Tourism industry a revenue generator for Bario

by Justin Yap justinyap@theborneopost.com. Posted on December 31, 2010, Friday

KUCHING: Tourism in Bario has grown from its accidental beginnings to being a mainstay of the local economy evolving along the way into various niche markets including ecotourism, adventure tourism, cultural tourism, research tourism and the latest manifestation of development conferencing.

INCOME GENERATOR: Cottage industry products are one of the latest moves that will drive the tourism industry in Bario.

Bario is the traditional homeland of the Kelabit people, one of the Borneo’s smaller ethnic minorities numbering around 5,000 people with an estimated 1,000 still living in or around Bario.

The growth of tourism in Bario is closely interwoven with other aspects of the social and cultural development of the community which it has grown alongside,” said one of the homestay owners in Bario Jaman Riboh Tekapan, who has 22 years of experience in the tourism industry in the community.

“Tourism has been recognised as a small-scale and non-agricultural activity that can constitute an important source of revenue generation and thereby create new venues for economic growth in Bario,” he pointed out to The Borneo Post in a recent interview.

He further noted the recent road linkage as well as the airstrip made it possible for tourist to visit Bario and the closest house was also the home of the headman. However, guests did not feel obliged to pay for their keep until the headman’s son placed a sign on the house proclaiming it as a ‘homestay’.

“That is how the tourism industry started in Bario,” he pointed out.

According to research, the next major stimulus to tourism was the recent infrastructure development, the eBario project which introduced telecommunication services into the community.

“The latest project we have for Bario is the community radio slated to be launched in March next year,” said eBario Sdn Bhd’s (eBario) project director John Tarawe.

“eBario has been recently granted the content applications service provider (CASP) class licence by the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC). With the CASP class licence, we will be the first company to deploy a community radio station in Malaysia,” added Tarawe.

By connecting the community to the outside world, the eBario project has had a profound impact on the community. The project has provided a significant boost to the tourism industry by facilitating the growth of websites for promotion and the exchange of information between potential visitors and the homestay operators in the community.

“From a slow beginning in the late 1990s, when there was only a single guest house, there are now around a dozen. Trekking tours range from a few days hiking with overnights in the scattered longhouses to more arduous expeditions of up to a week or more including jungle survival training,” Tekapan highlighted.

Adventure tourism involved exploration or travel to remote hostile areas, while cultural tourism was a genre of special interest tourism based on the search for and participation in new and deep cultural experiences.

“Cultural tourism in Bario is boosted by the ‘Bario Slow Food Festival’ which was established in 2005 and was held for its fifth year in June 2010,” he pointed out.

Research tourism in Bario, on the other hand, was a recognised concept that valued the contributions that researchers could make to the communities. The community was now adopting a more proactive approach towards any research to which they would consent that was to be conducted on their environment, he highlighted.

Accordingly, the benefits of research in Bario now far exceeded the contributions that researchers made to the local economy through their presence as it contributed knowledge that would underpin their own development objectives.

“In this regard, the eBario telecentre plays a vital role in providing communication and data processing facilities to visiting researchers. Coupled with the ready availability of research assistants who have gained experience in research in the social and natural sciences, researchers from outside could hit the ground running when they come to Bario.

“Research tourism has therefore developed into a critical component of the community’s economic development plans,” Tekapan explained. “Development conferencing is another type of tourism that is being pioneered in Bario.”

In December 2007, eBario organised the ‘eBario Knowledge Fair’, a multidisciplinary conference held in Bario. ‘The Knowledge Fair’ was held to showcase how a remote and isolated indigenous community had appropriated ICTs. It brought together more than a 100 participants from 15 countries.

Tarawe shared his view that travelling to attend a conference was a form of tourism. It was a particular type of tourism in which groups of people were brought together to share knowledge and promote their products.

“The term ‘pro-poor tourism’ has emerged as a mechanism for ensuring a larger proportion of tourism revenue. It is earned by the poor residents of popular tourism locations, something that is not an automatic outcome of the growth of global tourism,” he added.

Tourism in Bario is making contributions to the Bario community that go beyond increase in incomes and the creation of ‘income-earning’ opportunities. The combined effects of improved communications and road linkages has resulted in a further opening up of Bario and the Kelabit culture to the wider world.

In spurring an increase in the number of flights and in feeding off as well as contributing to the growth in use of ICTs, tourism had become intertwined with local development, growing from its accidental beginnings to a mainstay of life in the Highlands.

Bario is globalising on its own terms and tourism is an integral component of the process.