marc draws from Ogilvy’s research Mainstream Green to identify the reasons why some 82% of Americans have good green intentions but only 16% act on them. Too many years of zealous, finger wagging environmentalists telling everyone what they couldn’t or shouldn’t do has caused the associations pictured below (stolen from Marc’s page, btw).  More recent attempts at suggesting Green is Cool or Chic (a.k.a. Green is the New Black) haven’t yet managed to overcome the emotions of guilt that each of us associate with not living up to our green aspirations.

Six Reasons To Reject Green courtesy of @marcstoiber

Marc wisely suggests that we stop thinking about sustainability and more about future proofing  and to do the latter we must focus on resilience – i.e., the ability to adapt to unforeseen external shocks as it’s likely in this chaotic world that there’ll be no shortage of those. He suggests there are five ways to future proof your brand which I think tie in well with what it takes to be a conscious host (and I’ve paraphrased and taken liberties with the language):

1. Internalise Green – resilient companies won’t brag about being green, they’ll simply get on wit the task of showing they care by respecting the laws of nature and living in harmony with it. . Companies like Nike and Patagonia incorporate sustainability into every business decision but not into the brand. In Conscious Travel, we call this creating places that care.

2. Insight – resilient companies will invest in understanding how the market and context is changing and, more importantly, why it’s changing. Unless you have some understanding of the dynamics and change drivers, you might as well be playing at the roulette table. Companies like Sixth Sense and Virgin, who have been hosting the SLOW Life event in the Maldives understood where the market was going several years ago .

3. Design – Marc suggests: “Good design creates a visceral reaction in people. It conveys beauty while aiding function. It generates
feelings of wonder and drives desire.”  Apple’s products are cool not because Apple promotes them as such – they attract the loyal followers because they are beautiful as well as functional objects that make you want to spend time with your “device.”  Conscious Hosts focus their attention on the customer’s unique experience and endeavour to ensure all aspects of what it means to be human are stimulated and fulfilled showing that they care about the body (sensual pleasure), mind (mental/intellectual curiosity), soul (emotional response) and spirit (meaning). These experiences are sufficiently impactful and meaningful as to be transformative.  There are still few destinations thinking seriously about Experience Design, exceptions being Finland (LEO) and Canada (GMIST & Tourism Cafe).

4. Social Interaction – as pointed out in a previous post, this means more than using various Social Media but designing your entire business and business planning process around interaction between all stakeholders – guests, employees, suppliers and destination hosts. BBMG, the agency that first coined the term “Conscious Consumer” call this the Age of Creativity. The boundaries between guest and hosts, consumer and producer are blurring fast.

5.  Innovation – resilient companies will never sit on their laurels but will be constantly scanning the horizon for the opportunity to stand out or stand for something that differentiates and attracts, By interacting with all their stakeholders and creating cultures in which it is safe to play &  experiment while obsessing about customer delight, they create the conditions for innovative ideas to emerge.

If that wasn’t enough food for thought, Marc’s next post,  on the other hand, Patagonia Building a Strong Brand Out of Old Clothes.suggests that sixth way to futureproof your brand might simply to be contrarian.

Decades before businesses embraced the green movement, Patagonia spearheaded campaigns to use eco-friendly materials and fabrics in its clothing and pioneered sustainable manufacturing practices, turning the outerwear industry on its head.  The result? While most of the world was grappling with the Great Recession, Patagonia had its two best years ever. Sales at the 1,265-person company stood at $315 million in 2009, and Chouinard–still the sole owner–says they’re still growing. This year they’re expected to be near $340 million.

The reason for their success?

1. A commitment to quality gave Patagonia the courage to resist the call of the herd and drop prices when frugality was the buzz word of the time. Instead they became the Rolls-Royce of their product category.  Chouinard didn’t sell out, lower prices and dilute the brand because, to quote: “sometimes, the less you do, the more provocative and true of a leader you are.”
2. An association of quality with durability. Patagonia builds clothes to last. In their most recent initiative, Patagonia has actually asked its customers to reduce unnecessary consumption of its own products. Called the Common Threads Initiative it first asks customers to not buy something if they don’t need it. If they do need it, Patagonia asks that they buy what will last a long time – and to repair what breaks, reuse or resell whatever they don’t wear any more, and, finally, recycle whatever’s truly worn out. Patagonia in turn commits to make products that last, help repair quickly anything that breaks, and recycle the company’s entire product line. To help customers put used clothes back in circulation, Patagonia and eBay Inc. have joined forces to launch a new marketplace for customers to buy and sell used Patagonia gear.

