Vietnam Community Based Tourism Training
The PATA Foundation and Capilano University have formed a long lasting partnership in an effort to deliver tourism training to two ethnic minority villages: Taphin and Lao Chai in the Sapa region of Northern Vietnam.
Since August 2010, a new set of projects and training programs built off a previous five-year project (2002-2007). The project model sees Capilano University volunteer faculty, students, and alumni working with Hanoi Open University faculty and students on programs that build and strengthened the capacity of the local ethnic minorities, small business owners, village government, and communities as a whole.
DEVELOPING SUSTAINABLE TOURISM
In the villages the project’s programs begin with workshops to teach basic tourism skills and expand these to entrepreneurship and planning. These involve conversation, scenarios, role-playing, case studies, and practically getting involved. Together we improve sanitation, create new community tourism products (i.e. a temporary market, walking circuits and home stays), create business plans, enact community organizations, and help run community clean-up days with youth amongst other things.
We engage regional and local governments and local tourism stakeholders (hotels, local police, NGO’s, guides etc.). To build lasting sustainable businesses we facilitate familiarization trips to the village with appropriate tour operators, and facilitate trips with locals, many of whom had never left their village, to Hanoi to present their products to local and international private sector tourism companies. These transformative experiences have led to enhanced understanding of product development, partnership agreements, fair and equitable pricing, preservation of culture, and village improvement strategies.
THE CBT VIETNAM PROJECT
When Capilano University and Hanoi Open University were first invited into the villages of Taphin and Tavan in 2002 to begin the work of helping generate sustainable / community based tourism, Sapa was just emerging as a destination and very few visitors were coming to the remote, ethnic minority villages. We were challenged to help locals understand what tourism was, what the perspectives of the visitors were, and to help build skills in a culture based solely on subsistence agriculture and minor trade for hundreds of years. The only way to achieve this was through exceptionally high levels of consultation, community engagement, and relationship building.
What do we do? Our goal is to ensure that benefits of increased tourist visitation are distributed widely in the villages and that the tourist experience is made positive for the visitor and host alike. Training areas focus on general tourism knowledge, tourism planning, entrepreneurship and environmental stewardship and homestay development.
