Dear Sir / Madam,
In the frame of the ASIA INVEST project “Communities in International Business” (see concept note attached), the European Centre for Eco and Agro Tourism, in collaboration with the Cambodian partner CCBEN, the Mongolian partner STDC and INDECON in Indonesia, is organizing a regional workshop in Bali, Indonesia.
This event will take place for two days on the 13th and 14th March 2008 in Bali.
The goal of this meeting is to find an Asian definition of Community Based Tourism (CBT) which fits in the international criteria of Sustainable Tourism (e.g STSC criteria).
We planned to work among other on the definition of main principles/objectives, clusters and main baseline criteria (sustainability & comfort) for CBT.
Aside the 3 projects partners, we wish to enrich the discussion process on convergence towards a common definition of CBT by inviting representatives of at least 6 other CBT networks from Asian countries.
The regional Asian CBT baseline criteria drafted could be used as a framework to develop or enrich each national system (specific criteria / indicators / weights of indicators etc)
This 2 ½ year’s Asia Invest project (feb 2008-aug 2010) will use the CBT standard defined to better promote CBT towards committed European tour operators (e.g. within the frame of tour operator associations using a sustainable supply chain management system –Dutch ANVR, English FTO, Belgian ABTO etc).
A group of tour operators is planned to visit some CBT destinations in the 3 partner countries selected for quality-check and take over the best products in their packages.
A regional Asian network is envisioned to promote the CBT quality systems that respond to the International standard.
In that case each national system can get more visibility through a logo expressing the compliance with the basic common Asian CBT standards.
Would you have an interest in participating in this meeting, please contact us asap.
If you could not join this event for one reason or another, please let us know : we would be anyway glad to share with you the outcomes of this meeting.
Thanks in advance for your prompt reaction.
Best regards,
Metilde Wendenbaum
PS : on the top of the regional meeting, our Indonesian partner will organise on the 14th March in the afternoon a mini- conference on order to present the outcomes of the meeting to the public and media.
ECEAT Projects
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e-mail : m.wendenbaum@eceat-projects.org
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