Mzanzitravel Magazine - Issue 9

Responsible Tourism
creation through responsible forms of tourism and related land uses following a
“rights-based” approach.
SADC initiative
Back in 2005, the tourism and environment ministers of nine Southern African
Development Community (SADC) countries, namely Angola, Botswana, Lesotho,
Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe,
endorsed a transfrontier conservation area (TFCA) development strategy for
2010 and beyond. Its main aim was to increase the tourism potential of southern
Africa by consolidating the marketing and investment promotion efforts of existing
transfrontier initiatives. South Africa was given a mandate to play a leading role in
coordinating the implementation of the strategy.
Boundless Southern Africa is the marketing brand for transfrontier conservation
areas developed in terms of this strategy. Seven TFCAs stretching across the
borders of the nine participating countries are being marketed as preferred tourist
and investment destinations.
Another commendable development is that of Eco Atlas, which has developed
an ethical directory and green guide for responsible travellers that highlights the
social and environmental achievements in respect of accommodation, restaurants,
activities, products and services in South Africa. The use of the twenty Eco
Choice icons by tourism service providers enables tourists to see at a glance who
is achieving sustainable goals enabling them to make informed decisions about
which businesses to support.
Recognising the fact that tourism is the world’s largest job creator, another initiative,
Open Africa, set out to stimulate rural development by leveraging communities’
collective tourism assets. It does this by connecting remote areas with travel
markets in a competitively sustainable and innovative way. Its starting point is to
identify products and then clustering entrepreneurs into branded networks that
strengthen their combined power and market appeal.
Open Africa works with local communities to link existing community-based
tourism businesses, for example accommodation providers, tour guides, and local
artisans, into off-the-beaten track, self-drive routes, clustering travel attractions in
an area for travellers to explore. It also identifies enterprise opportunities along a
route and match them with potential or existing entrepreneurs and helps to develop
the business concept, product development and branding, as needed. Among its
other activities it lists capacity building, skills provision, marketing, the installing
of monitoring and evaluation tools to track route challenges and outcomes, and
enhancing conservation by various means.
Another non-profit company, the Sustainable Tourism Partnership Programme
Economic opportunities for local communities - vitmark / Shutterstock.com