In PNG, most of the tourism products are based in the rural
villages. The accessibility to the tourism product sites is one of the biggest
challenges when it comes to tourism product development. PNG Tourism industry players,
tour operators, service industry and the developers are faced with the
challenges every time when in the business to develop, promote and market niche
tourism products in PNG.
However, on the other side of the challenges are the
opportunities to look at the challenges differently. The niche tourism product
development at rural areas of PNG is definitely a vehicle for ecotourism promotion,
sustainability and conservation related that meets the United Nation’s
Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Looking into the challenges differently, presents
the benefit with huge potential to attract Special Interest Tourists (SIT) into
rural areas of PNG.
The prospect of developing and promoting ecotourism and
special interest tourism at the rural areas by way of increasing conservation
related activities and projects that will entail development and basic services.
The idea on this is to integrate tourism into community-oriented programs which
can be partly volunteer tourism (Voluntourism) to drive the interest. The responsible
government agencies and the development partners tasks are to look into rural
tourism product developments seriously and support the initiatives by
individuals and community-based organisations. The interrelating of community-oriented
activities are to sustain cultural heritage tourism which will determine the
interests for other tourist types while targeting Special Interest Tourists.
The exchange of idea and skills between tourists and the
communities will improve the living standards in the rural areas. The incorporation
of existing public services like education and health into promoting ecotourism
as part of voluntourism will help the community sustain themselves economically
and continue a resilience livelihood in the community.
The community-based tourism related activities and product
development will also emphasis the rich cultural heritage tourism that are not
yet discovered in Papua New Guinea. The interest will attract researchers,
specialists in fields of botany, ecology, archology and anthropology which sees
PNG has the haven to complement their filed work.
The secret to development be viewed as; the economic
activity of a certain area triggers the changes in the community lifestyles and
living standards by making way for other forms of developments and services
improvement. The changes generated by the economic activities will attract the
infrastructures like; roads, bridges and airstrips into the rural community.
The changes will continue in the process to bring
development into the rural areas because of tourism related activities or
growing interest in the niche tourism product development and promotion. Hence,
with the establishment of the ecotourism management and voluntourism, the
conservation and sustainability of the products and projects in the rural
communities are major attention to meet Sustainable Development Goals of United
Nations.
This will most likely be the bottom up approach of the
development on the rural communities in PNG with promotion of ecotourism and
voluntourism at the rural areas.
The challenges now with the tour operators, the tourism
industry association and stakeholders of the service industry is to look for
the marketing strategies and concepts to promote ecotourism to draw the
attention of the Special Interest Tourists to the rural communities for
Birdwatching, Kayaking, Surfing, Hiking, Trekking, caving, camping, local food
tasting and cultural heritage tourism.
The ecotourism and voluntourism concepts are the idealistic
means to develop and promote niche tourism products at the rural villages of
PNG. The challenges will only become obstacle in development for niche tourism
products at the rural areas if we will never find a solution to overcome them. The
view on the challenges to promote niche tourism at the rural areas of PNG is real
but the opportunities it presents will put things into different perspective.
PNG need to market the undiscovered, unexplored and unexploited
rural areas with a different view of PNG compared to what is seen and heard in
the developing townships and urban centres of PNG.
There is so much to be explored in Papua New Guinea for
tourism and it’s not just a place to promote only one tourism product but a country
with diversity and adversity that presents both the opportunity and challenge.
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| Hiya Village Children - Madang South Coast, PNG |
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