From Samir Acharya...
2nd Jan, 04.
Dear All,

The discussion on tourism was very interesting. Everyone agrees that the
model should be eco-friendly. But the debate is on what is eco-friendly.
In these days of corporate green-washing , eco-protection is on as many
sides as God.

The Administration seems to believe that leasing out Islands to MNCs or
large tour operators to build big, air-conditioned, earthquake proof
buildings to accommodate many many five/six star tourists right on the
beach/waterfront is eco-friendly. It seems that to attract tourist
dollars,
we are falling head over heels in trying to cater to what the tour
operators
perceive to be the needs or preferences of tourists.
Since we are not and can not cater to a million (or even a large number)
of tourists, we need not travel the beaten path. Why can’t we be
choosy and
lay down our own terms and opt to welcome only such tourists as are
willing
to accept what we can afford to offer?

My suggestions are not utopian. This philosophy has been very successful
in
our own Country, in Kerala. There was a hotel in Cochin called Casino
Hotel in mid 80s which has grown to become the Casino Group
today. They
have, very successfully, followed this model. If you must look for a new
model, and we must, why borrow one from Unesco or Moscow? Why not take a
page out of the Casino manual from Gods Own Country.
Tourists in a Country are comparable to a guest in the hosts
house. A
good guest does not demand to be seated in the hosts bed room or
demand to
take a pee in the hosts kitchen. So a tourist should follow
the old
dictum, &when in Rome, be a Roman .Likewise, when in
Andamans, be an
Andamanian.
>
Quoted below are two stories from the Business Line ( A financial Daily
from Hindu group) and The Hindu Online Edition on the Eco friendly Kerala
Model.

All the best,

Samir

Business Line
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Monday, Aug 05, 2002
Kerala tourism model will go places' Mr Jose Dominic, MD, Casino
group of
hotels
C.J. Punnathara

KOCHI, Aug. 4
FROM very small beginnings, the Casino group of hotels based in Kerala has
grown rapidly to etch a name in the international and domestic tourism
markets.
But the group is not resting on its laurels and has charted out big plans
for its future.
In an interview with Business Line, the Managing Director of the group, Mr
Jose Dominic, details the strategies which have taken the company to its
present position of strength in the international tourism market and also
what the group plans to achieve in future.
What is the secret behind your success story?
The greatest asset the Casino group started out with was the distinctive
Kerala ambience we invariably tried to impart as local content to all our
properties.
Access to large capital was not one of our strengths; but this has
eventually proved to be a blessing in disguise.
How do you find the competition from the big hotel chains setting up units
in Kerala?
Back to what I was saying. We had a paucity of capital, but we had lots of
ideas instead. Hence, instead of going in for grandiose buildings and
ostentatious interiors, we began to focus and reproduce the uniqueness of
Kerala, its architecture, customs and traditions in our properties.
In the international market, there was a dramatic shift from large tourist
groups and packaged tours to small family groups and the pursuit of the
exotic. We vibed with the new generation crowd and their requirements
perfectly.
In fact, there is no competition from the big players; we operate in two
different markets.
But they have also been setting up smaller resorts in Kerala's prime
locations ; also a large number of smaller players are trying to emulate
your success story...
