“Rio de Janeiro”

The city of Rio de Janeiro is well known for its beautiful views and beaches. The city has a large number of hotels and city and a great amount of visitors during the year, the city is the most wanted for foreign visitors that come to Brazil. When I went to the city I had with me a friend from Belarus, he was really excited to go to Rio, we went there by bus, the bus was really good and comfortable, but when we got there the bus went through a really ugly place, and the truth is my friend got scared, when we arrived at the bus station at Rio he told me he wanted to go back to São Paulo. Of course I didn’t let him do that and after we went to the hotel and he saw Rio’s beaches and mountains, he just felt in love with the city.

The good thing about Rio is its places, the beaches, the “Cristo Redentor”, a statue at the top of a mountain where you can see the whole city around you and the “Pão de Açucar”, a mountain surrounded by green areas and animals where u need to get a trolley to get to the top, it has to stops, Rio it is a wonderful city but like everyplace you may go it also has it’s not so good side. In Rio the bus transportation is really good, it can take from one side of the city till the other one, the only bad things is the drivers and the chargers are not friendly at all, the city is kind of dangerous during the night, and the fact that most of the people in Rio doesn’t know how to speak a second language, only makes it worse. While I was walking with my friend I could notice a large number of foreign people trying to ask for their meal with difficult.

New York City

When I went to New York I had no trouble in walking around, the city welcomes you stay there and enjoy, it is a wonderful city with amazing places to visit.

The best about New York it is that you can walk all the way around the city through public transportation, the trains and buses can take you anywhere, the places you visit are always well cared, and you have tons of options for entertainment during the day and also during the night, it is like if the city exists only to fulfill your desires.

Now the bad thing about the city is that people are not usually really friendly, New York is a city where you can notice even if it is not true that usually people in the city are always running to work or even back home, it is also a city where you need to be alert all the time, and when I went to one of the stores to look for t-shirts the guy told me that if I didn’t really wanted to buy that I should not ask him to see the t-shirts.

All the cities in the world have it good side and bad side, it takes a lot to make people feel comfortable and accept something that is different of what they are used to. Hospitality can happen everywhere, it can happen between two friends, or maybe between two unknown people, the most important is that people need to remember that they should treat people like they wanted someone to treat them.

The three websites underneath are from Rio. =)

http://www.bondinho.com.br/mudancas_home/ingles.htm

http://www.corcovado.com.br/

http://www.rioguiaoficial.com.br/

Goiania

Goiania is one of the best cities to live in Brazil. I went there two times to see my best friend, who moved from Sao Paulo to there, and I got surprised with the city. The first time I went there it was great, but the second time I got sick, so I went to the public hospital. The receptionist said I could only be examined by a doctor in an emergency and that in my case, which it was just flu, I could not be examined at the time and I would have to schedule a day to return. So I called to schedule a day to return, but to my surprise, the clerk said I could not schedule a day because I was from another state. That was an action of hostility, in my opinion. But, still, the city is amazing and very hospitable. The airport provides signs in Portuguese and English, the local gastronomy it’s excellent, the tourist places are beautiful and most of people are very welcoming.

Sao Paulo

Sao Paulo is the biggest city of Brazil, with a population near of 20 millions of people. The city provides an enormous variety of entertainment places, the gastronomy it’s global known and every day Sao Paulo receives and event. People come to Sao Paulo for many reasons, to see a friend or to make business, doesn’t matter the motivation, the city always receives someone. Last year 11,7 millions of people visited the city. The airports, even with all the problems, contains many signs in different languages, the public transport (mainly the subway) also provides these signs, which helps who come abroad. But, as every big city, Sao Paulo has a huge problem: the traffic. Every day, at the end of the day the city stops with the heavy traffic. And some public services, especially hospitals, also have problems.

So, to these two destinations become more hospitable, it’s necessary to improve the public services, not just for tourists, but also for the population itself. Hospitality it’s not just receive someone who came from abroad, but offer a good place to the citizens live. If the population it’s happy and believes in its country and state, this will reflects in the way how they treat tourists.

Audubon Green Leaf™ Eco-Rating Program

This program proposes best practices to hotels located in the United States since 1998.

