@DavidKirkland- spto-Vanuatu
Vanuatu Tourism Office became an ATTA member in late April 2022. Lea Faccarello, Manager Long Haul Markets, recently attended the Adventure Travel World Summit, where she was part of the Destinations Insights workshop. We were also proud to have her in our panel at ITB Asia last month, where ATTA partners and adventure travel experts discussed adventure travel trends, destinations developing adventure travel, and driving economic recovery through the intersection of adventure travel, community tourism and digital transformation.
Lea, could you define what adventure travel means to you and why it is so important for your destination Vanuatu?
Adventure – the dictionary definition is an exciting or remarkable experience. The great thing about adventure is its elasticity: it has a scope to mean different things to different people. In Vanuatu, adventure travels means: doing something different, pursuing your passions, listening to your heart not your head, stepping outside your comfort zone but still feeling safe, going where others are not, seeing the world from a different perspective, taking the local bus or dive deep in the ocean, discovering there is more that unites us than divides us…
Promotion and preservation are unfortunately not always two words that go together. The negative impacts of tourism on small, undiscovered and remote destinations like Vanuatu can be enormous. But should we put the beauty of our environment and our cultural differences under glass? Definitely not. Vanuatu’s positioning in the adventure travel world is crucial.
You recently became an ATTA member, do you feel this is the right community to promote your destination, why?
The Adventure Market is not new to Vanuatu. With its volcanoes, coastlines, jungles, waterfalls, caves, dive sites, It has a natural comparative advantage over nearby destinations for adventure tourism. This was in that perspective that the Vanuatu Tourism Office became a member of the Adventure Travel Trade Association this year and attended the Adventure Travel World Summit early October for the first time.
The Vanuatu Tourism Office’s involvement in this great community through our participation in this Summit and then in the panel discussion during ITB Asia allowed us to showcase the brand positioning for Vanuatu tourism as a ‘Real, life-changing adventure’, which communicates the emotional impact a trip to the islands can have on a traveler. Vanuatu is a rough diamond – real and authentic, with adventure at every turn. It brings you back to earth, clears your mind of all the stuff that doesn’t matter and replaces it with amazing stories to tell.
You recently attended our Adventure Travel World Summit in Lugano, your very first summit, what were your key highlights and takeaways from this experience?
My experience of this first summit was fantastic. I felt welcomed and understood.
Small and big destinations, operators and media, we all shared our challenges and brainstormed solutions. The main richness of being part of such a strong community is to learn and grow by combining knowledge, views and uses.
It is crucial for the Vanuatu Tourism Office and for the destinations’ recovery to reconnect, re-acquaint and re-align with our long-haul markets, and more precisely with the adventure travelers. Therefore, the biggest highlight for me was the opportunity to network with so many inspiring adventurers.
As a Pacific Island, Vanuatu is particularly vulnerable to climate change, how do you address this from a tourism point of view? What measures have you had to take?
The Vanuatu tourism industry is regulated since 2019 by the Vanuatu Sustainable Tourism Policy whose vision is to “Protect and celebrate Vanuatu’s unique environment, culture, customs, and people through sustainable and responsible tourism.”
Vanuatu Sustainable tourism strategy is based on 4 main themes:
- Wellbeing through high value, low impact tourism
- Resilience through niche tourism product development
- Diversification through agritourism and sport tourism
- Sustainability through certification, investment and entrepreneurship.