Somsak Boonkam observing a forest hiking trail in Chiang Rai.
With their focus on introducing sustainable tourism practices to local rural communities in order to improve quality of life, local-tourism website Local Alike has recently been chosen to represent Thailand in Chivas’ The Venture campaign, a competition among the world’s social-enterprise start-ups, with the winner receiving a US$1 million prize. Now in its second year, The Venture’s final round of judging will occur sometime next month.
“We actually competed in the Thailand preliminaries last year, though we didn’t make the cut,” said Local Alike’s founder and CEO Somsak Boonkam.
“The judges last year were concerned about our ability to scale up, as we had only 18 partner communities offered. This year, we’ve grown to include over 50 member communities, all of whom were working very closely with to introduce and develop sustainable tourism in their communities. It goes together nicely with the campaign’s slogan of ‘Win the right way’, as we are helping these local communities grow by their own strength instead of just giving them money.”
Unlike many other tourism-related businesses, Local Alike puts a significant emphasis on collaborating with locals in improving their community’s quality of living. Furthermore, they also work closely with these communities to develop unique tourism experiences based on the community’s cultural heritage. Once they’re ready, Local Alike puts the community on their online platform, where tourists can go and enjoy the activities and facilities prepared and overseen by the locals themselves.
To demonstrate his point, Somsak recalled his experiences working with the Baan Suan Pa community in Chiang Rai, one of the first communities Local Alike collaborated with.
“Before, the community was covered in garbage, and a lot of villagers were struggling with drug abuse,” he recalled.
“We saw this as an opportunity for us to help them improve their community, and we believed that tourism would be able solve a lot of the problems facing them.”
Somsak believed that by turning the community into a tourism destination, the villagers will become more active in keeping their community clean, and the constant influx of outside visitors will eventually take care of the drug problems. The villagers will also have an alternate source of income, which can hopefully be used to further improve their own quality of life.
“Today, the village is pristine, with garbage bins on every corner. The villagers have also set up a breathtaking jungle-hike trail. It’s almost unrecognisable compared to before.”
The CEO further added that by putting the communities in charge of planning and facilitating attractions themselves, they can have a better chance to engage and interact with tourists, something that average tour groups don’t seem to pay very much attention to.
“Some communities we worked with have told us that they felt like many tour groups tend to treat them like zoo animals,” he said.
“Dozens of tour buses roll into their village daily, but most of the time the tourists just get off the buses to take a few pictures of the local lifestyle before turning around and leaving just as quickly, without having interacted or engaged with the locals at all.”
One prime example of this, according to Somsak, is the Chiang Rai community of Baan Lor Yoh, known for its traditional mud huts and rustic tribal beliefs.
“Baan Lor Yoh used to be a popular destination for tour groups, who were mainly interested with the derelict, almost haunted look of the local crumbling mud-huts, as well as the rituals and beliefs borne of the local spirit-worship. Now that the village has cleaned itself up, and the locals have mostly converted to Christianity, the tour companies feel like the village has lost its identity.”
Somsak said that in their initial state, the Baan Lor Yoh community’s quality of life was extremely low, thanks to the clay homes and rituals they were known for. Homes struggled to stand up to the weather for very long, and the spiritual beliefs practised by the villagers caused a lot of problems.
“According to their religion, mothers who give birth to twin babies need to have their children killed. Sick people need to wait two days before they can get treated. What the tour companies view as selling points for this community were actually slowly killing the people living there.”
In order to reinvigorate the village’s tourism scene, Local Alike worked with the locals to turn their famous mud-huts into convenient homestay facilities for tourists. Travellers can stay in a mud-hut for 400 baht a night, with more lavish huts earning the villagers even more.
“We try our best to preserve the core of a community’s cultural identity, but we also want to improve their quality of life.”
Local Alike’s ultimate goal, according to Somsak, is to see all their partner communities be able to stand and thrive on their own strengths. The perfect scenario, he added, is one where the middleman like Local Alike is no longer needed, as the communities have now evolved enough to rely only on themselves.
“We’re always telling ourselves that we are a social-enterprise business,” he said.
“We see a problem, and we want to make it go away. If, in the end, Local Alike is no longer needed as the middleman, I will consider my goal successful; even if we go out of business, if the local communities can take care of themselves, I consider that a win for us.”
Somsak Boonkam meeting with representatives from a partner community.
Somsak Boonkam, centre, founder and CEO of Local Alike.
This source first appeared on Bangkok Post Lifestyle.