What was it about Cambodia and Track Saa specifically that you simply 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 individuals, 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 today, that’s in therapeutic. 70 p.c of the inhabitants had been beneath 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 feel that was in contradiction to what most likely individuals felt in regards to 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 all the way down to the water’s edge. It was simply a unprecedented expertise.
Why does it matter for individuals to expertise Cambodia?
I feel that Cambodia is an extremely particular place, and although it sits between its neighbours Thailand, Vietnam and Laos—three international locations which have very lengthy histories and are nicely outlined when it comes to tourism—Cambodia remains to be understanding 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 way of Phnom Penh or coming all the way down to the coast—there’s at all times this distinctive expertise of actual connection that you simply get once you come to Cambodia. Cambodia has its personal essence, its personal sense of place, and its personal historical past.
How is Track Saa’s strategy to sustainability and group programmes distinctive in comparison with developments of an identical nature?
As a result of we began off with constructing group initiatives, with no imaginative and prescient at that time to open a resort, we have now designed and created a resort expertise for our friends the place that’s woven in from Day One, versus designing and opening a resort and making that match into the resort. which could be very a lot what
regenerative tourism improvement design is all about. So we have a look at the residing system and the way we will function inside that and assist to boost these techniques. The work that we do is thru the nonprofit Track Saa Basis, which is its personal entity. If the resort shut down tomorrow, the muse would proceed to function, so the programmes that we work with aren’t there as a result of it makes the resort really feel good. They’re there as a result of that’s what we’d like, so all the pieces is community-driven.
Would you say duty and luxurious are, by their very nature, in opposition? Can they coexist?
I imagine they’ll coexist. To start out with, I feel we have now to know what the definition of luxurious is on this context, and it’s actually advanced prior to now 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 individuals and the tradition, it brings empathy and
consciousness that they take house with them. The place the high-end traveller can actually convey loads of change is that they actually wish to perceive the historical past and the place the place they’re at, and so they then typically donate to the programmes that we have now, so there’s that transference of consciousness and help.
What are your ideas on the altering panorama of sustainability-minded tourism in recent times, particularly in Southeast Asia, and client expectations and the way they’ve advanced?
I feel they’ve advanced enormously. I feel 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, and so they wish to have that have and connection. Historically, again then individuals 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 individuals wish to really feel, join, study and develop, and that’s extremely particular.
This text was first seen on Grazia.Sg
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