Planeta Forum

HI All, I want to concur with Toby that it was excellent getting a chance to meet in person, and it was amazing that she and I and Toot could all meet here together and talk for a couple of hours about what is transpiring in sustainable tourism here in Honduras and elsewhere. Thanks alot to all who ...

Hello Oliver, I have one final very interesting post for your section. Here in Honduras I have been tearing through a tremendous amount of information and hearing many presentations, and doing interviews. The big issue here is a brand new development that will be a very large project in the small Ca...

Hi everyone, Just quickly I want to be certain folks are aware that extensive research has been done on the question of certification and its validity in the marketplace and as a quality control mechanism. There have been 2 large Ford Foundation grants associated with this as well as a $3 million ID...

Hi everyone, I have had to take a break from the dialogue, because I have come down to work for a short term consultancy with a donor project in Honduras. I saw the posts about clarifying goals of a project upfront, and I wanted to agree heartily with that idea. Interestingly here in Honduras the go...

I would just like to post an inquiry in this section. Last year at the World Tourism Policy Forum, the World Tourism Organization launched a very ambitious project ST-EP that is designed to encourage community-based pro-poor tourism through private donations and investment, I believe. I checked thei...

Oliver, I have a comment on your thoughts regarding Internet marketing, and I hope Ron Mader pitches in on this one! I was the one to oversee the launch of ecotourism.org for The Ecotourism Society. Granted this was early, early in the days of ecotourism marketing. I remember racing to get that addr...

HI everyone, Ron asked that we as organizers introduce ourselves. Better late than never? I have been involved with ecotourism since 1989, when I produced a documentary for Turner Broadcasting and PBS in the U.S. as part of the World of Audubon series on ecotourism that looked at its development in ...

Apologies,

I actually posted the above item in the marketing forum. It is not really off this topic, but it was written to add to a summary in Triple Bottom line.

Megan

Hi folks, I was just reviewing all the posts. Thanks for picking up on this one now. I hope we can get more folks involved. I posted a comment in Communities and Marketing about the creation of business alliances in order to handle more effective marketing and foster more partnerships between commun...

George & Richard, I have to strongly recommend another reference - which I have already told Richard about - which is Harvey Hartman, Marketing in the Soul Age and Reflections of a Cultural Brand. He researches the market for sustainability products - largely organic foods. Here is a key quote of hi...

Hi Megan here, For those of us interested in corporate monitoring. There are a number of other approaches I am very interested in trying out. First of all, I think we have a lot to learn from the Corporate Social Responsibility movement and also from the Global Reporting Initiative. It has the benef...

Hello everyone, I am greatly looking forward to this dialogue, particularly on communities and SMEs. In the last 3 years, I have been asked to do a fair amount of work for the donor community - primarily USAID - on linking private businesses to community development. I have had the opportunity to wo...

Hello, I have one more post this evening. I would like to draw your attention to the publication, Ecolodges; Exploring Opportunities for Sustainable Business. and the other background research that was performed for this study. This is very good information to use for our dialogue. Ron has linked th...

Hello fellow Emerging Industry Participants, I look forward to our first day tomorrow. I have compiled some statistics I hope you will all see. I have them in charts ready to post - will work with Ron on this. Here is a taste. Of the 176 registered as of this evening, 7% are journalists, 40% are Act...

Hello everyone, I have released a new EplerWood Report that I think is relevant to our discussions. I invite you to have a look. It is titled, Stepping Up, Creating a Sustainable Tourism Enterprise Strategy that can Deliver in the Developing World. Please consider reading this before or during the f...