An event happened last May, which immediately reserved its space in the unplanned series I started on my blog and continued here on Travel Tomorrow.
The first of this series was about the event at ITB Berlin in 2019, which hosted communities from the World Indigenous Tourism Alliance (WINTA) and counted with the presence of Ben Sherman. What at the time was an unusual event happened thanks to the crucial support provided by Rika Jean-Francois – the historical pillar of the Responsible Tourism content of the fair – and to the suggestion and determination of the co-organisers Marcus Bauer and Susanna Hagen from Respontour.
After that, I was thrilled to report from the stage of the 2023 event at the ITB Berlin. That event highlighted the voices of Indigenous and Community-Based Tourism enterprises across the world and celebrated the recognition given to them in the form of Awards for their relevance and achievements.
This year’s event was hosted on the Asian continent. It had the same kind of protagonists, but they were all local to the land we were in. Nepalese community members involved in tourism got on stage with a microphone and an audience ready to listen.
1. Connecting communities
The Community Connect Event was organised in Kathmandu by the Community Homestay Network (CHN) on 26 May with the support of the Nepal Tourism Board (NTB) and other international strategic partners, including USAID.
The day celebrated the conclusion of the first edition of this event, which started almost two weeks earlier and saw 30 international delegates. Amongst them, travel designers, tour operators, media and journalists participated in four exposure tours (i.e. FAM trips) across more or less known tourist areas of Nepal. I was one of those delegates, and I had the good fortune to visit very remote indigenous villages that had never received international tourists before. But I will leave the stories of those encounters for another time and place.
When Community-Based Tourism entrepreneurs got on the stage, after a few speeches and another panel of experts, I was already celebrating and looking forward to hearing them present their grassroots experiences from a place of deep knowledge and authority. However, it went beyond that, and it moved me to the core, because of what happened both on the stage and below, in the hall.
2. Panel of innovation
There are a few reasons why I believe that the gathering was innovative and powerful. First and foremost, the panel loyally represented the gender proportion usually present in community tourism. Those who work with the segment know that worldwide Community Tourism is generally led by women, who, for different reasons, find in these activities the space and relative freedom that their societies don’t always reserve for them. The reality is that women often rediscover themselves as entrepreneurs while becoming financially independent and managing tourism activities within their community. For the organisers, it was the most obvious choice, given that the homestay’s owners of the Community Homestay Network are predominantly women.
Although not a complete surprise to me, it was a pleasure to see that of the four speakers on the panel just formed on the stage, three were women. In addition to that, those women represented different stages of women’s empowerment. Shila Amatya, Isha Mahato and Premmati Pun not only come from three different geographical regions of the beautiful and culturally still unknown country, proudly wearing their traditional outfits, but they also brought different levels of experience, engagement and history with tourism and tourists, which was a helpful opportunity to showcase the diversity of possibilities that exist.
Shila is the President of Panauti Community Homestay, the very first homestay of the CHN project. In her firm posture and calm but resolute tone of voice, she brought a decade of experience and strength that grew steadily day by day from the shyness of an inexperienced businesswoman hiding behind the curtains of her home. Today she is celebrated in her own community and beyond and continues to nurture the warmth and inner qualities of other women who look to her for inspiration.
Isha – the young, sweet and very shy Isha – couldn’t stop her emotions from making her voice thinner and shaky and her eyes from avoiding the camera and any direct contact with the audience. She seemed uncomfortable, but only because she has never sat on a stage to talk about herself, not to mention that it was her very first time in the capital, Kathmandu. In Barauli village, Isha is one of the fierce leaders of the women’s group, and on that stage she was not alone but rather was representing her very successful Homestay project located near the bank of a river and Chitwan National Park. There, the women are empowered and now have more voice and rights within their traditional Tharu community.
Premmati, host of the Narchyang Community Homestay in the beautifully unique Mustang region, was the more mature of the three and the least timid. In her case, I believe that her age and the challenge of a life exposed to nature have made her care less about judgment and given her freedom from the initial fear that an unknown audience has probably inflicted on her other two colleagues. Before listening to the translation of her messages, I could feel her strength and confidence through the tone and the vibes of her words. She brought the fierceness of a determined woman, accomplished through the work of responsible tourism.
3. Content matters, but preparation is key
The stage was not just a window on exotic realities, and important open questions were brought up and discussed on the panel. The argument whether human-animal conflict is merely a problem or also an opportunity, but also issues related to climate change and the building of resiliency in traditional communities were discussed, as well as the unexpected surge of overtourism problems in Nepal and the role of Community Tourism in it.
Bikal Khanal – Chief Purpose Officer at Royal Mountain Group, was a great moderator because he made the panellists feel comfortable and created space for the sharing of their stories and experiences without any sort of pressure or demand. “Just share who you are and what you’ve done. We are here to listen and learn.” This was his attitude, an anthropological and ethnographic attitude, I would say. The one that is needed when we work with indigenous communities.
It was clear, though, that that was not the first time they had met. They knew each other – very well in fact – and they had been working together for a long time. During that time, they had developed a relationship. When it comes to Community Tourism, it is not enough to bring representatives on stage, mark their presence in the event and tick the ‘doing well’ box. Two things are very clebehinar to me regarding this modality of tourism, as I often reaffirm: it must be based on a long-term relationship and, obviously, on trust and mutual respect.
In addition to that, crucially, it requires careful preparation, and the event brought clear evidence of the value of that. As encounters don’t happen by themselves, sharing stories can only happen if there are certain conditions in place, and if an appropriate space was previously designed for it. The ‘authenticity’ and depth of the conversation are proportional to the degrees of foundation work done before and behind the scenes.
Preparation matters even more in this context simply because Community-Based Tourism is a matter of delivering a message to an audience that is usually culturally distant. How is the message delivered, who is telling the stories, what are their beliefs and preconceptions, and what does the audience want and know about them? Answering these questions is mandatory if we really want to allow different futures and paradigms to unfold.
4. Celebrating new possible futures
That day, the majority of the audience was ready and prepared, and seeing their peers on stage, powerfully sharing their stories and gradually shaping the tourism experiences in their own terms, was an inspiration for all of the other community members invited to participate.
Eyes on the stage, mind focused on the speeches, arms stretched to frame and record the messages on their devices. The flashes of their cameras were highlighting the faces, and detailed memories were stored proudly for the future.
Last but not least, the event also provided a new reference for those who didn’t know much about Community-Based Tourism before and warmed the hearts of those who, like me, have dreamt of witnessing this kind of moment for so many years.
Sharing the local community stories through the protagonists’ voices is the first step of a journey that should necessarily include their active participation in the decision-making process, which is exactly where Community-Based Tourism starts. This journey takes time and many grassroots efforts, but the results create positive change for the whole society and our planet, as we are finally starting to realise.
Moreover, there is a lot of learning on the way, part of which was beautifully and warmly presented on that stage last May in Kathmandu.