Patagonia saw the deeper shifts that the recession accelerated – in an era of uncertainty and distrust, consumers realized that it made practical sense to become more self sufficient; to take responsibility; to truly value homemade things made with care. They are attracted to companies that can show they share these values.

Marc is right in saying that sustainability needs to be built into the product but not the brand especially when you consider that the word sustain means to prolong or endure. Sustainable products, like Patagonia’s clothes appeal because of their design, quality and durability not because they are green.  Men don’t feel “girly”, the value proposition is easy to understand; their message doesn’t confuse; it’s an easy straightforward purchase; you trust the brand and don’t feel guilty – if anything, the opposite – and that’s worth paying for!

Lessons for Tourism Operators

1. Quality in tourism is directly related to uniqueness and authenticity. The best way to “stand out” is to offer an experience that reflects and celebrates the essence of the place in which you’re situated –  as it is unique, and the end result of 13.5 billion years of evolution, why sell your place as if it were a commodity?  Take the time to research local history, culture and geography so that you can impress that uniqueness on your guests. When a guest wakes up in your hotel, she should know where she is; over the course of her visit all her senses should be engaged in shaping an enduring memory of what made that trip different, memorable, and special. Quality doesn’t have to mean expensive – it  requires imagination and taste not money. Quality in this sense is inextricably tied to authenticity – BE who you ARE. Don’t try to manufacture something bland that emerges from a focus group. Be true to your values.
2. Create memories that last! Travel providers are in the fantasy fulfillment business! Our guests start their trip with a fantasy, a dream of somewhere different; then enjoy an experience and take home memories. The more vivid and positive the memory, the more it will last and be shared. Engage your customers in the kind of conversation that encourages them to share their expectations and personal interests so that you can direct them to events and places most likely to generate the “wow” or OMG (O My God) response that leads to referrals.
3. Make it easy for your guests to share those memories. Every visitor goes home with a collection of photos and videos that they expect to edit and package in order to impress the folks back home. Within days of being back in their routine, they find they haven’t the time and the memory fades. Create and brand slide shows, videos, e-books complete with appropriate music, professional images and short video clips, in which all the guest has to do is insert some of their own pictures to have an immediate but personal memory of their experience. If it looks good and entertains and informs, it will be shared.

Those are my first thoughts about what it means to be contrarian but not my last. What do you think BEING CONTRARIAN might look like in the travel & hospitality sector?

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It’s Not Social Media, It’s Social Business – Do you Care?

Conscious Hosts conduct what we call Conscious Marketing based on an understanding that all business is now Social. There’s a good blog post and discussion from Edelman on what makes a Social Business here and from IBM here. Before we look more closely at what Social Business means, here are five reasons why Social Business is emerging as a concept and practice:

1. Customers now have the power to talk back, to talk with each other; and to attract enormous attention simply through the power of their own creativity. The value of a company is now directly related to the subject and quality of the conversations that take take place about it and determine a reputation. Between 60-80% of all market capitalisation of companies is tied up in intangibles such as brand equity, reputation, human capital,and  intellectual property. Never has it been so important, or, for that matter, so easy to LISTEN.

source: Marketing Works

2. There’s finally a recognition that companies aren’t things - corporate entities only with legal rights and no responsibilities – but collections of human beings keeping company with each other and working to a common purpose. As Simon Sinek has said: 100% of employees are people; 100% of customers are people; 100% of investors are people; 100% of supliers are people etc. So it’s not surprising to see that companies behave like the people who work in them.

Some companies seem to be super cheerful, energetic, happy, passionate and devoted to serve; others are rigid, buraucratic, stiff, slow, and affect a bored disinterest. We still talk about them as “brands” but what we mean is personality.

This trend, by the way, is sometimes described as “the humanisation of business” – as if there ever was a time when companies were run by robots. (That’s in the future not in the past). So instead of companies fretting about transactions; we have collections of people focused on relationships. It’s all soft & fuzzy; about feelings not product atttributes; and behaviours are harder to measure; highy subjective and utterly intrinsically SOCIAL. Hence the title of the post. So congrats if you have a Facebook page, a twitter account and your company President blogs. But that won’t be enough. Unless you’ve opened up every business process (in human terms – every human task; item of communication; element of service) and looked at ways it WOWs the customer; while enabling the employee who are doing the wowing to feel that they are growing and developing too.

