Editorial that has appeared in the October issue of Commodity Market magazine.
‘Gimme More’ is the slogan of GenNext — and the global traveller too. The Free Independent Traveller (FIT) was bored with the beaches, historical monuments, backwaters, places of worship, wild life, water theme parks and heritage sites on offer in several countries. Then came eco-tourism, a strange concoction of wild life, bio-diversity and trekking. Even that is passé.
So, what is new?
There began the tourism industry’s quest to provide more value and experience to FITs. The search ended at 500 to 3,000 metres above sea level. Tea, coffee, pepper, cardamom and vineyards, which were prone to the vagaries of commodity markets, jumped into the scene with an unbeatable script called Plantation Tourism. People behind the new script also had deep pockets.
The Sanjay Leela Bhansalis of this niche industry say it is all for sustainability of plantations, educative value and supporting the local community. No one would doubt their commitment.
Gul Mohammed, a farmer at a remote village in north Kerala’s Kasargod district, demonstrated how fishing can become a tourism theme by converting fishermen’s huts into ethnic home stays. This month’s cover story is on a fast growing sector called
Commodity Tourism, where fishing, tea, coffee, cardamom, wines or any commodity becomes a great resort theme. And at Rs 2,000-22,000 per cottage, it is aimed not at the economy segment but the premium. The novel industry has largely evolved out of innovative skills of entrepreneurs from hospitality and commodity business — with a bit of help from state governments in some places.
However, most of the award-winning ideas are the IPR of some select entrepreneurs. Properly regulated, commodity tourism can help both commodities and tourism sector. But tourism is all about innovation and attraction. Many states are yet to identify its potential and some which has done are yet to showcase it. India is an agrarian country and nothing sells more than greenery to the tourists already bored with in the middle of concrete jungles.
Most of origins of traded commodities are tourist destinations but you need an innovative brain and an open hearted administration to develop this potential into a money spinner.
From this issue of
Commodity Market magazine, we are adding new sections like Letters to the Editor and Trivia which will not only give you a twist in the tale but also information that you may have missed in your busy life. With more pages, we are striving as usual to give quality fare to our readers again and again. We have also made our distribution vibrant by reaching out to more towns and cities.
We are inundated with calls and emails for a Hindi and Gujarati version of the magazine. We will take a call on this at a later stage but at the moment our efforts are concentrated on making our current products more useful to our readers.
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