Travel Curation Tour Designing-Community Engagement

GHRM MBA, College of Management, NSYSU invited Daniel Cheng - the founder and CEO of Redefine Tourism Mixer (RTM), to give a speech at the Consulting methods and practices course. To help students designing their consulting projects, Daniel shared his story about how his company has become one of the largest Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) that helps develop travel start-ups and internet tour operators in Taiwan and the region.

Daniel began his lecture by introducing the considerable impacts of the current pandemic on tourism in general and proposing his solution for this situation: Travel Curation Tour with Community Engagement. Born in Linbian, a rural township in western Pingtung known for its seafood and wax apples, Daniel realizes the local fisherman's problem: they are not confident in what they do for a living. Therefore, his objective is to create the added value for his organization and the people in the area. The solution to the problem is to find a way to utilize the resources, including fish and water that are granted. As a result, "Fish Forest project" has been designed to capture and connect all Travel Curation Tour elements. In order to implement Fish Forest, Daniel and his colleagues visited and talked to villagers to understand their needs and observed their daily routine to collect relevant information. The data analysis, later on, was used to design the Action plan comprising of three steps:

1. Travel Curation

In this component, the Travel Agency needs to identify what are the most important for their Product Purpose and Marketing Purpose. Basically, they are the principles to attract tourists as well as to customize the services so that they are unique to each group of travelers.

2. Talent Incubator

This part describes how his company can create value and benefit for the local community through various marketing channels, especially online marketing. Also, Daniel has launched different campaigns to support both store-owners and travelers, in which the most well-known program is Travel workers. These activities help local people realize that they are visible to the world and their work is acknowledged, and they gradually become more confident.

3. Local Translator

Fish Forest also helps the local people translate their know-how into meaningful materials such as board games or teaching booklets to educate the tourists and their children about their work and their lives. Simultaneously, these materials can facilitate the transferring of expertise from parents to children in a value exchange manner.

Daniel has inspired value creation among students, and he received a lot of questions regarding his work and how he can achieve his goal. Finally, he promoted the coming campaign for Travelers to the students in class and promised that he would inform them of information as soon as possible.