Development of Tourism Policy and Strategic Planning in East Timor is a 2001 Occasional Paper from the University of Queensland’s School of Natural and Rural Systems Management. Its authors are R. W. (Bill) Carter, Bruce Prideaux, Vicente Ximenes and Adrien Chatenay. It records the first tourism policy work for East Timor between January 1999 and January 2001, during the transition to independence. It is a key historical source on how tourism entered the plans of the CNRT, FRETILIN and the East Timor Transitional Administration (ETTA).
Key contents
- Origins: In May 1999 Vicente Ximenes, an East Timorese FRETILIN leader and University of Queensland graduate, asked Carter for help planning tourism. They had already prepared tourism input for the Strategic Development Planning for East Timor Conference (Melbourne, April 1999).
- Conference papers: tourism papers for the East Timor Reconstruction conference in Tibar (May–June 2000) and the Brisbane strategic planning conference (July 2000), and two papers at the Islands of the World VI conference (Isle of Skye, October 2000). These are reproduced in full in the paper.
- Policy framework: after the Brisbane conference, a small University of Queensland team drafted an initial tourism policy framework and presented it to ETTA and the CNRT executive.
- Core argument: East Timor had rich natural, cultural and historic resources but no tourism infrastructure, few trained people and little investment capital. The policies centre on “green” regional tourism products that communities develop and run. The aim is reconstruction for the future, “not simply reinstatement of the past”.
- Background: a status report on East Timor from a tourism point of view, with the authors’ note that sources from the period often conflict.
Document details
- Authors: R. W. Carter, B. Prideaux, V. Ximenes, A. V. P. Chatenay
- Publisher: School of Natural and Rural Systems Management, The University of Queensland (Occasional Paper Vol. 8, No. 1)
- Year: 2001
- ISSN / ISBN: 1440-947X / 1 86499 506 8
- Language: English
- Pages: 104 (paper pp. 1–101)
- Download: timorleste.tl PDF