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.

.
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

Tourism Vancouver Asks The Right Questions

I am confident that all of my readers will agree that asking the right question before starting any strategic exercise is vital at any time but particularly so when the context in which you operate is undergoing profound and radical change.

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. Albert Einstein

Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers. Anthony Robbins

Given this belief, you can imagine how pleased I was when the Chair of Tourism Vancouver – Howard Jang, CEO of the highly successful Arts Club Theatre – posed two particularly important questions at their recent Business Plan Launch on Tuesday (Jan 17, 2012). I couldn’t attend because I knew I would be in Auckland, so was able to contribute via video.

The depth of thinking being expressed by Tourism Vancouver is most encouraging so I have re-printed, with permission of course, Howard Jang’s side of the conversation below.

Howard Jang, Chair, Tourism Vancouver

This musing by Jan Myrdal started me thinking about what the “cause” of tourism is really about:

Travelling is not just seeing the new; it is also leaving behind.  Not just opening doors; also closing them behind you never to return.

My own thinking on these topics has been evolving since the AGM and much of it was enabled by a new friend of mine, though an old friend of many in this room.   Anna Pollock is a highly respected Futurist, perhaps though you’ll let me also add the designation of Visionary, as you’ll see.

Following our conversations and my reading of some of her writing, I asked if she’d speak with you today, during this presentation of mine, via video. Stay tuned.   First, let me take up the “cause”.

I’ve long felt that there is more to tourism than making the cash register ring – important and fundamental though that is to our industry’s well-being and to this very organization. Yet there seemed to be values inherent in tourism that are broader, more meaningful, and possibly at the very foundation of a sustainable industry – one that is in the longer term profitable on many fronts. In discussions, I asked Anna, “what she feels is the ‘cause’ of tourism?” and here is how she responded:

Anna’s words both echoed and informed some of my own thoughts, posing fresh views that I wanted to share with you. It’s crucial that our tourism industry engage wide support with the citizens of Metro Vancouver, indeed within British Columbia.   The Team at Tourism Vancouver, are at the forefront of generating demand, attracting visitors, ensuring a business model that works for you, our members.   However, we are also about ensuring that the visitors’ experiences while here are unparalleled, and that when they leave us, they have an ambition to return and a willingness to speak highly to others about our destination.

I once heard this quote:

Once a place becomes special, it’s no longer special  Peter Storey

And then there is the other concept from our AGM.

When I first used the term – a presumptuous declaration of sorts, now that I look back – that the coming years would be Vancouver’s Decade of Culture, I was wearing more than one hat.

Understandably, I was speaking as your new board chair, and also I obviously come from ‘the arts’, from the cultural industries.

True though both those hats are, there was another – it is that of a Vancouver resident.   We call this place home – and that gives us notable privileges, huge opportunities, and a host of responsibilities.    For me, Culture has never been about just the Arts but, rather reflections of our soul.  I wanted to take the “decade of culture” beyond a comforting phrase and give it depth and context.

And, I asked Anna’s thoughts.

Those two clips and my own words are but a part of how we hope to inform, guide and learn with you during today’s presentations.

_____________________

Thanks Howard! – looks like you are already letting your guests define what Culture means to them. I see you have a great Youtube Channel and a number of vignettes on Culture in Vancouver.

Let me end with another quote from my favorite poet, Rainer Rilke,  that applies to all of us

Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

 

To see how Vancouver’s community (its residents) rescued its brand – click here 

Whose “Place” Is it Anyway?

I have just finished a terrifically positive, inspiring conversation with Ethan Gelber, co-founder of the Local Travel Movement in which we recognized that the essence of his movement and Conscious Travel is the same.

• All travel purchases are made locally even if the benefits do not always stay there.
• Travel is motivated by the differences that exist between origin and destination – we travel to see somewhere different than home. As the industrial model tends, over time, to standardize and homogenize, it contains within it the seeds of its own destruction. The Local Travel Movement is one path towards celebrating what makes a Place unique and scarce and, therefore, more valuable to guests and generate a higher return to hosts.
• Conscious Travel focuses on supporting hosts in celebrating and differentiating their “PLACES” as this is the only way in which they will be truly valued and can return real net benefit to all.

Not long after putting down the phone, my attention was drawn to the plight of the Cinqueterra.

This beautiful part of Italy appears under threat from a minority of its own locals. A local population of some 5000 residents is responsible for protecting what has been recognized as a world heritage site from the greed of a few “locals” who wish to tap into short term income associated with 3 million visitors. Years of work associated with revitalizing local crafts, developing local food and crafts and the creation and maintenance of a National Park have been halted. The region’s economy has suffered from the recession (caused largely by greedy bankers located miles away) and flashflooding.

