Featured Stories

Integrated Rural Tourism Development Event: Discovering rural wonders at their best and delivering them to the world.

Yerevan, Armenia (13 December 2018) - Armenia shapes its future to be a unique sustainable destination, building capacities in effective tourism planning and managing. A diverse group of tourism and development professionals from across Armenia has joined a blended training program on PM4SD (Project Management for Sustainable Development), and successfully completed the first segment, a 3-week-long tailored online training course. The participants will then undertake an onsite face-to-face training session taking place in Yerevan (December 20-21, 2018), to complete their training and to prepare for the PM4SD-Foundation certification, accredited by APMG International.

For details on the conference please click here

Ronald Sanabria

"The number one step to work with small and micro-entrepreneurs is demystifying what sustainability is all about, try to avoid complicated lexicon and words that only technical people can understand, and boil down best practices to common sense"

Ronald Sanabria, a native of Costa Rica, has worked with the tourism industry on certification, productivity, quality assurance and sustainability since 1992. He joined the Rainforest Alliance in 1998, first working with the Sustainable Agriculture Division. Two years later, he began leading the development of the Sustainable Tourism program. Ronald has coordinated projects in a dozen Latin American countries, supporting sustainable tourism training and technical assistance for hundreds of tourism businesses and community-based operations while also connecting them with the marketplace. He led the creation of the Sustainable Tourism Certification Network of the Americas (STCNA) and chaired its secretariat from 2003 to 2010. He assisted in the creation of the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC) and sat on its board of directors from 2010 to 2012. Currently, as an independent consultant, he supports governmental and UN agencies, conservation NGOs (including the Rainforest Alliance, Fundecooperacion and others) and tourism companies in sustainability-related projects. He also represents the Rainforest Alliance at the UN One Planet’s Tourism Program as a member of its Multi-Stakeholder Advisory Committee. Ronald was the recipient of the 2008 EXPOTUR Friend of Nature Award in recognition of his efforts to promote sustainable tourism in Costa Rica. During his time at the Rainforest Alliance, his team was awarded the Gallina de Oro award from the Costa Rican Association of Rural Community-Based Tourism in 2008 for its support assisting communities engaged in tourism; the Travel + Leisure Global Vision Award in 2009; and The International Ecotourism Society’s Innovation Award in 2010. In 2017, the Brazilian Association of Tour Operators in celebration of the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development recognized his work at the Rainforest Alliance as the international initiative that has inspired changes in tourism development in Brazil. Since 1992, he has taught at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Costa Rica. A Fulbright scholar, Ronald holds a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from the University of Costa Rica and an M.A. in Sustainable International Development from Brandeis University.

Principles of Sustainable Project Management

"Principles of Sustainable Project Management"

Author: Mohamed Salama, Associate Professor and Director of Corporate Executive Relations within the School of Management and Languages, Heriot Watt University, Dubai Campus.

Goodfellow Publishers ISBN: 9781911396857 HBK; 9781911396864 PBK; 9781911396871 eBook

In an era of digital transformation and sharing economy, it is quite challenging moving to such vibrant future with past-tense methodologies. Principles of Sustainable Project Management provides a unique approach to managing projects by combining the principles of sustainable management theory with the main processes and areas of knowledge in the currently established project management theory, in an applied context. Taking a truly international viewpoint, this important text:

Emad Hassan

"The average Egyptian measures the health of the tourism sector by the numbers announced about tourists’ arrivals. While the link between these numbers and the well-being of the sector is there, this indicator needs to be further developed to include the economic, environmental and social impacts in order for it to properly address the true impact on the country"

Emad Hassan is currently an energy advisor to the Minister of Tourism in Egypt, leading the Ministry’s efforts on green transformation in support of sustainable tourism. He has over 30 years of global experience in the energy efficiency, clean energy and environmental protection fields with assignments in 16 coutries and long-term presence in the U.S., Jordan and Egypt.  He started his professional energy career in 1984 in the U.S. after receiving his Master degree in Architecture and Urban Planning from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) focusing on energy efficiency.  He has held various positions at Southern California Edison Company, Bechtel Consulting and Nexant Inc, Between 2009-2012, he served as an energy efficiency advisor to Egypt’s ‘Supreme Energy Council’ led by Egypt’s Prime Minister, where he oversaw the development of a roadmap to advance Egypt’s energy efficiency agenda.

Since 2014, the Ministry of Tourism (MOT) in Egypt has been developing the necessary foundation to advance its sustainable tourism agenda that ultimately supports national and global sustainable development objectives. Among the key activities that MOT has managed to successfully pursue so far was the establishment of the ‘Green Tourism Unit’ (GTU) to help build an institutional capacity within MOT and the launch of the ‘Green Star Hotel’ (GSH) program as a tool to encourage local hotels to adhere to environmental and social standards. 

The Larvalbot

Brisbane (25 October 2018) - An out of the box idea to match-make coral and deliver new coral ‘babies’ using robotics onto the reef has won the Great Barrier Reef Foundation’s Out of the Blue Box Reef Innovation Challenge, securing $300,000 AUD (approx. $225,000 USD) to bring the idea to life. The proposal to restore coral reefs on a grand scale is the brainchild of Southern Cross University’s Professor Peter Harrison and Queensland University of Technology’s Professor Matthew Dunbabin whose innovative concept was declared the winner from a short list of five finalists. The concept is designed to be activated during the annual mass coral spawning event this November on the Great Barrier Reef when corals reproduce simultaneously in spectacular fashion. Scientists will capture hundreds of millions of coral spawn from the corals that have survived the two recent mass coral bleachings, and rear them into baby corals in mass quantities inside large floating enclosures. A new generation of robot will then play ‘stork’, delivering the tiny baby coral larvae out onto reefs.

Progress in Measuring Tourism Sustainability

Madrid, Spain (30 October 2018) – The World Tourism Organization’s (UNWTO) initiative Measuring the Sustainability of Tourism (MST) received a boost last week when its working group met in Madrid (24-25 October). After successful pilot studies to produce credible and comparable data, the initiative is on track with its aim of getting the MST framework adopted as the third international standard on tourism statistics. The group of experts creating a statistical framework for Measuring the Sustainability of Tourism met to establish the MST initiative’s major goals for 2019. The initiative is creating a draft framework for a data standard for tourism’s impact on sustainability and plans to have it adopted as the third international standard on tourism statistics by the UN Statistics Commission (UNSC).

Voices of the Wind: Traditional Instruments in Laos

Luang Prabang, LAO PDR – TAEC’s newest special exhibition, “Voices of the Wind: Traditional Instruments in Laos” is now on display after more than two years of extensive research and documentation in remote regions of northern Laos led by Belgian ethnomusicologist and curator, Dr Marie-Pierre Lissoir, and the TAEC research team. A highly interactive and intimate exhibit, display spaces communicate three important contexts of instrumental practices: ritual, instrument-making, and courting. Through village scene re-creation, audio stations, and interactive video and photograph kiosks, visitors will enter a world rarely seen by the general public.

CREST

Washington, DC (October 9, 2018) – Today, the Center for Responsible Travel (CREST) released The Case for Responsible Travel: Trends & Statistics 2018, which includes an in-depth look at the complex issue of overtourism and the role of responsible travel in developing solutions. The new CREST report considers overtourism trends in five distinct types of destinations and concludes that the principles of responsible travel and visitor education provide a vital framework for effectively addressing the issue. It also highlights growing consumer demand for authentic and meaningful travel experiences and analyzes the role of tourism businesses in mainstreaming responsible travel.