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Promoting village based tourism
By a special correspondent
Aaron Hayes first came to Papua New Guinea in 1997 to work
with the Education Department as a guidance officer.
Part of his job involved providing careers counselling to students
in the secondary schools, and helping them prepare for life after
Grade 10 or 12.
Hayes wrote a book called the PNG School Leaver's Handbook which
is still available in schools.
"In the book I tried to present all kinds of ideas for young
people to be self-employed in the village instead of hanging
around unemployed in the towns," he says.
"While researching village tourism for the Handbook I found out
that hardly any tour companies were offering village-based tourism
products to overseas travel agents and tour wholesalers.
"When I enquired, tour operators said that village tourism was
unreliable, difficult to book and difficult to sell.
"They also said they couldn't make any profit out of it because
village guest houses didn't pay commissions to agents who send
them tourists."
Hayes took the bull by the horn, and when he finished his contract
with the Education Department at the end of 2002, he decided to
stay in Papua New Guinea and start up two companies.
One is PNG Development Services which helps design community
projects and business ventures for people in rural areas and the
other company is Ecotourism Melanesia.
Ecotourism Melanesia is an inbound tour company which specialises
in sending tourists into the rural areas of PNG.
"My company has a policy that every one of our tours must include
at least one night in a village guest house or rural lodge, no
matter 'how high' the tourist is," Hayes says.
"We offer tours all over PNG and also do Kokoda Trail trekking.
"My main aim was to prove that village tourism could be
successfully packaged and sold through travel agents all over the
world and I have already proven this because my company is growing
after four years.
"My main frustration is that I cannot do enough to promote village
tourism in PNG because I am only one person and one small tour
company."
In 2004, Hayes and a few like-minded people set up a non-profit
organisation to help village people get involved in ecotourism and
to help market PNG village guest houses overseas.
This organisation is the Community-Based Tourism Foundation of PNG
Inc.
The organisation plans to run proper training for village guest
house operators with training books and videos in Tok Pisin, and
have its own website with all the village guest houses in PNG
listed on the website and provide a booking service for all the
guest houses, and market village tourism on the internet.
"We printed an awareness pamphlet about village tourism and
distributed the pamphlet through provincial tourism officers and
we have been flooded with hundreds and hundreds of letters from
village people all over the country requesting help and advice on
village-based tourism," Hayes says.
"What an opportunity to help the rural people!
"But the CBTF only ran well for a year with funding from the
Tourism Promotion Authority and since then we have been unable to
get any more funding so the Community-Based Tourism Foundation is
currently inactive.
"Letters continue to arrive every week asking for help but we are
unable to respond at the moment.
"This was the only organisation dedicated to supporting the growth
of the village guest house industry in PNG so it is sad that this
organisation cannot be better supported.
"Requests for help sent to various donors and government
departments have not been answered."
Next week: How PNG can get the best out
of ecotourism
 
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