True. Whatever the bigger players in the market do, they will always
remain
metro and city hotel operators. Their revenue from the small resorts will
be
fractional to their total income.
It is true that there are a large number of smaller players, but that's
the
way the markets have to grow. But here again what has been happening is
that
people are following the footsteps of market leaders and setting up new
units in places which are getting crowded.
They should try and explore and capitalise on new locations and places.
There is always place for more if the project is properly conceived.
Would you call the Kerala experience a role model for tourism in the
country?
Not just for the country, but for the whole world. We are lucky that we
did
not enter into the tourism bandwagon early with the likes of Spain,
Thailand
and Indonesia.
Theirs would be an example of a tourism model that failed. We are not
carrying the baggage of old times &of large hotel chains and
ostentatious
lifestyles. These are today available for the foreign tourists at his
home.
His choice is the exotic.
Let me give you an example. Our latest venture, the exotic ayurveda resort
to be located at the Kollengode Palace in Palakkad, will not be offering
the
worldly comforts of air conditioning, television, swimming pool, liquor,
nor
non-vegetarian food. Instead, will be offering a diet kitchen for
vegetarian
food, chanting rooms etc. We are building it because we are confident it
will succeed.
What in your mind are the major selling points of India?
We should continue to have cows roaming on our roads. Snake charmers on
the
roadside. Elephants and camels should still be found on the wayside. The
dhabas should still be there, besides the highways. Let the crowds and
bustle continue in our mofussil roads. Let the festivals block the roads.
In effect, we should not change to suit what is often perceived as the
tourist
requirements. In fact, these are most often than not what the tourists
come
to experience.
What about your future?
Now that we have set our house in order as far Kerala is concerned, it is
time we moved outside the boundaries of the State. This will improve the
repeat visits from our regular customers to our new destinations. It is
also
something that we have to pursue to sustain our organic growth. And we
would
like to blaze our trails in virgin territory not tried and tested before.
I think places such as Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Uttaranchal and
Chhattisgarh have got that potential.
> How do you plan to go about this?
Like in the past, capital is the daunting task. But that will not deter
us.
But unlike the slow and organic growth of the past, this time we will have
to grow and expand into new destinations quite fast. For that, we need
sufficient capital before hand. We might go for private placement of some
equity to mop up the funds.
We have got several international players who have shown immense interest.
We would have gone for a public issue, but the markets are down and we
will
not be in a position to realise our true worth. We will raise the capital
and should soon chart out our new course in the not too distant future.
************
The Hindu online edition Sunday July 28th 02
It's simple ... No Nature, no tourism
A decade ago, the people who coined `God's own country' as the destination
call for Kerala, didn't quite realise what they had hit upon. Kerala had
quietly staged a coup. Now, with the kind of attention tourism in this
part
of the country is getting,there is concern about the way policy
initiatives
are being shaped. What should the State do, asks HARIHARAN CHANDRASHEKAR,
as
the key to its tourism sweepstakes lies in the protection of its natural
resources?