It wants to improve the services and the quality that a hotel offers to its tourist through actions that seek a better water quality, water conservation, waste minimization, resource conservations and energy efficiency.

The certification process happens in five different stages: the first one implies that the own business should evaluate its actions and detect what sectors or services should be improved; the second one implies in suggestions that are made to the corporation about areas that the business could improve; and the third, the fourth and the fifth steps implies the certification, the continuous process of analyses of the sources and processes and the continuous improvement of the services and products the hotel has to offer, according to sustainability.

All the actions of improvement are developed according to four major areas, those areas are: energy efficiency, pollution prevention,  environmental management and resource conservation.

This certification can be related to three of the five TEFI values, like ethics, the enrollment with the community, the environment and the equilibrium that should be kept according to sustainability; like professionalism, and the seek for improvements in the processes and management of hotels, the continuous investment  in the employers and equipment; and like stewardship, the hotel needs to look forward sustainability, it needs to provide not only profit for its owners but also opportunities to its community, employers and “neighbors”, it needs to take care of the environment and develop not only it services but the area around it.

There is a large number of different certifications and labels that can be chosen by companies and private business in general, and that is why sometimes it gets hard to choose only one certification or label that fits perfectly for the business. The business needs to choose a certificate or label that is going to aggregate meaning to its business and that is going to help it to develop and grow even more according to sustainability.

by Malu Oestreich

Code to prevent sex tourims.

1. A new inspection policy of  places like motels/hotels should be created, places that agree with this kind of activity should have to pay a large fine or even be closed;

2. Investigations should be done weekly so that the police could prevent this activity;

3. Kids that are forced to work as prostitutes should be taken away from their families;

4. Parents that put their kids into that life should be arrested for bad caring;

5. People should be aware of the negative results of prostitution, and they should be able to denounce pedophiles to local authorities anonymously, without being scared.

EarthCheck was developed in 1997 as an initiative of Australian Government to establish a scientific and strategic research organization for tourism. Known as The Sustainable Tourism Cooperative Research Centre, the organization was directed by the principles of Agenda 21, from the Rio Earth Summit, and helped communities and governments to enhance their tourism initiatives in terms of environmental, economic and social sustainability.

EarthCheck is the leading benchmarking, certification and environmental management program used by the travel and tourism industry and for over a decade has been collecting data relating to the operational performance of more than 1300 travel and tourism organizations in over 84 countries. This has enabled EarthCheck clients to competitively benchmark the efficiency of their operations against internationally compliant standards of Best Practice.

EarthCheck recognises helps operators to monitor, measure and manage their environmental, social and economic impacts in more than 39 sectors in the travel and tourism industry. This includes the reporting of Greenhouse Gas emissions (GHG) and consumption of natural resources.

Certified and Assessed Programs to organizations aren’t for free. The organization requests an annual fee for their work, but the benefits worth it. Other programs like The EarthCheck Sustainable Communities Program and The EarthCheck Building & Precinct-Planning and Design Standards helps communities achieve sustainability in the areas of environment, social, economic benefits and place a monetary value on preserving heritage, rescuing culture and conserving the natural wonders of tourism destinations; assist local governments and developers in the planning and design of precincts, buildings and the associated infrastructure.

During the years, the organization became one of the world’s largest certifiers of sustainable travel and tourism operators and is trusted by market leaders such as InterContinental Hotels Group, Taj Hotels, Sandals, Langham Hospitality Group, Banyan Tree, and  ACCOR.

1. Strict laws should be applied to advertisements for tourism organizations in countries that have a history of problems with sex tourism;
2. Campaigns against the sex tourism practice must be more present in flights, tourism agencies, TV advertisements, internet, etc;
3. Tourism organizations must be aware and inform local authorities in case of suspect actions;
4. Hotels should not allow the entry of children and adolescents who are not accompanied by their parents;
5. Tourism organizations should work more with awareness programs;
6. Annual data of the increase or decrease in sex tourism in the world should be shared between countries.

Nationalism it’s a feeling that people have for its country and nation. It’s a proud to be part of a civilization and culture. But, in Brazil, we’re not so nationalist as some people may think. The problems with politics, social inequality and other social problems can be the cause. Beyond this, the imperialism also affects our culture.

