SGS BUSM4567 G5 Team4 Buon Don report PDF

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Stakeholders and Sustainable Tourism Destination Report BUSM 4567

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Table of contents 1 Introduction........................................................Page 3 2. Key Elements of Stakeholder Theory..................Page 4 3. Key Elements of Triple Bottom Line Performance and Evaluation..............................................................Page 5 4. Government Interests and TBL..........................Page 8 5. Service Provider Interests and TBL...................Page 10 6. Visitor Interests and TBL..................................Page 12 7. Host Community Interests and TBL..................Page 14 8. Recommendations............................................Page 17 9. Conclusion........................................................Page 17 10. References......................................................Page 18

1. Introduction According to Vietnamnews (2019), Mr. Nguyen Trung Khanh – director of general of the Vietnam Tourism Administration affirmed that sustainable tourism development is an important goal in the 'Strategy for Vietnam Tourism Development by the Year 2030 with a Vision to 2050'. To assist in achieving this objective, our group has chosen to analyze Buon Don district, which is located in Dak Lak province and famous for various beauty-spots as well as precious cultures and festivals being celebrated every year (Figure 1). There are 18 ethnic groups living in Buon Don district, of which the ethnic minorities account for 47% and mainly E-de, Tay, Thai, Nung and M’nong (Danvan news 2018). In general, the development of tourism in Buon Don has received many positive statistics recently. Kha (2019) reported that during the Lunar New Year 2019, the total number of tourists coming to Buon Don was estimated around 46.740, which contributed 4.4 billion revenue and rose 66% compared to the Lunar New Year 2018. However, not only this district but also Dak Lak province are facing challenges regarding investment attracted, the isolated geographical location, low starting point of tourism economy or inadequate tourism infrastructure (Cuong 2007). Last year, while the population of Buon Don was 64.551 people (Bao 2019), there were 950.000 tourists coming to this district (Dinh 2019), which means this district has around 25 visitors for every resident. In this report, based on the theories of Stakeholders and Triple Bottom Line (TBL), we will clearly evaluate Buon Don district current tourism performance and its impact on government, service provider, visitor and host. After identifying economic, social and environmental aspects related to each stakeholder, we also offer some recommendations that encourage significant adjustments to reduce negative consequences and make this destination become a memorable ecotourism experience for every tourist.

Figure 1. Buon Don’s beauty-spots including Yok Don National Park, Serepok River, Don Village (Google image n.d.)

2. Key elements of stakeholder theory The stakeholder theory plays an essential role in making sustainable tourism development to be successful (Miles 2017). Besides, based on Edward Freeman (1984, p. 46), stakeholders can be defined as ‘Groups or an individual who can affect or be affected by the achievement of them organization's objectives’. To maintain sustainable development in tourism, the majority of stakeholders are responding to the need between the internal (employees) and the external (customers) to achieve the benefits. Besides, the business decision affects people and their well-being (Stakeholder Theory 1996). Hence, in order to be satisfied through the organization, the organization should make it fair for the related parties. The majority of the evolution of the stakeholder theory is focused on the strategies that firms can take so as to reduce the limit of shareholder theory to sustainability (Narbel & Muff 2017). In this report, stakeholders divided into numerous potential groups including the government, tourism service providers, tourists, and the community. a) Tourist Tourists are one of the factors in the stakeholder contributing to economic growth and improving community life. However, they can bring both positive as well as negative effects for the tourism industry. Moreover, visitors including domestic and foreign can trade the culture and create more job opportunities to support the local community in Dak Lak. The report stated that this province welcomed more than 950,000 visitors in 2019, which increased by nearly 19% compared to 2018 (Dinh 2019). This shows the development stage for Dak Lak and tourists are extremely important to help the Dak Lak tourism reach a sustainable tourism destination. b) Tourism service providers: The second category of stakeholder is the service provider including hospitality, restaurant, travel agent, and others that are related to serving the tourist's needs. Furthermore, opening the airway traveling to Dak Lak will bring various profits for the tourism industry (Duong 2019). Hence, this is the great opportunity to generate income for the locals as well as increase the price to develop tourism. On the contrary, development might go together with harmful effects on the environment. For example, according to Long (2019), tens of hectares of forests were burned and destroyed in the border district. Therefore, service providers are responsible for maintaining the profit, assisting the eco-friendly and providing better life for the community in Dak Lak.

