Tag: international tourism

Bolivia Grabs World Media Attention with Salt Hotel

Post author By David South Consulting
Post date 18/11/2022
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By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

Tourism is a great way to attract foreign currency to a country and build local economies, especially in remote or isolated places. But the catch is finding a way to get people to go the distance and come and visit and spend their money.

In a global South twist on the well-known Ice Hotel in Sweden(www.icehotel.com) – a hotel entirely built out of ice – enterprising Bolivians have built a hotel out of salt.

A Bolivian hotel in the middle of the world’s largest salt flats has found a clever way to attract tourists to this remote holiday destination: build the hotel entirely out of salt, right down to its furniture.

The South American nation is one of the poorest inLatin America, and its income distribution is among the region’s most unequal. Bringing in foreign currency and attracting more tourists can help to reduce this poverty. According to the World Travel and Tourism Council, travel and tourism will contribute 2 percent to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) in 2011. Around 75,000 jobs are directly dependent on the tourism business in the country and this is projected to rise to 96,000 jobs by 2021.

And it is a good business to be involved in: “Travel and tourism is one of the world’s great industries, providing 9 percent of global GDP and 260 million jobs; it drives economic growth, business relationships and social mobility,” according to David Scowsill, President and CEO of the World Travel and Tourism Council.

The Hotel de Sal Cristal (http://www.hosteldesal.com/?L=2), near Colchani, hosts guests who come to visit the salt flats of Salar de Uyuni (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salar_de_Uyuni). They are believed to store 50 to 70 percent of the world’s lithium supplies and an economic boom has started in the area. The striking and blinding white salt flats were featured in the James Bond film “Quantum of Solace.”

The hotel’s unique construction from rock-hard salt hewn from the salt flats is working to encourage tourists to stay longer in the area during their holiday. Before, they would just take a quick excursion on to the salt flats before moving on to their next destination.

The Hotel de Sal Cristal is built using blocks of salt cut from the surrounding flats. The architectural design is inspired by the ancient Chinese balancing philosophy of Feng Shui (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feng_shui). Following the principles of the philosophy, it faces the sun and balances both masculine and feminine energies. Shaped like three coca leaves, the feminine side, this balances with the more masculine side reflected in the salt flats, the hotel’s website claims.

The hotel has 27 rooms with hot water and heating. – and beds made of salt. In the dining room, people can sit on chairs made of salt and eat at salt tables. The rooms are wall-to-wall salt, bright and white.

The hotel’s pool is surrounded by sand-like salt.

The hotel’s ‘Resto-Bar’ offers views of the salt flats and promises it will “allow the cosmic energy…” to flow freely.

The menu offers llama meat and risotto of quinoa (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinoa) alongside traditional Bolivian dishes, salads and soups and Bolivian-themed treats.

The hotel has an ‘astronomic observatory’ for star gazing, making the most of the low level of light pollution on the flats.

One of the hotel’s tour guides, Pedro Pablo Michel Rocha from Hidalgo Tours (http://www.salardeuyuni.net/), told the Daily Mail newspaper: “I love it when visitors come to this place for the first time.

“They can’t get over the fact that everything is made out of salt and I’ve even seen a few people lick the furniture to make sure!

“It is a wonderful experience to come somewhere like this where they’ve used the natural materials available to create something like a hotel.”

The salt flats, formed from prehistoric lakes, have a salt crust hard-baked by the sun with a pool of salty water underneath which is rich in the rare element lithium. Lithium (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium) is sought-after for its use in things like re-chargeable batteries for mobile phones, computers and electric cars.

The area’s economy has boomed since 3.4 million tons of lithium – believed to be half the world’s supply – was discovered underneath the salt flats.

The power of tourism to alleviate poverty has been documented by Caroline Ashley, co-author of Tourism and Poverty Reduction: Pathways to Prosperity (http://www.earthscan.co.uk/?TabId=92842&v=497073), after extensive research on tourism’s impact on poverty in countries across Africa andAsia.

She argues that “tourism can fight poverty.”

“Note, we say ‘can’, not that it always does. The share of spending by tourists within a destination that reaches poor people can vary from less than 10 percent to a high of 30 percent,” Ashley told BusinessFightsPoverty (http://www.businessfightspoverty.org).

“When it works, international tourism is actually a very good way of channelling resources from rich to poor. In destinations as diverse as hiking on Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, business tourism in Vietnam and cultural tourism in Ethiopia, between one quarter and one third of all in-country tourist spending accrues to poor households in and around the destination.”