Too heavy a burden?
GOING to Kerala is always a pleasure. People say there's trouble with its
labour force; that getting anything done is near impossible. But
everything
seems to work well enough for the visitor & the food, the ambience;
even the
humidity; while oppressive; is kept at bay by air
conditioners that work.
Kerala has its spurts of power shutdown, but it isn't as bad as it is in
Karnataka, or worse, Uttar Pradesh. If you've had to live with eight hours
of power cuts a day, then you'll know.
The people who coined "God's own country" as the destination call for
Kerala
didn't quite realise what they had hit upon. Ministers and bureaucrats in
other States are chewing their nails over the coup that Kerala staged
eight
or nine years ago. Come to think of it, even the Keralites didn't quite
know
what had come their way when, a couple of years ago, the National
Geographic
Traveller, the prestigious Canada-based international travel magazine
billed
the State as one of the world's top 50 destinations.
The Government patted itself on its back for work that it thought it had
done. But, in actuality, it was the culmination of the sustained effort of
many small but inventive entrepreneurs who had carved for themselves a
unique niche for offering hospitality without the trammels of the
organised
industry. This groundswell had begun back in the late 1980s. They found
they
could set themselves up in business with cottages on the backwaters or in
the hills that could invite a few travel agencies to bring in the
spillover
tourist traffic from Goa. The Arab tourist was also a tourism revenue
earner &; remember those years when you had these sporadic reports of
lascivious Sheikhs and their penchant for the lissom lasses of Kerala?
Meanwhile, around the globe, the big tourist traffic from the Continent
was
getting bored with the Sea-Sand-Surf (not to forget the fourth `S')
formula
that Cancun in Mexico and Thailand's Pattaya offered. It wanted more. It
found Goa to be congested. So it looked southward and the traffic to
Kerala
began to swell.
From a measly 29,000 overseas tourists in 1979 places, the number rose to
225,000 in 2000. Through the 1990s the number steadily rose, thanks to the
steady growth of a generation of small tourist home offerings in the hills
and the wetlands. Now things are not quite the same. As the number has
swelled, the attention that tourism has got from the Government and the
big
business houses has made the small and medium entrepreneurs a trifle
uneasy.
They now find the big guns of tourism want a place under the Kerala sun.
The
Government wants a piece of the action, too. What was once a lacklustre
posting for the IAS officer has now become a coveted job. Kerala's tourism
secretary and director and the director of eco-tourism are sought-after
people today. Prof. Thomas, Minister of Tourism holds another forgettable
portfolio, and nobody quite knows what that is.
As Jose Dominic of the Casino group of hotels, pioneers in some ways of
Kerala's leadership initiatives, says, "The Government's spending on
tourism
development last year was Rs. 80 crores. Now it wants to up this figure to
a
staggering Rs.1,000 crores to be spent over the next three to five years.
That can spell disaster if we are all not on the guard."
God's country is in for a series of shocks. Being a leader is a lonesome
job. And Kerala simply has no precedent in the country to inspire it to
new
directions. The big spurt in visitor traffic to the State, which has for
many years been a "money-order economy", has meant the Government is
desperately clutching at the tourism straw. The State missed the industry
business in the 1970s & mercifully so, for it has suffered the least
environment impact from the conventional manufacturing industry. There's
hardly any talk of pollution of its dozens of rapid, westward flowing
rivers
from industrial effluents. The natural resource has remained relatively
untouched, unexploited.
So what should Kerala do? Should it take models of tourism from the West
and
transplant them without thought to the unique features of the State's
various micro-regions? Should it adopt a "do-nothing" stance, which will
protect its excellent natural resources and help the tourist traffic keep
coming? Should it take the Small and Medium Enterprise route that has paid
such rich dividends in the past, and keep the big players and big revenue
models out of its tourism development models?
There is concern at the Government's policy initiatives that display the
timidity of the herd and, admittedly, a lack of sensitivity to Kerala's
fragile economic resources. Thenmala, a sanctuary that had remained a
quiet
getaway, is receiving excessive attention, as the Government is likely to
develop the lush valley as a destination. Periyar has already gone that
way.
Baikal is still a sleepy little town to the north of Kerala that boasts of
no more than an ancient fort and a lovely coastline, where the wild waters
of the sea tirelessly pound the shores. Its tranquillity will soon be
lost,
though, if the Government went ahead with its current business plan for
developing the historic town into a tourism enclave.

