Quarterly Report January – March 2009: Community Tourism Alliance

Project activities are divided into five major components: strengthening of local tourism organizations, regional, and national; access to credit and financial services; promotion of good management practices and certification; promotion and marketing of tourism products; and development and marketing of handicrafts. The Community Tourism Alliance continued to provide advice and technical assistance to strengthen local tourism organizations during the quarter. In the region of Verapaces, AGRETUCHI was supported in providing for the development of its annual operating plan, the collection of information for creating a profile to be presented to INGUAT to expand tourism infrastructure in Candelaria Camposanto, and the first draft of a project profile submitted to the program Pro Rural Tourism to improve tourism infrastructure and equipment that make communities Puerta al Mundo Maya route. This project involves the empowerment of a tourist information center in the county seat of Chisec in a project run in collaboration with the Municipality of Chisec. In the Mayan Biosphere Reserve, the Community Tourism Alliance continued to advise the commission ACOFOP Tourism in developing a strategic plan and to develop a project for the construction of a school community tourism to be presented to the Project Petén Development Conservation Maya Biosphere Reserve. Working with Carmelita Tourism Commission focused on the re-structuring of packages based on a cost analysis. Assessments completed by the end of the course participants of Community Tourism Guide in the following communities: Carmelita, 15 people passed the evaluation; communities close to the National Park Yaxha-Nakum-Naranjo, 17 approved; and San Juan Comalapa, 14 approved. The project also began the process of planning and evaluation for the implementation of this course in San Juan la Laguna, Solola, San Marcos la Laguna, Solola, San Andrés, Solola, San Pablo Tacaná-San Marcos, Chilascó-Baja Verapaz, Chiabal-Huehuetenango, and Uaxactún-Petén. The Community Tourism Alliance is supporting the CONAP in the organization and implementation of workshops for the development of the Public Use Plan Mirador Rio Azul National Park - Naachtun Dos Lagunas Biotope. In other regions, the assistance provided by the project management and promotion of tourist visitation in protected areas focused on the following topics: preparation of a guide to improve the management of visitors during Easter in the City Park and Shells advice on the preparation of a project profile to develop the Master Plan to be presented to the program Pro Pro Rural Tourism. During this quarter, the project designed a program of technical assistance in administrative tools and management of tourism businesses. This program began implementing MSME Sololá 8 and presented in Petén, obtaining registration of 16 companies. The result of technical assistance in access to credit and financial services provided by the project during the current quarter were two loans approved for the purchase of buses, for a total amount of U.S. $26,250. The project is also participating in the review and feedback of the Guide to Good Practice sustainable tourism communities. Currently, the consulting team has presented the environmental and economic environment of the business of good practice guide. Each of these sections has a key box evaluation and implementation of best practice which is also part of the results obtained. Component activities tourist product marketing focused on the monitoring of the program "Let's Make it your business or tourist destination sell more". It continued to provide technical assistance in the development of sales tools to program partner companies. During this quarter, 24 companies joined the program. In Sololá, methodology was designed to analyze the market to implement the campaign "Stay another day", which corresponds to one of the priority activities of monitoring the students study by the Universities of George Washington and the Valley of Guatemala 2008. In Verapaz, a campaign called "Knowing the Verapaces" was implemented, focused on promoting various tourist destinations and services in educational establishments of Coban. Geotourism work was focused on publishing, research, and verification of information, including a list of museums, sites nominated location, location, and boundary of protected areas, among others. For this, the database of nominations was searched, and consulted with institutions and partners (ANACAFÉ and INGUAT). CPI has been coordinating the interests of National Geographic, and ANACAFE INGUAT to refine the final details of the map and to start designing the launch strategy, positioning, and marketing based on geotourism map. Through the agreement with AGEXPORT, a diagnosis was performed to identify new groups with which to work craft collections added value. Articulated the same consulting team to provide advice and monitoring in the prototyping phase and