Tourism, conservation and cultural preservation can be allies. UF is showing communities how.

Gregory Parent (MS ’07, 9LAS) and other UF researchers are helping villagers get a handle on the tourism industry that is growing due to the beauty of the area and large wildlife population with the dual goals of economic development and conservation. This woman lives in the Okavango Delta in Botswana. Photo by Gregory Parent

By Alisson Clark (BSJ ’98)

In the Indonesian village of Sambi, 10,700 miles from Gainesville, UF researchers unpacked the tools they brought to create a tourism management plan for the tiny rice-farming town.

Along with their laptops and questionnaires, they took out several dozen disposable cameras, giving them to the villagers and asking them to snap photos of places and experiences they’d like to share with visitors. The photos would give UF graduate student Ignatius Cahyanto (MS ’08) and his adviser, associate professor Lori Pennington-Gray, a window into Sambi’s culture. They’d also provide insight into how tourism dollars could flow into the village without disrespecting or diluting the culture that visitors come to see.

“Tourists can be intrusive,” says Brijesh Thapa, director of UF’s Eric Friedheim Tourism Institute. “We wanted to know what local people wanted to show as much as what they wanted to conceal.”

Empowering the local community is a common thread in the institute’s work.

“In my opinion, if it takes place in your backyard, you should not only have a say, but also be the first one to benefit,” Thapa says.

Home Base

The institute — part of the College of Health and Human Performance — was known as the Center for Tourism Research and Development until this year, when it was renamed to recognize a gift from the Eric Friedheim Foundation. The foundation set forth a challenge to become the country’s top tourism education program.

With eight faculty members and 27 affiliated professors representing several countries, it’s already the largest concentration of full-time professors devoted to tourism research, Thapa says. That, combined with its location in Florida — one of the world’s top tourism destinations — convinced the Jacksonville-based foundation that UF could become “the equivalent of the Wharton School or the Kellogg School for Tourism,” says Friedheim Trustee Sid Gefen. The foundation is named for Friedheim, a journalist and longtime publisher of Travel Agent magazine, who died in 2002.

At its founding in 1992, the institute dealt mainly in recreation, but now works from the Amazon to Zambia recommending sustainable management strategies. Along with graduate students from around the world, the institute’s professors turn out research that helps inform policymakers’ decisions on tourism.

It’s not a job that can be done from an office. Thapa spent part of last year touring Kazakhstan on horseback and sleeping in yurts. His platinum frequent-flier card attests to 75,000 miles logged in the air. But the institute also works closer to home, with long-range projects evaluating Florida’s beach access points, preparing travel-industry leaders to handle

hurricane evacuations, even tracking the role of social media in the recovery from the Gulf oil spill.

Researchers from UF’s Eric Friedheim Tourism Institute are helping southern African villages and other communities worldwide manage their local tourism industries. Photo by Gregory Parent.

Tripod of Sustainable Tourism

Zambia’s Kafue National Park has hippos, impalas, elephants and lions, but few visitors. Even tourists who come to the country to see Victoria Falls rarely visit the park. Thapa points to two reasons for this: Road conditions make the trip from the falls to the park a grueling seven-hour slog. And the park is the size of West Virginia, so visitors can’t just wander in and hope to see wildlife.

The institute’s research at Kafue, one of the largest national parks in the world, has helped determine how to bring in visitors while maintaining its breathtaking natural beauty. One recommendation was to pave a single-lane highway that would cut the drive time from Victoria Falls by more than half, with minimal ecological impact. The institute also suggested ways to maximize visitors’ chances of spotting the animals they came to see. That means strategic placement of roads, lodging and visitor centers. It also means getting the poaching problem under control, an issue where community support is crucial for enforcement. When locals realize that poaching works against the influx of tourist dollars, it’s bound to be less accepted, Thapa says.

Local control extends to the institute’s teaching mission as well. In seven southern African nations, UF is working with universities to develop natural resource management courses, creating a pool of qualified workers within the countries’ own borders.

“When local people are in management roles, they not only get the economic benefits, but they become stakeholders in decision making, which helps ensure the local culture is not impacted,” he says.

Wherever the institute’s faculty works, Thapa says, they bear in mind that the popularity of a tourist destination can be its undoing. Whether it is litter-strewn beaches, foot traffic damaging ancient ruins or just too many tourists clogging the streets, “once the place is degraded, tourists are not going to come.” He sees sustainable tourism as a tripod, balanced on the destination’s economic, cultural and environmental health. Take out one leg, and the whole thing topples.

Fostering Connections

While protecting local cultures is one part of the institute’s mission, exchange between cultures is another.

Melissa Wohlstein, senior director of development for the college, recalls a recent meeting at the institute’s offices between visiting scholars from Turkey and Armenia, where diplomatic relations have only recently resumed after 100 years of hostility. The Turkish professors filed onto one side of the conference table, the Armenians remained on the other. It wasn’t until they gathered for a dinner at Dean Steve Dorman’s house that the frosty atmosphere thawed.

“Just getting people into a room together can be a major step,” she says.

The gathering in Gainesville was a first step in a two-year project using tourism to break down barriers between the two cultures. UF students will partner with Turkish and Armenian students to develop a tourism plan for the countries’ shared border.

“When people visit another country, it isn’t about politics. It’s people to people,” Wohlstein says. “Tourism can help promote peace.”

The impact of tourism on cultural tensions isn’t limited to tourists. When South Africa hosted the FIFA World Cup in 2010, visitors flooded the country. UF researchers set out to quantify the effect that hosting Africa’s first World Cup had on South Africans.

“What we want to see is, a year later, can that euphoria be sustained? Can soccer bring this country together? What does this mean for South Africans and Africa as a whole?”

Beyond our Borders

UF collaborates with tourism and conservation workers from across southern Africa to promote sustainable tourism practices. Photo by Gregory Parent

When international graduate students leave UF with their degrees, Thapa encourages them to share what they’ve learned with their home countries.

That’s because he’s seen how they help influence policy decisions. For instance, Lorraine Nicholas (Phd ’07), who researched sustainable tourism in her native St. Lucia while at UF, is now a chief tourism officer at the nine-nation Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States. The institute also spreads its vision by helping to establish tourism development programs at universities worldwide. When faculty members travel to a site, they might also hold workshops on ecotourism or create a curriculum to prepare local workers for travel-industry jobs.

Thapa says they’re especially committed to giving local universities the tools to continue UF’s innovative research, using out-of-the- box techniques, such as the disposable cameras in Sambi.

“When we’re long gone, those universities can sustain what we’ve started,” Thapa says.

A Great Place to Visit …

Learn more about the Eric Friedheim Tourism Institute, located within UF’s College of Health and Human Performance, on its website. To support the program, contact Melissa Wohlstein at 352-294-1607or mwohlstein@hhp.ufl.edu.