By CRRC-Armenia Junior Fellow Tigran Sukiasyan
On June 28-30, 2013, ATA Fellows (American, Turkish, and Armenian Fellows), which is a partnership of academics from the University of Florida, U.S.A., Dokuz Eylul University, Turkey, and Armenian State University of Economics, Armenia, as well as industry practitioners from each country, organized a conference on tourism and hospitality: “The Highway to Sustainable Regional Development”.
On June 28-30, 2013, ATA Fellows (American, Turkish, and Armenian Fellows), which is a partnership of academics from the University of Florida, U.S.A., Dokuz Eylul University, Turkey, and Armenian State University of Economics, Armenia, as well as industry practitioners from each country, organized a conference on tourism and hospitality: “The Highway to Sustainable Regional Development”.
The conference, attended by CRRC-Armenia Junior Research Fellows Tigran Sukiasyan and Ani Karapetyan, brought together academics, researchers, NGO
representatives, industry practitioners and scholars of different disciplines
to focus on the knowledge development and implementation in the field of
tourism and hospitality.
US Ambassador to Armenia John A. Heffern made the opening of the conference, emphasizing
the importance of the ATA Fellows Project. In his turn, Dr. Artak Manukyan, Armenian
Director of the project, made a presentation on the prospects of the opening Armenia
- Turkey borders, where detailed analysis from different angles were presented.
The three-day conference integrated separate
sessions focusing on the theoretical, empirical and sustainable development
opportunities. The discussions of the first session were dedicated to Peace and
Tourism, Tourism and Sustainable Development, as well as Tourism Management and
Corporate Responsibility. Dr. Mahmood Khan, a professor from Virginia
University, talked about tourism and peace, stressing that governments should
not intervene in the process of tourism development; indeed, people should do
the job. In that way, only tourism will lead to peace facilitation process, he
stated. Another interesting presentation was made by Dr. Kaye Chon, a professor
from the School of Hotel and Tourism Management, The Hong Kong Polytechnic
University. He talked about innovative approaches to the tourism and
hospitality, and how they would lead to better quality and outcomes.
The second session of the conference was
devoted to the Sustainable Tourism Issues and Capacity Building as a Prerequisite
for Sustainable Development. During this session, several interesting comments were
made by Armin Zerunyan, Country General Manager, Hilton Worldwide, Turkey, referring
to the tourism development in Armenia. According to Mr. Zerunyan, high prices
of flights to Armenia create a serious obstacle to the tourism development.
Also, he pointed the importance of Armenian Diaspora for attracting more
tourists to Armenia, bringing an example of Eastern Europe countries, which
used their diaspora connections to create a well-developed tourism
infrastructure. Lastly, Mr. Zerunyan marked out the importance of winter tourism
for Armenia. As a supporting example, he noted that in winter, significant
number of Turkish people travel to Bulgaria, where winter tourism is highly
developed; indeed, by developing its own
infrastructure, Armenia could be a strong competitor in that field. In
addition, Dr. Muzaffer Uysal, Professor of Tourism at Virginia Tech, mentioned
Italy with its free skiing and snowboarding schools having a huge positive
impact on the tourism development, and suggested to implement similar projects
in Armenia.
The last day of the conference summed up
with a brainstorming session related to the further development of the ATA
fellows project. The
participants were divided into three groups: Research, Product Development, and
Policy Making. In the Product Development part leading role of marketing and
training for the actors providing tourism services, and investment
opportunities for tourism development were emphasized, also stressing the fact
that Armenia is the first Christian country (similar examples in other
countries, where the religion played an important role for tourism development,
were brought by Dr. Kaye Chon). More specific research in the region and cross
border collaborations were proposed in the Research part, where CRRC fellow Tigran Sukiasyan made a speech related to the project idea, which may contribute to the knowledge development and its implementation within the framework of the ATA fellows program. Database
creation and analysis of the tourism trends in the Caucasus Region, cooperation
with universities, NGOs, public and private institutions concluded the last
Policy Making part of the brainstorming session.
The presentations will be
posted on the ATA Fellows website.
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