Mr. CB Ramkumar discusses the dangers of over-tourism and how to effectively control it while sharing his knowledge of international standards, local culture, and sustainable business at the Outlook Responsible Tourism Future Forum in Tura, Meghalaya, held on September 27, 2022.
@meghtourism @outlookindia @cbramkumar
#responsibletourism #sustainabletourism #OutlookresponsibleTourismFutureForum #Celebratinghomestays #MeghalayaTourism #Tura #WestGaroHills
@meghtourism @outlookindia @cbramkumar
#responsibletourism #sustainabletourism #OutlookresponsibleTourismFutureForum #Celebratinghomestays #MeghalayaTourism #Tura #WestGaroHills
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NewsTranscript
00:00 I'm going to talk to you a little bit about what can happen, what can't happen as far
00:09 as your own tourism business is concerned.
00:13 So let me sort of straight away push and move on.
00:18 For tourism, there are advantages and there are risks.
00:23 And while we celebrate and try and encourage all you homestay owners to start your businesses
00:30 and there are other homestay owners who have already started, as a community, so for me
00:36 this is not about tourism anymore, this is for as a community, you all need to be very
00:44 very aware of what are the advantages and what are the risks and we'll just go through
00:49 that now.
00:50 [Speaking in foreign language]
01:07 So I've listed here some of the advantages of tourism.
01:11 First of all there's a tremendous demand, especially to unexplored areas of India.
01:18 Thanks to COVID, India is benefiting.
01:22 Nobody wants to travel to, or a much lesser number of people want to travel to Switzerland
01:27 or America or Japan or anywhere.
01:30 They want to travel to India, they want to explore India.
01:33 So it is good for us in India.
01:37 Tourism as we all know, it supports activity, it supports employment, it supports income
01:43 and the culture exposes.
01:46 We need it to showcase our culture.
01:49 We saw a lot of it yesterday.
01:51 Now these are all the advantages of tourism.
01:53 [Speaking in foreign language]
02:13 Now there are risks to tourism also.
02:16 Not to take away from all the good things that tourism can do, there are risks.
02:20 And the risks are this, if tourism is unregulated, and I'm so happy that all the tourism officers
02:26 are here from Meghalaya Tourism and from the Gargoyles Union.
02:30 If tourism is unregulated, then that's a huge risk.
02:35 And as an organization from the GSTC, we have seen multiple times this happening over and
02:42 over and over again.
02:44 There's an unexplored part of the world, people go there, and because it supports so much
02:51 of economic activity, that unregulated tourism eventually destroys the place.
02:57 That's what I mean here.
02:58 Tourism, when it's unregulated, when it does not respect the culture of a place, it does
03:04 not respect the sense of space, the sense of place of the local people.
03:09 I'll give you some examples a little later.
03:12 That is a huge risk for tourism.
03:15 And that will definitely happen to Gargoyles, unless all of you in the community are very
03:26 aware of it, and the tourism officers support this, and ensure that Gargoyles does not become
03:35 like another Shimla, or another Kodaikanal, or a Mooti, where there are too many people.
03:42 And it's not the problem of too many people.
03:45 It is the people giving up their land and their sense of space for the sake of tourism
03:53 and money coming in.
03:54 That is a big risk.
03:56 [BLANK_AUDIO]