Ashley said a successful tourism strategy needs to focus on “the 4Ps: pay, procurement, persuasion and partnership.”

“Pay a living wage to local employees; take a hard look at procurement and potential to source locally … persuade – or at least inform – your clients how to take up opportunities to spend in the local economy…” and build a partnership with government to integrate tourism into the local economy.

And it looks like the hotel can’t get more connected to the local economy than being made of the very salt that surrounds it.

Published: November 2011

Resources

1) The Global Summit: World Travel and Tourism Council: Taking place in Tokyo/Sendai from 16-19 April 2012. Website: http://www.wttc.org

2) A website packed with resources for planning a trip to Bolivia. Website: http://www.boliviacontact.com/turismo/

3) The Intercontinental Hotels Group has an interactive website showing the many ways hotels can become sustainable. Website: http://innovation.ihgplc.com/

4) Hotel designs: A website for interior designers, architects and hoteliers. Website: http://www.hoteldesigns.net/home.php

Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP’s South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South’s innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator.

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ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

© David South Consulting 2022

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Shopping and Flying in Africa’s Boom Towns

Post author By David South Consulting
Post date 26/10/2022
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By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

As economies across Africa grow, the continent still has a long way to go to create infrastructure to match people’s rising expectations of what a modern, prosperous life looks like.

Africa’s current economic growth has mainly been driven by commodities and oil and gas exports. Critics say this boom has failed to bring tangible benefits to many of Africa’s poor, who feel left out of the prosperity.

Trade has been flourishing not only because of exports to traditional markets in Europe and North America but also because of explosive growth in trade and investment between China and Africa.

Two trends now underway are set to transform people’s wealth and living standards despite the many obstacles caused by the inequalities of current economic growth. The first is the rise and rise of retail shopping options

looking to meet a strong appetite for consumer goods. And the second is the expansion of flying options on a continent notorious for its poor air links. Increasing investment in retail and flight networks will be a source of jobs, careers and wealth for the coming decade.

The aviation sector supports 6.7 million jobs on the continent, according to TradeMark Southern Africa (http://www.trademarksa.org), and makes a US $67.8 billion contribution to Africa’s gross domestic product (GDP).

But the woeful state of Africa’s air networks means that it is often cheaper for people to fly to other parts of Africa via European airports. And Africa has a long way to go to match air safety standards found elsewhere: there was one accident for every 305,000 flights involving Western-built jets in Africa last year (IATA) – nine times the global average.

But Africa is now receiving the attention of the global airline industry. The Abuja Declaration (http://nigerianaviationnews.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/aviation-safety-in-africa-abuja.html) aims to bring the African accident rate in line with the global average by 2015. And it is hoped the added competition and introduction of more global players will also raise standards and make flying in Africa safer, more convenient and cheaper.

The experience of Europe and North America shows that increased air traffic brings a boost to economic growth.

With more frequent, safer and more reliable air routes, business people will be able to move around and strike deals, tourists can get around and traders can cross borders without the hassle of navigating poor road networks.

Airlines are lining up to compete on improving air links in Africa to capitalize on rising incomes and economic dynamism.

The competition to serve the air passengers has heated up with the announcement of numerous new airlines, as well as well-established global carriers making plans to expand routes across Africa. Kenya Airways (http://www.kenya-airways.com/) has pledged to reach all of Africa’s countries by 2017 while also launching its own budget airline called Jambo Jet (http://www.ventures-africa.com/2012/06/kenya-airways-tolaunch-low-cost-airline-as-it-prepares-for-competition/).

State-owned South African Airways (SAA) (http://www.flysaa.com/gb/en/) is also starting to expand its network to include every capital city in Africa. SAA will start by adding flights to Ivory Coast and the Democratic Republic of Congo, making it able to serve 26 African destinations. In the short term, it is doing this by halting flights between Cape Town and London, leaving that route to Virgin Atlantic and British Airways.

Operating out of bases in Kenya, Tanzania, Ghana and Angola, a new African discount airline, FastJet (http://www.fastjet.com/) – with EasyJet (http://www.easyjet.com/en) founder Stelios Haji-Ioannou as its backer – is taking over Fly540 (http://www.fly540.com/) and adding 15 leased Airbus aircraft. It will launch flights to Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania and Angola. According to Kenya’s Nation newspaper, the plan is to replicate the success of EasyJet connecting Europe and North Africa with cheap flights in sub-Saharan Africa.

