This has been the buzz word of the industry worldwide for some time now and already one of the most abused terms like “Green Tourism” with more players jumping on the bandwagon of “Responsible Tourism”. However Responsible/Sustainable Tourism has not only been our approach, but has always remained our passion and we are proud be one of the first tourism entities in the region who took initiatives in a meaningful way beyond being vocal on its significance.
One of our key initiatives was introducing the specialist bee-keepers in the mountains of Northern Oman to the main-stream tourism, as they had never been part of conventional tourism circuits.
We have been working closely with some of the local communities ever since, ensuring that there is meaningful cultural exchange between them and the visitors and at the same time the communities benefit economically and thus help keeping the traditions alive. We continue to pursue our goals in sustainability, to excel, for it’s not just our policy, but our Passion!
Discover Oman/Eihab Travels has been committed to promoting Responsible Tourism in the country and has taken our own small strides and initiatives since 2008 to Introduce many practices that directly benefit the local communities.
We were also represented at the International Conference on Responsible Tourism last year held in Cochin, India. In line with our vision and our passion, we co-sponsored the Responsible Tourism networking event at ITB Berlin 2009 together with Your Safe Planet UK and The Blue Yonder India. The event received wide media coverage and Travelmole, the leading online community for travel and tourism industry, also gave us an opportunity to talk about our initiatives.
We work actively with traditional honey farmers in the mountains of Oman, supporting them economically. Our new initiative is promoting the Sidab Women’s Sewing Group which is a non-profit community organization which does a commendable job in developing sewing skills of local women from the fishing village of Sidab. And these women create wonderful bags, pouches and other hand made crafts in this modest initiative. We have introduced a number of international journalists to the facility there by creating greater awareness of their activity and have included visit to the facility in our full day tours so that guests can also buy their products apart from the gifts that we purchase from the community and provide each of our guests on these tours. We also now order our gifts for our overseas trips from this community and recommend them to other organizations apart from arranging meals for our groups on the terrace of their building where guests can enjoy traditional meals cooked by the local women working there by doubling economic benefits to the community.
We have been encouraging our guests to use the (cloth) bags purchased from the community instead of plastic bags there by contributing to our efforts to minimize environmental impacts. Every guest who visits the community is offered a complimentary gift by us (purchased by us from the community). Therefore the community benefits each time a guests visit them – irrespective of whether the guests buy their product or not. Additionally we recommend their products to other institutions including hotels who now buy these products for their shops. We also started to organize special meals (cooked by the women in the community) for our groups on the terrace of their building which provides additional income to the community.
The decision to include visit to their facility in our tours was taken after consulting them and with their consent. The women are trained to produce something very original, using patterns and designs which are very local and there by contributing to preserve cultural heritage. From the feedback of clients, it has well been established that their experiences with the community has had great positive impacts and better understanding of the host communities. In some cases the guests also visit the houses of the women working on this project and enjoy chatting with family members.
The women are proud when they receive positive comments on their creations and for the guests these products are marvelous and original. The outcome is a positive cultural interaction and greater respect between the guests and the host community. We have been proud be pioneering the responsible tourism initiatives in the country in a meaningful manner. We are sure that our small efforts would help create more awareness about responsible tourism among the industry and that more stakeholders will be encouraged to follow this path.
