Guillaume Cromer: From community tourism to the French

Photo credit: Guillaume Cromer [/caption] Guillaume Cromer is one of the experts who came to meet the Northern Hotel on August 18 as part of the responsible tourism trophies. Following this meeting, he published this article on his website SPE Tourisme. In the year 2000, the Swiss Cooperation agency Helvetas launched a community tourism project in the heart of Central Asia, Kyrgyzstan, to promote the entire heritage of the Kyrgyz territory in favour of the economic reconstruction of the country. The concept called "CBT – Community-based tourism" in English is explained by the fact that this type of tourism project is based on the inhabitants or the local community. The latter manages and coordinates the entire tourism project. In Kyrgyzstan, in the four corners of the country, residents have gathered in local organizations to offer tourist benefits to national and international visitors. Thus, the shepherds, the housewives, the farmers, the artisans, the young, etc. Offered accommodation (in the inhabitant or under the yurt), mountain guidance (on foot or on horseback), restoration, local handicraft in the form of souvenir objects or cultural services. Thus, based on all the local heritages (equestrian culture, local gastronomy, mountain landscapes and steppes, handicrafts, historical monuments, history of the elders and shepherds, etc.) and valuing them around benefits Tourists, these inhabitants were able to improve the image of a country of the former Soviet Union while improving their daily living conditions and creating jobs for the young people of the villages. Showtime Eleven years later, the project is a great success. It becomes impossible for a traveller to take an unstamped "CBT" service. All the tourist guides have highlighted the CBT offer in their publications. In Kyrgyzstan, more than 20 villages have created their local CBT antenna. The National Association KCBTA (Kyrgyz Community based Tourism Association) based in the capital Bishkek coordinates the local antennas, organizes a la carte circuits for international tour operators and travels on the major tourism fairs in Europe and Asia. Finally, the project has made small ones in neighbouring countries, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, based on the heritage and identities of each territory. Recently Uneassociation of Community tourism in Central Asia, bringing together all these entities has even been created. On January 1, 2011, closer to home, in Marseille, a cooperative company "Hôtel du Nord" was created to offer travellers accommodation at home, participatory walks in the northern districts of the cité Marseille and the sale of Local products (Marseille soap, locally refined goat cheese, books and publications featuring local heritage, etc.) exclusively from the 15th and 16th arrondissements of Marseille. Based on the heritage (natural, cultural, built, historical, human) of these neighbourhoods, the members and friends of the cooperative decided to restore the image of the northern districts of the city making, without knowing it, a true community tourism to The French. The traveller can thus meet the inhabitants of these neighbourhoods, to understand their fights, their difficulties, their joys and their fears and to follow their projects which aim to preserve their living environment, to improve the life of all the inhabitants, to give Desires for young people or simply to share good moments of conviviality around a stew or a pastis. The traveller will thus have the change to meet Michèle, Thérèse, Christine, Maxou or Rose, to spend a night in the district of La Mourepiane, of the Esta Cher to Cézanne or in the city of the visitation, to discover the traditional soap of Midi, of To meet Dominique the origin of an exceptional project of shared gardens in the sensitive city of Aygalades, reviving thus the social connections between the inhabitants and developing entrepreneurship and citizenship in the cities of the northern districts. Many exceptional projects are thus followed, supported and endorsed by the cooperative, which offers a new look at the northern areas of Marseille to the French travelers but also to the Marseille themselves discovering or rediscovering a neighbourhood Attaching to clichés far too attached…. Thus, as in Kyrgyzstan, the inhabitants of the 15th and 16th have regained a way of valuing their exceptional heritages in the service of local economic development of the inhabitants as well as for a positive opening of these neighborhoods to the eye Outside. A magnificent Citizen project, nominated in 2011 for the Voyages-sncf.com Trophy of responsible tourism in the category urban tourism. by Guillaume Cromer, on August 18, 2011