Analysts believe the entry of an aggressive and experienced player like Haji-Ioannou will shake up competition within African aviation.

Other global players lining up to expand in Africa include Emirates, Etihad, Qatar Airways, Turkish Airlines and Korea Air, which has already started flying between South Korea and Kenya’s capital, Nairobi. This is being seen as a boost to the trade in electronics goods between the two countries.

The added excitement in the African air industry has also prompted Air Uganda (http://www.air-uganda.com/) and RwandaAir (http://www.rwandair.com/) to increase their destinations. Qatar Airways (http://www.qatarairways.com/uk/en/homepage.page) will start flying in November 2012 to Maputo, Mozambique three times a week, increasing to 20 the number of destinations the airline serves, according to the Nation.

And while Emirates has a 41 per cent share of the African market, African player Ethiopian Airlines (http://www.flyethiopian.com/en/default.aspx) ambitiously wants to become Africa’s largest airline by 2025.

For shoppers, West Africa is experiencing a boom in new retail spaces being developed, according to a report from Euromonitor International (http://www.euromonitor.com) (http://www.howwemadeitinafrica.com/ghana-%E2%80%93-africas-new-retail-hotspot/18544/). The advantages of creating and developing modern retail spaces are numerous: hygienic shopping environments with greater safety and security attract multinational and global brands, which tend to create lots of long-term jobs.

Euromonitor International has identified Ghana as the next hotspot for retailers. The country is seen to have the right business environment in place that is attractive to foreign investors. It also has the right mix of political stability, cultural tolerance and rising prosperity.

The country is now being seen as the gateway to West Africa’s market of 250 million consumers. Ghana is able to leverage its position as a gateway into landlocked nations and on its strong ties with English-speaking powerhouses like Britain and the United States.

On top of these strategic advantages, the country has focused on upgrading retail spaces in the capital, Accra. The Accra Mall (http://www.accramall.com/), opened in 2007, is considered the most modern shopping mall in Ghana.

Euromonitor found Ghana’s retail industry grew by 14 per cent between 2006 and 2011.

Euromonitor found companies like multinational Unilever and PZ Cussons believed basing their operations in Ghana was a big advantage.

“The presence of such manufacturers provides a good opportunity for retailers as they can source these manufacturers’ products cheaper locally rather than importing them,” it said.

Euromonitor identified three other African countries as potential retail marketplaces. This includes Zambia, a potential agribusiness powerhouse. It is already developing a strong reputation in beef through its Zambeef (http://www.zambeefplc.com/) operation. South African companies have done well in Zambia, including Shoprite, Pick n Pay, Mr Price and the Foschini Group. Much of the action is around the capital, Lusaka.

Rwanda is known for its ease of doing business and there is activity going on in residential areas, roads, hotels, offices and retail spaces. The capital, Kigali, has a new modern, shopping mall, The Union Trade Centre, with a 24-hour store.

Angola has been benefiting from peace since the end of its civil war in 2002. Foreign companies have been attracted to Angola from South Africa, Portugal and Brazil. The Belas Shopping Mall (http://belasshopping.com/website/) opened in 2007 in the capital, Luanda, followed by the Ginga Shopping Mall on the city’s outskirts in 2011.

Published: August 2012

Resources

1) How we made it in Africa: A great website packed with inspirational people and stories on business success in Africa. Website: http://www.howwemadeitinafrica.com/

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

© David South Consulting 2022

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Preserving Beekeeping Livelihoods in Morocco

Post author By David South Consulting
Post date 21/10/2022
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By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

The clever combining of tourism and long-standing beekeeping skills has revived a local craft and is also helping to preserve the ecology of Morocco.

Beekeeping, or apiculture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beekeeping), has two clear benefits. Bee products, including honey, beeswax, propolis, pollen and royal jelly can be a valuable source of income. The other benefit is the critical role bees play in the ecology by pollinating flowers and plants as they go about their daily business.

Bees are at risk around the world, as reports of the dying-off of bees from colony collapse disorder (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colony_collapse_disorder) raise concerns about the impact on the earth’s ecology and plant life should bees disappear.

North Africa and the Middle East are considered the cradle of beekeeping, with records showing beekeeping going back to 2400 BC in Egypt. According to “A review of beekeeping in Arab countries” by Moustafa H. Hussein, “The total number of honey bee colonies in Arab countries is approximately 42 million, the total number of beekeepers is 321,700”.