The High Ranges...How long will Kerala's natural resources remain
untouched?
> The next three years will see a rude awakening for Baikal. Some
1,200-1,400
acres of land has been secured by the Government and have been offered to
a
host of tourism entrepreneurs — the big ones. The Taj and the Oberoi
groups
have shown interest. Homegrown entrepreneurs like Jose Dominic are
skirting
clear of it because the model is scary. What they'll have is what Malaysia
got in Penang, or Thailand got in Pattaya. A huge strip of coast clogged
with restaurants and hotels that will be factories producing mountains of
garbage every day.
Besides, that kind of international traffic no longer exists. The Three
`S'
segment of tourists has dwindled worldwide. The discerning tourist or
traveller who is seeking to share the local experience has burgeoned over
the last decade to as much as 55 per cent on global traffic profiles.
Besides, right there in Thiruvananthapuram's backyard, Kovalam's 66 hotels
and tonnes of garbage stand as a stark example of the maladies of such
mainstream tourism.
THE stakeholders in the tourism game are many — the Government,
tourism
entrepreneurs, the local communities and the tourists themselves. But the
passive resources they're all dependent on are Kerala's lush hills, its
placid backwaters, its beautiful seaboards, its breathtaking arts and
crafts & that have existed for millennia, and need to be protected,
for long-
> term reasons of helping another generation inherit what exists as natural
resources, as well as the more practical reason that there can be no
tourism
in Kerala without its natural resources.
The exigencies of the tourism business, and the revenue that the
Government
sees as potential from it all, is only incidental. The key to Kerala
tourism's sweepstakes is the protection and conservation of the bio-
diversity of its amazing natural resources.
The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII)-Kerala organised, on May 27-28,
a
conference on eco-tourism that served as a sort of sanity check on where
the
State's tourism is, and where it should be headed. Every stakeholder in
the
game was invited for a pow-wow on the directions that need to be charted.
The Keralite's insouciance, his wit, his cynicism and his ability to soul-
search never ceases to surprise any outsider who ventures into the State.
From the lowly loaders and packers, to the people who preside over the
destiny of the State, there's vigour in thinking. There's constant probing
and self-examination. Criticism is measured; cynicism arises out of a
basic
desire to believe in good values, and so is very healthy. Almost everybody
who has anything to do with tourism aspires for some very lofty objectives
and ideas. And as the old saying goes, "Aim at the skies, and there's a
good
chance you'll hit at least the tree."
The tourism industry, the development model enthusiasts, the Government's
tourism department, the district tourism promotion councils, adventure
groups & almost everybody in the business & seek to establish
a set of
governing guidelines for the long term. It's important that the State's
tourism ministry evolves a policy that is institutionalised, and one that
remains unhampered for at least a decade.
For the first time there is realisation that there is the real threat of
policy or programme excesses that may spell disaster for the State's rich
natural resources. Tourism in Kerala thrives not thanks to any sites of
religious or historic significance. All it has are the lush Western Ghats,
the wetlands and backwaters in the 280-km long plains that run from north
almost down to the peninsular tip, and the lovely natural beaches. There
is
still no realisation that tourism growth would falter if Kerala's scenic
splendour were lost, even if that will take some doing.
Across the board, the general consensus among many leaders of the tourism
business, and other stakeholders is that a framework has to be evolved
which
will sharply enhance discerning awareness among all people of the
strategic
necessity today of pitch forking Kerala's current pattern of conventional
tourism into a set of discerning, eco-sensitive tourism packages. The
various stakeholder agencies & from industry to government to local
communities & at the CII conference emerged with a consensus. The
salient
recommendations likely to be posited before the Government range from the
noble to the strategic. Some of them are and
& Protection and preservation of bio-diversity of Kerala's
eco-habitats
should be the keystone of all tourism policy initiatives.
& Tourism in Kerala should be synonymous with eco-sensitive
tourism.
& All policy pronouncements should seek the approval of all
stakeholders
and should be transparent.
& The Government should not look at regulation and licensing of the
tourism
industry, which will only lead to destroying the long-term objectives.
& Greater trust in the spirit of human endeavour of small and
medium
tourism entrepreneurs will go a long way to engender sensitive tourism.
& Tourism plans should be centred on what the land, people, the
cultures
have to offer, and not pander to the tourists' needs.
& Accent should be on facilitating cultural exchange and true
exposure to
Kerala and its values.
& All stakeholders, including the Government, should adopt a
do-nothing
posture as far as Kerala's natural resources (which is the big tourist
draw)
is concerned.

In the tourism game, there has been a display of lofty ideas and
objectives.
& Opportunistic approaches should give place to strategic
approaches that
are firmly rooted in sustainable business practices.
As the Kozhikode-based Tommy Mathews, a soft-spoken, but well-meaning,
exponent of these refreshing and strategically far-sighted approaches,
says, "You cannot showcase Kerala's unique symbiosis of cultures, its
festivities, its performing arts, its fragile, but resplendent,
environment.
All our tourism brochures and their hard-sell cannot work if you don't
sensitise the backdrop."
So what's that Experience that Kerala offers? How does one position this
Other Kerala in ways that its lure for tourists strengthens? How do you
get
every stakeholder to see that tourism cannot exist if they don't have this
unique experience, which Kerala's forests and wetlands, crafts and
heritage
offer?
With all that as they are, you cannot take away this one fact —
there's
ferment among thinking and concerned people over the State's tourism
sweepstakes. Will they forge new directions? Will they buckle under the
onslaught of greed of unschooled entrepreneurs or of the bureaucracy and
Government? Only Kerala's own destiny-shapers can mould those answers.
The writer is head of Biodiversity Conservation (India) Ltd., and an avid
watcher of Kerala's tourism economy.
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