3. Because companies are human and because humans are in such a fix right now, there’s a growing desire on the part of both employees to want to find meaning in their work and for customers to find fulfullment or feel good about their relationship with it. No longer can companies afford to be nothing but lean and mean transaction machines focussed on quarterly profits. Edeleman’s Good Purpose 2010 report found that 86% of global consumers believe that companies should place at least equal weight on societies interest as in business’ interest.
In fact, there’s now growing evidence that companies whose culture expresses a “higher purpose” are significantly more profitable than those that place return on investment as highest priority. If you want proof, read Firms of Endearment, a more inspiring book than Jim Collins’ Good to Great, that highlights the spectacular results achieved by 30 companies run by CEOs who are happy to call themselves Conscious Capitalists. There’s even an institute that is promoting an alternative to the kind of capitalism that has got western economies into the trouble we’re in now. So when you think ROI, remember that it stands for Return on Involvement (see Interaction Associates) and, as importantly, start to think of who is involved.

4. Customers are changing too. The recession accelerated a change that emerged in the late 90s when a growing proportion began to tire of the endless cycle of consumption, obsolescence and waste. As boomers aged, it was inevitable that they would be driven less by Maslow’s deficiency needs (security, belonging, esteem) and more by a need to develop, to serve, to find meaning and purpose. Perhaps as a result of watching their parents and deciding that they didn’t want to be like them, we find that GenY and the Millennials want more than a pay check. Some 61% of GenY employees say they feel personally responsible for making a difference in the world.

There’s a huge body of research that has been conducted since the recession that suggests anywhere from a low of 30% to a high of just over 50% of consumers could now be described as “conscious” – awake, alert and aware. They are taking more responsibility for their own decisions as their trust in traditional, authoritative “command and control” style organisations like Government, the Church, big companies is at an all time low. At DestiCorp we’re so convinced that this trend will provide a means for tourism to get off the mass, industrialised bandwagon that we think is so destructive, that we’ll be focussing all our work on ushering in a Conscious Travel movement.

5. The role of women. Women have already shown their proclivity for use of social media. See an earlier post The Web is Female. We simply love communicating. But it’s not all talk. Women also have the financial clout. According to Businessweek, American women make more than 80% of buying decisions in all homes.Their buying power  has soared 63% over past three decades. Some 30% of working women now outearn their husbands

While they are still hitting their head against the glass ceiling of senior management, it’s women who undertake the majority of tasks that involve face to face or voice to voice contact with employees and, thereby, are directly reponsible for a firm’s reputation.

In summary. the decade beginning 2010 will be one in which companies thrive or wane on their ability to show they care; to create working environments in which human beings flourish and are active contributors to the healing, well-being and prosperity of their communities.

Examples of travel-related Companies that Care include the Roger Smith Hotel in New York, where social media is derived from an inherent belief of its CEO and President, James Knowles. He believes in and encourages “the miracle of human growth.” The hotel’s connection to a community of people is based on story telling, off-line connections, and relationships built on passion, says the company. The team is always interested in telling stories that engage people while building relationships and relevant communities. The hotel says it is selling hotel rooms and events via the strength of its networking and content. To find out how Kimpton Hotels and the Joie de Vivre Group are showing they care, review this summary here.

So How Do You become a Social Business?

Becoming a truly social business requires some form of transformative shift in mindset at the top of an organization. First it means appreciating that a company, like a community, is a dynamic, living breathing system made up of living breathing systems who happen to be human beings. The distinctions between what is internal and external are artificial – the boundaries are highly permeable. And in these systems, the intelligence does not lie in the nucleus, the brain or the HQ of an organization but is distributed throughout with highest concentrations on the edges (or in the case of tourism, on the frontline where customers interacts with hosts).

A conscious business acknowledges that all value resides in the nature of the relationship between supplier and buyer and the quality of those relationships is determined by the amount of self respect and mutual respect that exists in those relationships. Employees that are kept in the dark, not trusted by management, treated as children not adults, required to adhere to rigid “inhumane” policies and procedures etc. will pass on this antisocial culture to customers with disastrous consequences. The business might have a very active social strategy but implementation will fail if it hasn’t addressed what it means to be a social business.

Sadly most businesses are jumping on the social media bandwagon by trying to master the tools without any consideration of the deeper change in mindset that’s required. This is where I find Simon Sinek’s observations helpful – treat the business as if it were a person not a thing because every interaction with customers, suppliers, other employees and other stakeholders will always be personal.

Here’s Simon Sinek speaking plain common sense about Social Business. Pour yourself a coffee and take 25 minutes to remind yourself how the world really works!