In the paper “The Future of Bees and Honey Production in Arab Countries” by Moustafa A. EL-Shehawy, Egypt has the largest number of bee colonies in Arab countries (48 per cent), with Algeria in second place and Morocco with 9 per cent of the bee colonies.

Support for beekeeping comes from the Arab Beekeepers Union (http://abu.saudibi.com/index.php?page_id=115), which was established in 1994 with the aim to improve “the beekeeping profession all over the Arab World”, according to its website, and the Arab Apicultural Congress, first launched in 1996.

Beekeeping has significant potential for further development, many argue, and can be a great source of income and sustainable livelihoods for communities with a long history of beekeeping.

In Morocco, one solution to preserve beekeeping as a skill and source of income is to turn beekeeping into a tourist destination and event, which has the dual aim of boosting a local food product and reviving a traditional craft and skill.

The Berber heartland of the Agadir region is an area with a reputation for beauty, filled with waterfalls and mountains – and plentiful flowers, which attract bees. As a result, the area is home to the proud local specialty of honey, as well as for its argan nuts and oil, almonds, palm, juniper and olive production.

Now a “Honey Road” route for tourists, combined with community honey festivals, is helping preserve local skills and give a boost to this long-standing economic activity.

Beekeeping is a centuries old skill for the Berber people of North Africa. Berbers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berber_people) are spread out across North Africa and were traditionally nomadic herders. Most now live in Morocco and Algeria, but Berbers can also be found in Tunisia, Libya, Mauritania, Mali and Niger.

Starting at the beginning of May, a honey festival takes place in the Moroccan village of Imouzzer des Ida Outanane (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imouzzer_Ida_Ou_Tanane), 60 kilometres from Agadir.

The honey festival brings together the region’s beekeepers. Tourists can sample honey and prizes are offered based on the quality of the product. It is part of the “Honey Road” route that tourists are encouraged to journey along.
The villagers share responsibility for the care of the bees. Demonstrations take place showing the basics of honey production and the keeping of queen bees.

A few kilometres away on the Honey Road is the village of Izourki Oufella, which produces honey perfumed with thyme and lavender.

The Honey Road runs a triangular pattern south and west of Marrakech between Argana, Oued Tinkert, Asif Tamraght, Agadir and Imouzzer. Argana is reputed to have the “largest and oldest collective beehive in the world” (http://www.morocco.com/blog/tantalizing-tastes-of-the-honey-festival).

Abdelhakim Sabri, owner of Auberge Zolado (aubergezolado.com) – a hilltop hotel with a restaurant and spa – is located in Agadir on the Honey Road.

Sabri works to preserve local culture. “Rural beekeepers struggle, so we’re introducing visitors to apiculturists like Ahmed – and Morocco’s finest honey,” he told High Life magazine.

Ahmed is a Berber beekeeper. He builds cylindrical hives for the bees by rolling sheets of woven reed and then caking them in earth. When the earth has dried, the bees quickly make it their home.

The region’s honey is prized for its distinctive flavour, infused with the aroma of herbs such as thyme, or flowers such as lavender, orange blossom or cactus. A mixture is made of honey, argan oil and almonds and is usually given to couples on their honeymoon.

“Different flowers bloom during different periods, so honey changes through the year,” said Sabri.

It sounds like the Honey Road is worth regular visits to sample the honey as it changes with the seasons!

Published: April 2013

Resources

1) A documentary on the Honey Route from Morocco’s travel promotion agency. Website: http://www.visitmorocco.com/index.php/eng/content/view/full/3975

2) Apinews: Latest apiculture news. Website: http://www.apinews.com/en/

3) Saudi Beekeeping Industry: An association to coordinate efforts to promote and support apiculture. Website: http://www.saudibi.com/?page_id=115
4) Laboratory of Apiculture and Social Insects (LASI): The Laboratory of Apiculture and Social Insects (LASI) at the University of Sussex is the largest research group in the UK studying honey bees and other social insects. Website: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/lasi/

5) Apimondia 2013: This year’s International Apicultural Congress will take place in Kiev, Ukraine from 29 September to 4 October 2013. Website: http://apimondia2013.org.ua/en/

6) International Bee Research Association: Founded in 1949, the International Bee Research Association (IBRA) is a not for profit organisation. It collects, collates and disseminates information on all species of bees. It is a publishing house, producing a varied and extensive selection of bee publications. Website: http://www.ibra.org.uk/

London Edit

31 July 2013

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Africa’s Tourism Sector Can Learn from Asian Experience

Post author By David South Consulting
Post date 20/10/2022
No Comments on Africa’s Tourism Sector Can Learn from Asian Experience

By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

Africa continues to be seen as new territory for global tourism, yet it still is not even close to meeting its potential,according to a report by a South African think tank. In fact, many resorts and tourist areas are failing to fill up with visitors. This contrasts with the booming world tourism industry, which broke records in arrivals in 2011 (UNWTO).

