Brunei Tourism welcomes suggestions to create eco-friendly tour packages

THE Brunei Tourism Board welcomes suggestions and inputs from ecotourism experts towards creating a more sustainable and eco-friendly tour packages, said the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Brunei Tourism.

Sheikh Jamaluddin Sheikh Mohamed said that the tour packages enlisted on the "Kenali Negara Kitani" (KNK) packages were designed by local inbound operators, therefore he would not know if the packages were eco-friendly to some travellers.

"We are only promoting the package to the public," he told The Brunei Times.

"So if the tourism experts feel that the packages are not eco-friendly, I would like to discuss this more and see if we can find ways to address those concerns," the CEO offered.

Sheikh Jamaluddin added: "This is how we improve through what I call constructive criticism."

His comments came in response to an input offered by an invited speaker, Hitesh Mehta at the Asean Tourism Conference yesterday.

Mehta said that tour packages were the type of sustainable tourism packages that played a vital role in preserving the environment and that Brunei needed to offer more of these types of packages, in view of its participation in the Heart of Borneo (HoB) project.

"Sustainable tourism is what every type of tourism needs to be, whether it's mass tourism, religious tourism, nature tourism, adventure tourism and the problem the world faces today is that they have not been sustainable (in its tourism sector)," said Mehta.

He said that ecotourism was sustainable tourism on its own definition.

"The brochures you have about the 10 best things to do (the KNK tour package brochure), it is not an eco-conscious brochure, maybe it was not meant to be," he said.

He explained that the next stage the board could do was to create a brochure that only has eco-concious properties and destinations.

"I mean they can have what they already have but they can also create a new one which is very much to do with sustainable tourism," Mehta said.

"If you see what's been happening all around the world, ecotourism by its definition is tourism that helps protect conservation areas, it also helps and benefits local communities, and it provides rich interpretive experience, so exploring ecotourism is going to help protect the environment, it's going to help local communities and the HoB project," he added.

The Brunei Times