Today we left Zamora and began our journey to Saraguro. Our activities started in the indigenous community with going to a local home where they prepared a meal for us. There, we were given blue agave juice which was considered to be a ceremonial drink. After this, we had a presentation from a member of the indigenous community on how the industry of tourism impacts their indigenous communities. I found it interesting about how they divide the industry into different sectors.
Expansion of knowledge
Ministry of Tourism
Since the presentation on this night was about the ministry of tourism and how they govern all tourist businesses, I wanted to do more research into the ministry of tourism and how it operates. From this article, I was able to figure out that each area is sectioned off and run by a different department. These departments have the role of managing the tourism industry within it. The goals of these departments were primarily to promote sustainability in tourism practices, promote the conservation of cultural or religious areas, and promote cooperation between the private and public sectors when it came to tourism. Each of the area departments also had multiple teams within them to maintain all of the different aspects of tourism. For example, there was a team for tourist resources, marketing, and financial work. Also, since Ecuador has been promoting ecotourism, I checked to see if that was one of the main goals of the ministry of tourism. I found that it was not explicitly listed as a project or the areas of development within the ministry, but it could be related to sustainable tourism depending on their definition of that term.
Works Cited
MetaMorf NetMedia. (n.d.). What we do. Retrieved from http://www.vivecuador.com/html2/eng/what_we_do.htm