Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
speeding up the necessary processes for interested investors to encourage
them to convince other investors to come to Madagascar;
supporting the ongoing concession process for the establishment of high class
ecolodges of international quality in some of the National Parks;
facilitating interest in building similar structures around the parks, with
special focus on supporting local SME development;
further lobbying of three to four star brands from around the world that
specialize in classic sun and beach tourism as well as smaller specialized
operators (e.g. diving, kyte surf, hiking & trekking, climbing, etc.);
government statements followed up by actions pushing ecotourism develop-
ment forward; and
private sector support of the recent launch of concrete measures taken by the
government to increase the Malagasy investment climate (e.g. the creation of
the EDBM for investors in 2007) to ensure that more of them will follow.
Until today, the local population has unfortunately not been integrated as much as
it should be in tourism activities. There is little channelling of the income and
benefits from tourism development directly to them due to missing regulations
and lack of planning. The private tourism sector is characterized mainly by
foreign hotel owners (French, in Nosy Be Italians, few Malagasy citizens) with
international brands still missing. In terms of the employment structure, it
remains the same: management positions in hotels as well as in tour operator
businesses are filled by foreign people. This is due to a lack of indigenous high
quality education in this sector. Increased training and education systems comply-
ing with international standards as well as management and training programmes
for the local population are of the utmost importance if the local population are to
keep up to date with and profit from this new development. As most of the very
few existing tourism schools and university courses are based in the capital,
people from the regions have often no chance to attend as travel and living costs
would be too high for them. For a lot of families, the cost of their children's educa-
tion is already hard to finance. The solution may be in more decentralization of
tourism education to the provinces, preferably in each of the regions. This should
avoid the local population being displaced by foreigners and tourism development
being destroyed by jealousy - which ultimately might result in poor treatment for
tourists. What has not been valued yet is the ability of Malagasy people to learn
languages very quickly. The native language is composed of a mixture of
languages which makes it easy for the locals to pick up other languages. In
addition, donors' financial support programmes need to be accessed more easily
and supported by technical assistance as interested people can often not follow or
satisfy the difficult procedures or reporting requirements. Better awareness raising
and start-up measures (e.g. infrastructure development, micro-credits especially
for tourism) are often helpful to show to the locals that tourism developments can
have positive results.
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