It seems that a little tourism can be a good thing – when I visited the area in 1969, the villages were poverty stricken and in a state of dilapidation. A tourism industry provide the economic rationale for their restoration. But too much tourism can be harmful. More is not always better. Two communities, Vernazza and Monterosso along with the mountain paths that connect the five communities, were severely damaged in the storms of October 11th. While tourism activity was negatively affected, some also cite tourism along with climate change as a cause of the damage. Regular mantenace of the terraced hillsides has lagged as residents turn to more lucrative and less onerous occupations than farming. In 1951, about 3,500 acres were cultivated in the Cinque Terre. Today, there are fewer than 275.

I write this post in the hopes that my readers will share the link to the source of the video below. Film makers, Kristie Lee Weller and Sharon Boeckle of Harvestfilms, who had already chronicled the revitalization of the local economy, are seeking to raise $2500 to film the current conflict and draw attention to the issue.  Click here  to see the film and here to read their blog. 

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1965817586/vendemmia-a-documentary-film/widget/video.html

The second reason for writing is to open up the conversation regarding the question: whose place is it anyway? Do non-residents like me and the American film-makers have the right or a responsibility to influence local opinion and show we care? If a place can be recognized as being of global significance, what safeguards and support can and should be given to local communities to protect that which is deemed as scarce?  The opinion broker, AVAAZ, has been effective in demonstrating that a global community can influence, even determine what happens in a locality.  How does that fit with an ethos of “self-determination” when local preference might be equated with “self-destruction” ??? Note: some of these questions parallel those raised in Andy Jerosz blog Challenges That Occur When You Meet the Locals discussed earlier here.

Regardless of your response to these questions, I urge you to help these film makers document the issue and its possible resolution. Given the doubling of tourism (as forecast by the UNWTO), you can safely expect that the Cinque Terra story will be commonplace and we’d better be ready to deal with this conundrum all over the world.

POSTCRIPT
For up to date information about Cinque Terra, please visit
http://www.cinqueterre.com/blogc

Can Conscious Travellers Help Protect China’s Heritage?

China’s rich cultural heritage is under threat of either neglect or rapid commercial development. The long-term viability of its own future as a tourism destination depends more on protecting its rich cultural heritage than on building chains of hotels. Now is the time to do all we can to safeguard, protect and rejuvenate heritage sites and indigenous cultures.

The China Chapter of the Pacific Asia Travel Association together with Sunny Conventions & Exhibitions is holding a one day Responsible Tourism Forum to explore the ways in which tourism can make a positive contribution. I have been asked to speak about the Conscious Traveller.

There’s a great line up of speakers as you can see from the program and much we can learn from each other. I’ll be reporting back progress made by organizinations likeWild China, Red House China, the China Wall Group, the schoolhouse at Mutlanyou, and the Mekong Tourism Coordinating Office.

Can we Create “Intelligent” Destinations?

The trigger for this post came from another that I came across today by The IdeaHive and a conversation held late last night with a friend who asked:  “Why do we call tourism an industry?  It makes it sound so mechanical and sterile.”

I sighed internally at my friend’s question – not because it isn’t a very good question – but simply because I have spent the past 20 years arguing that tourism should not be viewed as an industry. The question rem inded me that I seem to have failed miserably in convincing others of that view. My sadness stems from a belief that until we change the way we “see” tourism, we’ll continue down a destructive path.

In 1991, drawing my inspiration from Shakespeare I argued that tourism was not an industrial machine but a living organism, a body – a “body politic of tourism” with the flesh, bones and organs equivalent to its diverse sectors (lodging, transport, attractions etc); the energy and blood flow being the market; and the arteries and veins being the in and outbound transport sector. I further argued that the tourism body wasn’t a closed, self-contained structure but an open dynamic system involving complex sets of relationships – even thoughTim Berners Lee hadn’t even dreamed up the world wide web at that point. At that time, DMO managers and tourism operators thought I was either irrelevant or simply being academic – and I can’t blame them. What has a worldview got to do with putting “bums in beds tonight”?

So you can imagine my excitement when the Internet did become reality and we started to think about creating a “digital nervous system” for tourism destinations that increased their intelligence. The vision was consolidated back in 1998 when we suggested at ENTER 98 that

The challenge at hand is to use the glue of information combined with the wires of telecommunication to bind the discrete elements of a region’s tourism industry into an intelligent whole; into an intelligent enterprise that is sensitive (can anticipate the demands of a marketplace before they are fully expressed); creative (can develop products and services that add value); and nimble – can generate more value faster than the competition.

We started developing an “Intelligent Destination Management System” and, as there were precious few systems  at the time, I was criticized by several academics at the conference for being pretentious in applying the adjective “intelligent.” But I had my reasons….