Brazil is a country that has one of the most admirable cultures in the world, but unfortunately the citizens aren’t proud about this. In fact, we disrespect other regional cultures here, for example, in Sao Paulo we often hear jokes and bias about the “Nordestinos” (citizens from the northeast region). This disrespect between regional cultures it’s something “normal” in Brazil, but it shouldn’t be. The diversity of cultures it’s a characteristic from Brazil, since the colonialism times. This proves that the Brazilians aren’t really nationalists, we are regionalists.

Another problem in our culture is the imperialism, especially from USA. In big cities we see the American culture very present in many things like music, food, clothes and even in some slang. Most Brazilians prefer to travel to another country, than traveling on your own country. When someone from abroad arrives here, we extend a red carpet for this person like it was a superior being. Maybe that’s a result from colonialism times, but we need to establish limits for this kind of behavior. We’re neither inferior nor superior to other civilizations.

This lack of nationalism affects the national tourism, since people often think: “Well, if I travel to northeast I’m going to spend “X” of money, so I rather travel to another country, it’s almost the same price”. That’s true, but before knowing some other country, why not explores yours?

So what we need to see is that our country is amazing, in many aspects. Of course we have problems, Brazil it’s a “young” country, but we won’t improve anything with bias and disrespect with ourselves. We need to realize that not everything that comes from abroad is better than what we have here.

In January 2010 I went to live in the USA as an au pair for one year. During this year I could enjoy everything about the american culture. In one of my trips I went to New York city to the show of the Brazilian singer Ivete Sangalo at the Madison Square Garden.

During this show something really got my attention, after it was over, all Brazilian people started singing “Eu sou brasileiro, com muito orgulho, com muito amor”, (I am Brazilian with proud and love), but the thing is I don’t really understand why that happened, maybe that happened because we were in a different country, and because some of that people or maybe most of it like me were out of Brazil for a very long time and like me missing our country.

Something I could see every day in the US is how Americans love and appreciate everything in their country, they embrace their culture, they would do almost everything to keep their country safe and their costumes alive, they defend their country even if for that they have to go to the war, even with they have to fight and give their own lives, they do that with honor.

Brazilians are not the same as americans, sometimes they know how to appreciate a soccer game better than their own country and according to this thinking I would say that maybe Brazilian people need to understand better the value of ethics, because before being able to appreciate one different country and one different culture we need to learn how to be authentic and how to put our culture and costumes in first place in our lives, it is not because you are far from home that you can show your feelings for something that need to be an ideal that starts right were you belong.

by Malu

When someone says he or she is looking for an authentic experience they mean they want to try something different, the tourist from the future does not want to go to travel relax, and lay down in the sun he wants more than that he wants to experience new things, he wants to understand new cultures and be part of it, he wants to be part of its landscape.

The text “Integrating sustainability and Hawaiian culture in to tourism experience of the Hawaiian Islands”, talks about the tourists and how they are requesting more and more of their trips, they don’t want more a sun burn and a day in the city they want much more, they want to go to a place that is full developed according to its culture, history, population, and natural places they want to go to a sustainable place.

In the Haiwaiian case we can observe that during the years and due to the high number of tourists and bad planning in the tourism activity that the location and its population lost part of its cultural aspects, and how hard it is to acquire its characteristics back, it is ten times easier to cultivate someone’s culture than to renew and recuperate it back.

Now the second text about “Authenticity in Cultural Heritage Tourism”, talks about measures that need to be taken so that someone could have a truly authentic experience, it talks about what is authenticity and what a place needs to make it real.

Once again like the Hawaiian text it explores the characteristics the new tourist and its new face, how he is going to be, what kind of experiences he is going to look after, and what he wants to keep from that particular experiences, the new tourist is always looking after new things, and knowledge.

Both texts shows how important it is to keep someone’s culture intact, and it can be compared to the TEFI values because it highlights important values that shouldn’t be lost during time in someone’s culture like sustainability, transparency, honesty and inclusion.

Bibliography:

http://www.eturbonews.com/16026/integrating-sustainability-and-hawaiian-culture-tourism-experien

http://sohosandiego.org/reflections/2003-4/authenticity.htm

Authenticity in Tourism it’s what distinguish one country or region from some other place. The culture, language, arts and local aspects are part of the authenticity and these aspects are used by organizations to attract tourist demand. But, sometimes, these aspects are changed or reformulated in order to attract more tourists.

