8 EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW ©
8 EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW © Messe Berlin The Official Partner Country of ITB Berlin 2015 David Ruetz, Head of ITB Berlin Exhibition Director; H. E. Tsedevdamba Oyungerel MP, Minister for Culture, Sports and Tourism of Mongolia (r.) Creating a Unified Voice to Move Mongolia Forward The official ITB Berlin Partner Country 2015: offering a connection to nature, people and animals unlike anything else in the world As a destination, the unique offerings of Mongolia make it an exceptional choice as ITB Berlin’s partner country for 2015. The official signature ceremony took place on Wednesday 5 th March at the Berlin show grounds, and the Mongolian Government Minister of Culture, Sport and Tourism, Tsedevdamba Oyungerel MP, widely known to the Mongolian society as a passionate advocate for democracy, public speaker and author, also made the trip to Berlin to announce the launch of her country’s new “brand” – Mongolia – Nomadic by Nature. We asked her why these traditions persist in her country… Mongolia is true to this age-old lifestyle and we insist on perpetuating this in every aspect. Our constitution states that pastureland is common land; and that no land for pasture can be privatised. Our constitution protects the nomadic lifestyle by keeping our 1.5 million square kilometres space open as a common for every herder; but it is a common for every tourist too! This kind of connection to nature, people and animals is unlike anything else in the world. Until recently, Mongolia has been relatively unknown as a tourist destination. Do you see this as a positive or negative factor, and what is the result of this “mystique”? I could say there is a positive and a negative aspect. Negative from the point of view that there is little contribution for the moment to our economy, but from the point of view of sustainability and the committed dialogues between the stakeholders of tourism, maybe it was a good thing that we were not well known too early. Now, it’s a good time to open up wider opportunities for tourism because we now have many forms of social discussions and social dialogues between the local people, industry, local governments and central government, and many of Mongolia’s laws now oblige the government to listen to all the stakeholders affected by decisions related to budget, land or water. With the open input from all those concerned, we can create a much better and more sustainable environment for the future growth of our industry. What made you decide to forge this partnership with ITB Berlin? It was a very major decision for us. We never invested in big marketplaces like ITB Berlin before, because we were lacking in the finances and experience to do so adequately. But I believe that politically, it is a good decision for us. When we were looking to strategise our tourism sector, we realised we needed to create one big unified voice to consolidate everyone’s ideas. Participating in ITB Berlin will give us the opportunity to unify the sector’s voice. So the decision to be partner country is a commitment on both an economic and a political level. Mongolia is reputed for the friendliness of its people. Is this an important aspect of your communication? Yes, very much so. You know, sometimes, a holiday is not just visiting ITB BERLIN NEWS • Saturday 8 th March 2014 www.itb-berlin-news.com
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW 9 H.E. Tsedevdamba Oyungerel MP, Minister for Culture, Sport and Tourism – Mongolia a place; sometimes a holiday is to make friends… lifelong friends. When an environmentally responsible tourist asks you where to go to make friends with local people, you can tell him or her Mongolia, because Mongolia can offer very warm friendship to anyone. People who go to Mongolia are not only captivated by the nature and the strange nomadic lifestyle; they also all say they are enchanted with their stay in Mongolia because people are always friendly with them and they made real life long friends. Sometimes you might make friends not just with people but also with horses or camels! Mongolia has around three million people, but also three million horses. You will experience the life that your very, very distant ancestors may have lived, long before there were cities or before there were farms. The people have warm hearts, and you will find it a very warm place. Even though Mongolia has an extremely cold winter, it is always sunny, the people are always happy, and when you have a sunny, blue, blue sky and it’s minus 30 degrees, you don’t feel cold! You truly don’t feel cold especially during our winter festivals: the camel festival, the eagle festival and all kinds of winter adventures, you just feel very active, happy and very friendly towards each other. I don’t think I ever met a Government Minister before who grew up barefoot in the fields, with no car and no telephone. Does that give you a different way of looking at things compared to other people in this business, do you think? Totally. If you look at the world through television, or through the window of a building, it is very, very different world than the one a barefoot girl sees sitting on the grass, playing with calves and kissing her horse. When I grew up as a nomad child, my closest friends were animals. My everyday playground was pasture… kilometres and kilometres of pasture. And hiking to a mountain and bringing my horses back, or going to another mountain and bringing the sheep back, I would do this every day. It’s a very different kind of routine compared to people in the western world. When your Government came to power and you were given the portfolio of Tourism, Culture and Sports, how did you feel about that? I felt very blessed to have this position, because it gave me the opportunity to do what I am passionate about. I am passionate about saving the nomadic lifestyle. I am passionate about keeping nomadic I AM PASSIONATE ABOUT MONGOLIA, AS A COUNTRY, DEVELOPING ITSELF WITH THE DEEPEST CONSIDERATION FOR NOMADIC LIFESTYLE culture, and I am passionate about helping local people benefit from tourism. I am passionate about Mongolia, as a country, developing itself with the deepest consideration for nomadic lifestyle, and the deepest consideration of the culture that has been passeddown through thousands and thousands of years of history. It would be a crime to lose this in the process of rapid development we are seeing in our country. That’s why ITB Berlin will be used as a platform to explain where and how tourism should grow and what we should keep for our future generations while developing our economy. Hall 26 C Stand 339 ITB BERLIN NEWS • Saturday 8 th March 2014