Apart from South Africa, much of sub-Saharan Africa is the worst performing region for tourism in the world. Africa received 5.2 per cent of the world’s tourism – 40 million visitors – in 2010. Yet the continent as a whole has 15 per cent of the world’s population: a hint at the potential being missed.

Okavango Delta in Botswana (botswana-places.co.za/okavango.html), reports Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper,has nearly empty luxury lodges and resorts and is offering heavy discounts to lure tourists in.

But the report believes there are two countries African nations can look to for lessons on how to tighten up their tourism offerings: Vietnam and Cambodia. It points out both these countries share similar challenges, including colonial legacies, war and conflict, poor quality skills and weak infrastructure. Both countries dramatically reversed their failures in a decade and now have booming tourism sectors creating jobs and bringing in wealth.

Africa suffers from negative publicity generated by media reporting about terrorist attacks on tourists across the continent and kidnappings by criminal gangs and pirates in East Africa. The so-called ‘Arab Spring’ upheavals in North Africa are also having an impact. The continent’s many infrastructure problems also limit its potential. These include unreliable power supplies, out-of-date airports, inadequate involvement of local populations in the benefits of tourism and the tourist economy, and poor awareness of attractions apart from the clichéd African “safari”.

The report is urging a re-think by all of Africa’s nations of their tourism strategies and the structure of their tourism sectors. In order for the tourism industry to grow and to thrive, greater focus is required and greater investment needed to ensure the facilities, attractions and experience matches what tourists would expect. And the report believes this matters a great deal because in tourism lies the solution to many of the continent’s high unemployment problems.

Tourism is one of the world’s largest industries and a great generator of wealth and jobs. But while it provides 5 per cent of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP), it only provides 2 per cent of Africa’s GDP.

Tourism in Africa is also heavily skewed to just a handful of countries. The bulk of tourists visit just four countries: Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia and South Africa.

“This desultory record belies the natural advantages Africa has over other regions that have performed much better,in particular the continent’s extraordinary diversity – of wildlife, environment and people,” according to the report produced by the Brenthurst Foundation (thebrenthurstfoundation.org), a think-tank in Johannesburg.

The paper is called ‘Unlocking Africa’s Tourism Potential: Lessons from Vietnam and Cambodia’ (http://www.thebrenthurstfoundation.org/a_sndmsg/news_view.asp?I=121182&PG=288)

The Brenthurst Foundation researches new ideas and “innovative actions for strengthening Africa’s economic performance”.

Cambodia’s tourism industry grew by 17 per cent in 2010 and became the country’s second largest earner of foreign income. In Vietnam, tourism has grown by 11 per cent every year since 1995 and makes up 12 per cent of the country’s GDP.

The report isolated four key lessons that African tourism authorities should follow:

1) Help the private sector to expand what it offers to tourists, and make it more sophisticated, including ecotourism and maritime tourism.

2) Undertake aggressive international marketing campaigns (South Africa is a good example) and push hard their well-known tourism offerings, making them global icons. Also develop tourism hubs.

3) The tourism sector needs to professionalize by investing in skills training in tourism and hospitality.

4) Identify potential tourist markets and smooth the journey for them by streamlining obstacles like visas. They should also make a list of health and safety concerns tourists will have and address them. The report believes this strategy would go a long way to tackle the continent’s high unemployment levels.

“No continent stands to benefit more from the 21st century tourism boom than Africa,” the report claims.

Published: February 2012

Resources

1) World Tourism Organization: UNWTO is the United Nations agency responsible for the promotion of responsible,sustainable and universally accessible tourism.Website: http://unwto.org

2) Vietnam Tourism: The national tourism administration of Vietnam. Website: http://www.vietnamtourism.com

3) Tourism Cambodia: The official website for the tourism authority of Cambodia.Website: http://www.tourismcambodia.com

4) Tourism and Poverty Reduction: Pathways to Prosperity by Jonathan Mitchell and Caroline Ashley, Publisher:Earthscan.Website: http://www.earthscan.co.uk/?TabId=92842&v=497073