c) Government: Government is a third vital factor in sustainable development since they not only improve the economy but also provide more advantages to the local community. Based on Cuong (2020), Dak Lak has improved well on the process of connecting the economy to create growth and development for helping the community. Besides, to achieve sustainable development, Dak Lak is trying to perfect its tourism development for the host community and the government has helped the locals to support the economy (Bui 2020). d)Host area community: Murphy (1985, cited in Tourism Notes) stated that the long-term success in the tourism industry depends on the acceptance and assistance from the host community. To improve the products and services, this province tries to standardize, recognize, and certify 1-2 national 5-star products (Nhan 2019). Thus, the community also has a responsibility to ensure the tourism industry reaches further. As the population in Dak Lak is approximately 1.869 million in 2019 (Bao 2019), the locals should engage in activities that aimed to improve Dak Lak in the near future.

3. KEY ELEMENTS OF TRIPLE BOTTOM LINE PERFORMANCE EVALUATIONS TBL was first coined by the consulting group AccountAbility in the mid-1990s and later explained by John Elkington in 1998 (Stoddard 2012). It is a term that is used to indicate the economic, environmental and social responsibilities of organization and also a practical framework of sustainable development. In essence, this notion is the belief that the essential condition to make the company develop permanently is providing products or services in such a manner to guarantee financial profits, environmental quality and social justice to its stakeholders (Żak 2015). Buon Don performance will be clearly described through these TBL:

a) Economic: The economic sustainability has a strong connection between the progress of the organization and the growth of the country’ economy and how well they could engage to support it (Alhaddi 2015). It is propounded that the companies should make an effort to prevent financial issues and maintain stakeholders’ wealth by offering a higher proportion of earnings to them (Nursimloo, Ramdhony & Mooneeapen 2020). Specifically, to help the community overcome poverty and improve their living standards, company needs to be responsible for offering more job and training opportunities and contributing to the government revenue such as applying entrance fees or paying taxes. Duyen (2019) indicated that in 2010, Dak Lak had 1800 employees working in the tourism industry. Even though the growth rate was approximately 13% yearly, the quality of human resources is still facing difficulties. In particular, there were 1000 inexperienced staff that accounted for 55%, which directly affects the quality of tourism operations in this province. Additionally, there are no more than 100 tour guides and some of them aren't competent at different languages including Korean, Chinese and Japanese to meet the demands of visitors (Trung 2019).

b) Social: Dangi and Jamal (2016) stated that social sustainability aims to respect human rights and require equitable distribution of benefits, especially tackling poverty in community. In detail, this aspect targets to address problems that relate to the company’ stakeholders such as community involvement, fair wages and the respect of diversity cultures (Alhaddi 2015). Applied in tourism, the organization should put efforts to support community to enhance their livelihood as well as conserve precious cultures. Because sometimes when international tourists come, they might negatively affect the residents’ life due to the difference between languages or cultures, which could result in conflicts or arguments. During Lunar New Year 2018, Buon Don organized some events such as the Gong culture, amazing traditional dance and singing performances, which created more jobs for residents, boosted relationships between locals and visitors (Nguyen 2018). In addition, this activity had successfully spread the valuable spirit and culture of the Central Highlands to every tourist (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Tourists enjoyed performances in Ban Don during the Lunar New Year 2018 (Dantri 2018) c) Environmental: ‘The primary purpose of the environmental bottom line is to preserve the environment’ (Nursimloo, Ramdhony & Mooneeapen 2020, p. 768). Minimizing pollution, protecting biological diversity and natural heritage are some main objectives of this aspect (Dangi & Jamal 2016). Additionally, based on The Wise Travellers (2019), two dimensions that environmental sustainability encompasses are not only natural environment but also built environment regarding landscape architecture. Unfortunately, according to Le (2020), a tourist in Dak Lak saw elephants being forced to carry tourists wading through the river with heavy steps and unhappy faces. After finishing, this animal was pitifully chained and shackled. Moreover, from 2007 to 2014, there were more than 21 elephants died due to lack of rest, food or the massive frequency of serving visitors (Nguyen 2015). Besides, a 40 year-old elephant was founded to be dead because of exhaustion while serving tourism at Ban Don village (Thanh 2015) (Figure 3).