In terms of implementation and, with technology that was infinitely more cumbersome and expensive than today, a number of us made rapid progress developing and installing multi-functional information systems that enabled one rich database about products and providers to be distributed electronically across a number of channels (over-the-counter information and booking systems in Tourist Information Centres; kiosks, online information search, retrieval and booking systems via the web) – and all before 2001 when the “dot.com” bubble burst delaying the emergence of web services and proliferation of mobile apps for nearly a decade.

But sadly what we didn’t shift was the metaphor for understanding the nature and structure of the industry and that is now what’s holding tourism back from realizing its full potential. Because the primary perceptual filter is that of machine and or assembly plant along which inanimate products are packaged for consumption by consumer markets; we’re not harnessing the creative force underpinning the phenomenon as effectively as we could. Machines don’t evolve or self-organize, people do. Tourism is a living system because it comprises people who live in and are supported by living systems. Ironically, the best innovative thinking within destination tourism is coming from those closest to technology not because of their technical knowledge but because they are applying a more effective mental model (ie a living network). The larger tourism community, on the other hand, is stuck because its leaders haven’t changed their mental models from static machine to living ecosystem.

Other parts of our economy are changing their mental models as the full impact of what it means to be living in a globally connected network sinks in. Which leads me to The Ideahive post The author, likely influenced by such luminaries as Peter Russel (The Awakening Earth, 1976)  and  Howard Bloom (the Global Brain)  suggest that to deal with the global challenges facing our species we need to choose to become part of an emerging global mind.  I’ve quoted The Beehive post extensively below and ask my readers to read it with a tourism destination in mind. Ask yourself what might happen if we applied an understanding of neural networks to the way we do tourism? How could we apply their formula for success – either for competitive advantage or, better still, to create a better world?  How can we help destinations smarten up – because if they don’t, they’ll find their sterile, machine-like products as empty and ghostly as the badly planned,  vacant condos littering some costa somewhere on the Mediterranean.

Here’s the contribution from the The Beehive:

Imagine yourself as a neuron. You are connected to many other neurons. You are continuously receiving information from many different directions, deciding which information to pay attention to, and which not. You are constantly synthesizing this flow of information into some form of meaning — a best understanding of the current situation —  and then you share that best understanding with your friends. If neuron Bob is telling me that he thinks we don’t need to worry about global warming, and yet neuron Sarah is telling me that global warming is causing the flooding in Pakistan, then how do I make sense of that, what is the story I tell to others as a result?

What ends up happening, over time, is that each neuron starts to pay more attention to those connections whose information helps make most sense of the world, and pay less attention to those connections whose information increases confusion.

This creates a network that is an integrated, living mirror of the reality that it is experiencing. It is a system that is in a continual process of refining its model of the world, so that its experience of reality makes more sense. This is because it is only from seeing a world that makes some kind of sense, that you can begin to take more effective action.

The function of your brain it to make sense of your world; the function of your social network is to make sense of your collective world, whose complexity requires far more than a single human brain to understand.

By  learning from the stories of others, we can paint a better shared picture to achieve a clearer understanding of the world.

From this understanding arises an equation that describes the potential for a social network to leave a dent in the universe:

O x C x D x A x P = Better Future

O: the openness with which each node deals with information of all kind: its active willingness to learn — (multiplied by)

C: the amount of creative energy each node puts into the network: its willingness to synthesize & share (multiplied by)

D: the cognitive diversity of the network, so that we can collectively see things from the widest range of deeply informed viewpoints possible (multiplied by)

A: the degree of access to resource networks (multiplied by)

P: its shared focus around a common purpose to create a better future for all

This is the formula for how to be part of global mind.

Choose to act as if you are one of the neurons, to help create a better future

Perhaps so called “destination managers/marketers” might find it useful to take a closer look at the work emerging from neuroscience… more  to follow.

Conscious Consumers at Work in New Zealand

This New Zealand project demonstrates New Consumers at work. A “collective” of conscious consumers have a vision of Wellington as a place where it’s easy for people to live socially and environmentally responsible lifestyles.

Their goal is to: To

• empower consumers to make more informed purchasing choices; and
• encourage and support Wellington cafes to adopt more environmentally and socially conscious business practices.

Badges Awarded to Cafes in Wellington

The project promotes nine practices which they believe make good business sense, respect people and the environment and reflect current consumer preferences. Participating cafes get awarded a badge for each of nine actions or practices that result in higher levels of sustainability. The nine badges encompass such topics as Fairtrade, composting, organic, recycling, BYO cups, eco-friendly cleaners. free range, and eco packaging.