In the paper “A Life Cycle Model for Aboriginal Arts Performance in Tourism: Perspectives on Authenticity”, the author suggests a life cycle model for aboriginal arts. He says that: “…aboriginal arts performance is subject to a change and potential revitalization process which consists of five stages: (1) the primordial state; (2) increasing involvement; (3) situational adaptations; (4) revitalization; and (5) management for change, conservation or decline”.

The author explains about the aboriginal culture and authenticity and how the tourism affects the culture. The paper suggests the idea of applying a life cycle model to the impact that tourism causes on the aboriginal arts. With these stages, he explains that “the increasingly complex world in which aboriginal arts now can decline or survive or change and in which tourism’s demands and opportunities have powerful role.

In his conclusions, the author says: “It is important to realize that the arts have always changed. They have changed to reflect the needs of society. Tourism – both its supply and demand – is now often a quite fundamental need in many societies. The performing arts increasingly reflect that fact. The life cycle concept helps both tourism planners and cultural commentators understand and explain those changes. Stage five, management, is the current end stage. That stage is unique because it is one where a conscious – even self-conscious – management process tries to determine cultural evolution and conservation goals. Tourism can play a part in funding and guiding the determination and management of those goals. Culture has always been driven by the market: the central difference in the 21st century is that markets were once local, but are now increasingly global. And in some societies we try to control market forces for a wide variety of reasons, far beyond the scope of this paper”.

So, what the author says is that the culture has always changed and it will keep changing for many reasons. When a location begins to work the tourism, the culture it’s used according to its interests and the tourist demand, thus the culture can decline, survive or change.

In another paper, “Authenticity in ethnic tourism: domestic tourists’ perspectives”, the author talks about the tourists’ perspectives about authenticity and quantify these perspectives with fieldwork.

The fieldwork was made in Xishuangbann, China, and interview 600 people, 35 of them international tourists.  After the questionnaire, “survey results reveal that a large number of tourists were satisfied with staged authenticity, while a smaller (but considerable) number would prefer a more“authentic” experience in a natural setting. As indicated in Table 1, 45.3% of respondents perceived ethnic folk villages as authentic, 65.7% of respondents were satisfied with staged cultural performances, and 45.8% perceived ethnic souvenirs as authentic. A considerable number of respondents stated that they could not judge authenticity (27% regarding the folk village, 9.2% the cultural performance, and 17.3% ethnic souvenirs). This is in accord with the fact that many tourists had little information about ethnic Dai culture prior to the visit: 82.5% of respondents indicated that they did not know about ethnic culture and only 17.5% of respondents were familiar with ethnic culture. Those who were familiar with ethnicity showed a higher degree of knowledge of ethnic dance/song and architecture: 45.5% of respondents indicated knowing about ethnic dance/song and 39.2% about architecture. This result can be understood from the way Banna culture has been projected in the mass media. The images of attractive ethnic dancers and singers as well as bamboo houses have been widely portrayed in tourist brochures, newspapers, and magazines. Thus, tourists are more aware of the spectacular rather than more basic aspects of culture, such as farming systems, folklore, and history.

The study revealed that most of the tourists were Chinese on package tours and international tourists are currently rare. The results proved that many tourists doesn’t know about the local ethnic culture and can’t judge authenticity, so the tourism organizations should work more in this issue.

References

Philip Feifan Xie, Lane, Bernard

Journal of Sustainable Tourism; 2006, Vol. 14 Issue 6, p545-561, 17p, 1 Graph

http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=5e7318ff-26ee-4cbd-b702-1e9f61affb52%40sessionmgr13&vid=18&hid=9

Chhabra, Deepak

Journal of Sustainable Tourism; Jul2010, Vol. 18 Issue 6, p793-809, 17p, 1 Diagram, 3 Charts

http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=86503558-91ba-4443-9ca4-3bf09bf2d96f%40sessionmgr104&vid=8&hid=21

Hi, my name is Fabio, I study Tourism in University Anhembi Morumbi and I’m going to talk about Stereotypes in Tourism.