Figure 3. An elephant died while serving tourism at Don Village (Dantri 2015)

4. GOVERNMENT INTERESTS AND TBL a) Economic sustainability With the correct assessment of the potential of Buon Don, the Phu Nong Agriculture and Tourism Cooperative has deployed an ecotourism model for the Sêrêpốk 3 hydroelectric lake (Le Thanh 2020). In order to achieve green tourism criteria, the government has actively made existing assets bring better economic productivity (Nhu Yen 2020). Based on the premise of VietGAP, the highest standard of agriculture practice in Vietnam (ICB n.d.), under-exploitable fields have been upgraded to eco-orchards invested in landscape to attract tourists. Nevertheless, the climatic conditions in Buon Don are not favourable to implement this plan (The Hung 2020), which can affect people’s lives if crops fail. However, it cannot be denied that the effect this model brings to this destination after COVID pandemic. It has helped Buon Don promote tourism, welcoming more than 141 Figure 4. Sightseeing areas built on both sides of Serepok river (Thoibaokinhdoanh 2020)

thousand visitors in May and June (Le Huong 2020).

b) Societal sustainability Along with the tourism economy, the government also focuses on creating long-term self-business opportunities. Local people, especially ethnic minorities, are encouraged to participate in livestock training courses (Le Huong 2020). Since then, more technical animal husbandry in parallel with many positive changes in life (Thanh Loan 2020). Combined with the ecotourism model, the number of poor households has decreased significantly (Le Huong 2020). In addition to maintaining a civilised society, the Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism has implemented the "Criteria of Conduct in the Family" in Buon Don to manage domestic violence issues.

Figure 5 : People apply the knowledge from training courses to animal husbandry (Thoibaokinhdoanh 2020)

Otherwise, in order to popularise training courses on a large scale, the government is still having difficulty in mobilising funding from enterprises (Quoc An 2020). Besides, a part of people are lazy to work, putting more pressure on the local authorities. c) Environmental sustainability According to BBC news (2017), elephant tourism is considered a cruel activity because of the severe effects on their health. Therefore, Dak Lak provincial authorities eliminated this type of service (Tran Hoa 2020). They flexibly switch to elephant-friendly ones such as bathing or feeding them (ibid.). Meanwhile, the ecological fields that attract visitors also push local people to consciously preserve the environment (Nhu Yen 2020). Conservation of natural resources is the leading sustainable development direction for the specifics of Buon Don tourism (Phuong Dinh 2019) On the other hand, welcoming the large number of tourists imposes some restrictions. Despite the tourist’s tendency to choose a destination for a clean environment, the local government still needs garbage collection teams as tourists litter (Nhu Yen 2020). Not only that, cases of illegal logging are still going on even though the authorities have stepped in (Tran M. & Bui C. 2020).

Figure 6 : Trial of a case of illegal logging in Buon Don (Toaandaklak 2020) From the Governance perspective, the proposed approaches are all linked together to satisfy the TBL. Each line plays an important role in the others in terms of sustainability. With a sustainable environment, the economy will be stable, from which a society can be considered sustainable when it can meet people's living standards. The government not only enhances the economic value of the region but also helps many households escape poverty, and at the same time demonstrates the responsibilities of them for the environment.

