What was it about Cambodia and Track Saa specifically that you just had been so drawn to?
I moved to Cambodia in 2004. I’ve a really adventurous spirit and I really like visiting distant locations, and I used to be captured by the essence of Cambodia within the folks, the vitality and the vibrancy. However again then Cambodia was very a lot nonetheless waking up after the Khmer Rouge, and it’s a nation, even to this present day, that’s in therapeutic. 70 p.c of the inhabitants had been underneath the age of 30 again then, so it had this actually younger, dynamic spirit. There was a lot positivity, which was one thing that I believe that was in contradiction to what in all probability folks felt concerning the nation at the moment.
I had simply spent two weeks circumnavigating the Koh Rong archipelago, and it was pristine and the water was crystal clear. We’d cease exterior of the seashores and park in a single day and sleep on the fishing boat, and monkeys would come right down to the water’s edge. It was simply a unprecedented expertise.
Why does it matter for folks to expertise Cambodia?
I believe that Cambodia is an extremely particular place, and although it sits between its neighbours Thailand, Vietnam and Laos—three nations which have very lengthy histories and are effectively outlined by way of tourism—Cambodia remains to be figuring out who it’s. So anybody who visits Cambodia at all times walks away with a way that they’ve had an actual, human reference to it. It doesn’t matter in the event that they’re visiting the temples of Angkor Wat or going by Phnom Penh or coming right down to the coast—there’s at all times this distinctive expertise of actual connection that you just get while you come to Cambodia. Cambodia has its personal essence, its personal sense of place, and its personal historical past.
How is Track Saa’s method to sustainability and group programmes distinctive in comparison with developments of an analogous nature?
As a result of we began off with constructing group tasks, with no imaginative and prescient at that time to open a lodge, we have now designed and created a lodge expertise for our visitors the place that’s woven in from Day One, versus designing and opening a lodge and making that match into the lodge. which could be very a lot what
regenerative tourism growth design is all about. So we have a look at the dwelling system and the way we will function inside that and assist to reinforce these techniques. The work that we do is thru the nonprofit Track Saa Basis, which is its personal entity. If the lodge shut down tomorrow, the inspiration would proceed to function, so the programmes that we work with aren’t there as a result of it makes the lodge really feel good. They’re there as a result of that’s what we want, so the whole lot is community-driven.
Would you say accountability and luxurious are, by their very nature, in opposition? Can they coexist?
I consider they’ll coexist. To start out with, I believe we have now to grasp what the definition of luxurious is on this context, and it’s actually developed previously few years. We don’t use the phrase “luxurious” and haven’t for some time, we speak about high-end or accountable tourism. Coming into a rustic like Cambodia, even when that travelling is at a high-end degree, by simply connecting to the folks and the tradition, it brings empathy and
consciousness that they take dwelling with them. The place the high-end traveller can actually carry quite a lot of change is that they actually need to perceive the historical past and the place the place they’re at, they usually then typically donate to the programmes that we have now, so there’s that transference of consciousness and assist.
What are your ideas on the altering panorama of sustainability-minded tourism in recent times, particularly in Southeast Asia, and shopper expectations and the way they’ve developed?
I believe they’ve developed enormously. I believe there’s a higher consciousness for most individuals, and that there’s a actual shift away from the vacationers of 20 or 30 years in the past. Individuals now establish as travellers, they usually need to have that have and connection. Historically, again then folks used to remain within the huge motels,
the place they might step into after which they might be transported again right into a cocoon. And now folks need to really feel, join, study and develop, and that’s extremely particular.
This text was first seen on Grazia.Sg
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