Building Resilient Tourism Destinations

August 25, 2022

Capacity Development Specialist Kathleen Jovellanos presented CDIA’s work at the Resilience Forum and Roundtable Discussion held on 24 August 2022. It was organized by Pacific Asia Travel Association’s (PATA) Tourism Destination Resilience Program in cooperation with Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ).

Attended by 130 tourism authorities, city leaders, and development partners across Asia, the webinar provided an opportunity for participants to gain insights on how to make their tourism destinations resilient.

An important consideration toward this goal is having resilient infrastructure and services, thereby having the capacity to assess and prepare for risks, develop an enabling environment, and pool resources for infrastructure planning and implementation.

Kathleen presented what CDIA is and how it works with secondary cities, many of which are tourism destinations, in preparing sustainable infrastructure projects and linking them to financing.

She highlighted that although there is plenty of financing options, robust projects that financiers can take forward to implementation are limited. Therefore, cities should consider three critical elements for attracting financing for their projects: capacity building for implementers and other project stakeholders; feasibility of proposed projects in terms of not only technical but also environmental, social, financial and economic considerations; and alignment of the projects with funder’s priorities.

Kathleen also showcased some project examples from cities in Georgia, Uzbekistan, and Cambodia demonstrating not only the geographic presence of CDIA across Asia, but more importantly the holistic, integrated, and tailored assistance it can provide to cities.

Other international organizations such as GIZ, World Economic Forum, World Bank, and Asian Development Bank also presented their programs for tourism destinations to better understand financing and investment opportunities for priority resilience needs in cities.

PATA’s Tourism Destination Resilience program assists subnational cities in the Southeast Asia region with insights into the areas needed to build resilience in tourism.