Go deep, do good

Social enterprises are becoming a larger part of the sustainable tourism ecosystem but they too face competition and unique challenges, Raini Hamdi finds

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With clients increasingly hankering for more meaningful travel, social enterprises are becoming an even bigger component of the sustainable tourism ecosystem.

Three Asian finalists of this year’s Tourism for Tomorrow awards presented by the World Travel & Tourism Council show why these projects can easily endear themselves to today’s travellers.

Founded in late 2009 by three long-term expats living in Battambang, Cambodia, Kinyei International promotes youth entrepreneurship through two interconnected businesses: Soksabike, an educational bike tour, and Kinyei Cafe; a training cafe.

The cafe gives travellers, expats and locals a space to exchange and develop ideas through various workshops, talks and lectures, aside from serving good coffee with beans procured from Cambodia, Laos and Thailand by its own baristas, all of whom are young locals from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Its other business, Soksabike, offers four bicycle tours of 30km to 50km in length taking guests to discover family-run cottage industries in the Battambang countryside.

To date, Kinyei has trained 50 local staff in coffee and food service, tour guiding, finance, IT and management skills. “Three years ago we handed over small business operations to the local team,” said Katherine Hallaran, one of the founders.

The second of the three Asian finalists concerns the Sapa region in northern Vietnam. Defined by terraced rice paddies, Sapa is regularly voted one of the most picturesque regions in the world. But its climate and topography mean the Hmong, Dao and other minorities who live there can only bring in one harvest a year, thus living on subsistence levels.

Launched in 2007, SapaO’Chau offers community-run tours, operates its own boarding facility, supports 11 homestays and employs 30 trekking guides. In 2013, it became Vietnam’s first minority-owned tour operator to gain an international licence and remains the only one operating in Sapa.

The third social enterprise saves a community from oblivion. Waerebo is an idyllic mountain setting for seven traditional thatched Mbaru Niang houses that are home to 25 families who farm the surrounding fields for coffee. But its remoteness – four hours’ walk to the nearest village with any access to motorised transport and from there, seven hours’ drive to Bajo, capital city of Flores – makes sustaining a livelihood a challenge. Only three of the houses are left standing. Local NGO Indonesia Ecotourism Network (Indecon) has helped preserve them and opened an income stream for the residents through community-based tourism.

These enterprises are proof that tourists today are willing to go to lengths in their search for authentic experiences. From only 155 tourists in 2008, Waerebo welcomed 2,100 guests in the first 10 months of 2014 from all over the world to enjoy trips such as A Journey of A Cup of Coffee. Meanwhile, over 15,000 guests have either passed through Kinyei Cafe or taken one of the bicycle tours.

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Tour operators interviewed said they constantly sought such projects out but infrastructure was a key hurdle for the mainstream players among them.

Khiri Travel  works with all three players and chairman of Yanna Ventures, which operates Khiri Travel, Willem Neimeijer, expects to do more as he expands the Ground division, which arranges educational trips and develops communities.

“Khiri Travel sent SapaO’Chau only a couple of bookings last year. They run fantastic programmes and Ground will have the type of clients for their more in-depth programmes around Sapa.

“Khiri Travel Cambodia works with Soksabike for clients in Battambang.  Their strength, but at the same time limitation is their location, which is away from where most tourists go, so for mainstream tour operators this is a bit of a handicap. However, my advice to them is stick with the area. Cambodia can do with the visitor dispersion.

“Khiri Travel Indonesia has worked with Indecon for a very long time and Waerebo features in many of our programmes. Sustainable tourism is playing a key role in the conservation of nature and culture in Indonesia (but) infrastructure remains a formidable obstacle and more investment in remote parts of Indonesia (so beyond Java and Bali) is needed.”

Laurent Kuenzle, CEO of Asian Trails, said often smaller projects were the ones that made a bigger impact in people’s lives because they were easier to manage, with less government red tape.

“My experience is that people who manage the smaller projects are more passionate and focused on actual results for the people and not PR for some kind of NGO or organisation,” he said.

Kuenzle said there were many sustainability projects today and Asian Trails chose to support the ones that “bring local people on their own two feet so they can support themselves”.  The projects are integrated into its tours as much as possible so clients “get that feel of being close to nature and to people when they travel with us”, said Kuenzle.

Melina Chan, founder and principal of Kinyei International, agreed there was more competition now, even with social enterprises.

“Although we were the first to market, it is always a challenge to remain competitive while prioritising social impact. One challenge we find is that the low barriers to entry combined with rapid economic growth in Battambang mean increased competition. We find that supply sometimes outstrips demand because we operate in a limited market. In this sense, to keep ahead, it is hard to remain ethical and sustainable.

“A second challenge we see is the issue of human capital. There is a lack of local technical expertise, which is valuable for our businesses. We are constantly needing to do internal development, grow and build our own expertise through in-house training. Of course this is also a huge and very exciting opportunity and part of why we love what we do. But, it remains difficult to engage specialist expertise and attract that talent internationally to a regional centre like Battambang.”

This article was first published in TTG Asia, June 3, 2016 issue, on page 4. To read more, please view our digital edition or click here to subscribe

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