This week’s reading “Poverty or riches: who benefits from
the booming touring industry in Botswana?” presents the criteria and formula
that will make up “sustainable tourism”. This can be served as a parallel to
approaches to a functioning start-up that is aimed to ultimately benefit a
nation economically, culturally, and socially. In order to convince national
decision-makers/governance groups that our enterprise will be productive and
influential, our team should be able to address the main challenges we will
face when building our start-up: local/national economic growth, employment,
and social benefits.
Sustainable tourism in Botswana encourages the “acceleration
not only of national economic growth, but also regional and local economic
growth. This growth must be shared fairly across the social spectrum” (4). Our
holistic mobile application aims to bring more individuals to not only support
big organizations that promote healthy lifestyles (brand name fitness
programs/healthy eating programs), but also local businesses that can provide
the same benefits (yoga instructors, meditation groups, religious
organizations). Our app will be able to draw attention to small businesses that
users didn’t even know existed. Furthermore, personal trainers and life coaches
that can be advertised on our application may also have opportunities to work
with more clients (with extensive background checks and security measures).
Another important aspect of a start-up is its ability to
produce jobs: “Employment is one of the key socio-economic activities generated
by tourism in a destination area…Although tourism generates a substantial
amount of employment opportunities for local people, the jobs which citizens
usually hold are of poor quality” (11). Keeping this in mind, our mission is to
provide meaningful, productive jobs that will benefit and support an individual
in the Silicon Valley (financially and morally). Located in the heart of the
Silicon Valley, we will able to build connections with and create jobs for experienced
developers and entrepreneurs who are interested in being a part of a company
that deeply cares about mental, emotional, spiritual, religious, and physical
wellbeing. Furthermore, we aim to provide big jobs for researchers and analysts
that will give the company's developers detailed feedback on how to shape the designs and
content of the application.
Lastly, sustainable tourism, or in this case a sustainable
start-up “should be holistic, balance the interests of multiple uses and users,
acknowledge and accommodate the spatial and temporal variability of resources
and encourage wide local participation and autonomy in decision-making” (17).
As a mobile application that is catered towards the people of the Silicon
Valley, we will make sure to survey and dig deep into the interests and needs
of these individuals. We want to create a feeling of inclusivity of all ideas
of wellness and health. We would want to make the most of the resources in the
local communities and emphasize equal importance to each. Our application is
designed to motivate people to take control over their own health, and to let them
know that participating in this movement should not feel like a burden or
hassle. This app will allow users to make decisions and utilize numerous resources that will create and pave the way for their wellness journey.
By taking these steps, we hope that we can persuade national
decision-makers that this mobile application will be a healthy and positive
integration into society for the users, producers, local/national
organizations, and the overall wellbeing of the Silicon Valley community.
Question: How can we make this model of “sustainable tourism”
less ideal and more practical? Is it inevitable for at least one party to
sacrifice resources or morale?
Works Cited:
Joseph E. Mbaiwa (2017): Poverty or riches: who
benefits from thebooming tourism industry in Botswana?, Journal of Contemporary
African Studies, DOI:10.1080/02589001.2016.1270424
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