What do you think about a place where you went in a travel? If I asked you about Japan, for example, what would you answer me? If I travel to Japan someday, I would probably answer that it’s an amazing country because of its culture and I would say something about animes, their habits and the strange taste for insects. These kinds of thoughts are Stereotypes.

I searched on Internet and I found two interesting sites talking about stereotypes. The first site talks about Newfoundland and the local accent and culture. The writer argues about how the local stereotypes can be used for their benefit and uses some examples. But the tourism organizations don’t actually use the cultural aspects as a differential, as we can see in this video where the speaker has an American accent: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2Tp

To finish his arguments, the writer says: “As anyone with experience in tourism marketing will tell you, tourists don’t travel to visit the reality of a place – they come to experience the stereotype that exists in their heads.  Stereotypes, like brands, act as a frame of reference to the consumer and help them to simplify and interpret their experience.  The real trick for tourism marketers is to present the stereotype in a positive light, leverage it to convey your point of difference, and make sure the consumer can actually experience it when they arrive.  On all these measures, Newfoundlanders (and many other parts of the world) are sitting on a tremendously underleveraged asset in their tourism marketing campaigns”.

The second site talks about Brazil, my country. The text it’s from Bryan, an American residing in Manaus. He is an English teacher who travels to experience a view that most tourists will never experience.

Before he starts his text – Brazil: A Few Stereotypes of My Own -, he says: “In Brazil, if you are dating, you let the entire world know it. You sit next to each other, not across the table from each other. You kiss throughout the evening or night. Maybe this is why, when Americans come to Brazil they fall in love with Brazilian women. Women throughout Brazil are of a different nature.”

 During his text, the author talks about São Paulo, Bahia and Manaus. He uses his own experiences as examples and compares some habits from here with the habits from USA.

When he talks about Manaus, he prioritizes the women and prostitution. As a Brazilian, I didn’t like some parts, but I have admit, most of what he says is true. The prostitution and the sex tourism still a very serious issue in Brazil.

So stereotypes can be something good, but in most of times it’s something bad, based on lack of knowledge. So the best way of avoid the “bad stereotype” is acquiring knowledge about the location that you want to visit. And the “good stereotype” has to be used more often by the tourism organizations, without shame or afraid.

Links:

http://brandarcade.com/?p=477

An example of the Newfoundland accent: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m-y-qAbpL0

http://www.brazzil.com/2003/html/articles/aug03/p138aug03.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIir-qhyUN8

The ad I have selected was made by the Brazilian government in an attempt to increase the number of foreign visitors from 5 million to 8 million in the next few years. The ad slogan ”Brazil is calling you… celebrate life here” is clearly translated through a sequence of images picturing joyful Brazilians (that actually look European) bungee jumping, scuba diving, walking by the beach and enjoying their time with friends.

Brazil has always been famous for the triad samba, soccer and fascinating woman. Nonetheless, we see a very shy reference to that – which is a great way to try to improve people`s perceptions and motivations to visit the country. Nowadays, despite trying to change that image, we still have reminiscences of this triad, leading to sexual tourism and the innacurate perception that, in order to have fun, everything is allowed in Brazil.

The ad motivates people to visit Brazil not only for its natural beauties, but also to visit historical sites, such as Ouro Preto as well as Inhotim Institute of Contemporary Art (Latin America`s largest outdoor art Center). It also shows fine cuisine and great city centres, giving the tourists a large variety of things to do and see.

In the beginning and by the end of the ad we see business meetings in other countries, while in Brazil people are “celebrating life”. We can also notice that when the video shows other countries, the image gets greyer and, in Brazil it gets brighter and colourful – creating an awareness of a need to “celebrate life in sensational Brazil”.

Considering Maslow`s Hierarchy of Needs, the ad shows that tourists in different levels of the pyramid would satisfy their needs by visiting Brazil. For example, on the first stage (physiological needs) they could visit Brazil in order to relax. On the other hand, if they are on the top of the pyramid (self-actualization), they could visit the country to explore new horizons.

It is undeniable that this ad has many flaws and could receive a lot of critique. However, we must agree that changing a destinations image worldwide is a quite difficult task. I do do believe this ad meets its ends and is putting Brazil on the run to become a highly competitive destination.