5. SERVICE PROVIDER INTERESTS AND TBL a) Economic sustainability As mentioned in ‘Key Elements Of Triple Bottom Line Performance Evaluations’, the quality of human resources in Daklak is facing difficulties. More specifically, the Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism of Dak Lak stated that before 2017, the human resource for tourism in the area had approximately 70% untrained. However, after this period, the percentage has declined to just 20% left (Dinh 2020). Tourism employees have been trained professional knowledge and skills through the channels of the Provincial Tourism Information and Promotion Center, Dak Lak Tourism Association or businesses that collaborate their training program with universities, colleges, vocational schools (Dinh 2020).

Figure 7. Tourism employment training channels logo, eg. Provincial Tourism Information and Promotion Center, Dak Lak Tourism Association, Tay Nguyen University

The quality of human resources in Dak Lak area improved bring benefits to service providers. In the tourism industry, human resources that are prepared with the right knowledge, skills and ability are necessary for the business (Jennifer, C, Brian, P, Steven, D 2011). There are opportunities for tourism services that could be done by high quality human resources such as doing marketing campaigns, implementing strong application of evaluation criteria for the tourism activities, applying science and technology, developing smart tourism for the area, etc (Phuong 2018). However, some threats are: the weak social infrastructure, the local people's education level and the quality of labor are low, the infrastructure network is not fully developed, the declining ecological environment. On top of that, tourism products in the area are based on available resources from the natural, the lifestyle of ethnic minorities that go without investment, exploitation and development in order to attract visitors. There is also no close connection between the tourist destinations in the area. These factors are big threats for service providers as the area is still underdeveloped and require major support from the government.

b) Cultural sustainability While traditional cultural values of ethnic groups in the area still remain (Le 2019), most of the tourism products here belong to the local M’nong community. Service providers would face the lack of tourism products if they cannot negotiate with the local community to together bring these values to the visitor. On the other side, there is an alert issue that many families sell artifacts to earn for the living. If this situation is still on-going, the value that service providers bring to the visitors would decrease or even become unavailable. And from there, the purpose and meaning of conservation and development for businesses and communities here become inadequate (Phuong 2019).

Figure 8. Traditional rituals and

Figure 9. Cultural artifacts preserved by the

customs for elephants in Buon

local M’Nong community

Don c) Environmental sustainability Elephant riding activity in Buon Don had brought high income to elephant owners and service providers. However, the latest report declared that in Buon Don, there are only 45 elephants left. According to the Dak Lak Elephant Conservation Center, the house elephants used and exploited in this field have long been out of the control and management (Khanh 2019). This issue is a disadvantage for businesses and local people who are part of the service because not only there would be a loss in this profit, but

Figure 10. Elephant riding in Buon Don

also decrease the value that service providers could have brought to the visitors. One of the main locations at Buon Don that holds this activity is the Serapok river - which also consists of many famous landscapes and attracts a large number of tourists for Dak Lak in general. However, tourism development along the river's ecosystem is facing many challenges due to overexploitation for hydroelectric dams. They have prevented the stream, caused the river drying up and therefore, destroyed the landscapes of this tourism destination (Minh 2019). This problem would be another drop in existing value that service providers have brought to the visitors before, making tourism programs and tours become less attractive afterward.

Figure 11. Elephant riding on Serepok river & hydroelectric damns in Serepok river

Being service providers for a sustainable goal of a destination means they are conscious of the impact of their activities, and desire to have the best management on them without the sole goal of benefiting economically to the detriment of society and the environment. In addition, they would have to put into actions the creative and innovative solutions for positive growth and development in their target destinations (Florie n.d). As seen in the performance of Buon Don tourism activities, the relationship between service providers and local host is not yet connected, in addition to the host awareness to conserve traditional cultural artifacts and signature animal of the area such as elephant is not yet thoroughly, have made the purpose and meaning of conservation and development for businesses and communities here become inadequate (Phuong 2019). Some suggested solutions will be given below so as to achieving the sustainable development goa...