Tourism Sector: Business Opportunities and Support Services (BOSS) Project, Intervention Report is an International Labour Organization (ILO) report from 2016. It looks back on the tourism work of BOSS, a private-sector development project in Timor-Leste that ran from 2011 to September 2016. Irish Aid and NZAID funded it, and the Institute for Business Support (IADE) hosted it. The report matters because BOSS supported the drafting of the 2017 National Tourism Policy and the national tourism website, and because it is candid about what did and did not work.
Key contents
- Approach: BOSS used the “Making Markets Work for the Poor” (M4P) method, working through existing firms and agencies instead of delivering services directly. It found early on that tourism did not behave like a simple value chain such as horticulture or cattle.
- Interventions:
- Support for a Tourist Visitor Centre
- Support for setting up a National Tourism Association
- District Tourism Working Groups in key locations
- Technical and business-management training for tourism operators, handed over to a local provider so it could run nationally
- Tourism destination marketing, including a national tourism website to be run by the Ministry of Tourism
- Public–private dialogue, and drafting of the national tourism policy
- Results: the report says the main successes came at district level and through sector-specific training. At national level, it points to the release of the draft tourism policy.
- Lessons: the final section sets out what the project learned and recommends next steps for government and partners.
Document details
- Publisher: International Labour Organization (ILO), BOSS Project
- Year: 2016
- Funders: Irish Aid and NZAID
- Language: English
- Pages: 11
- Download: timorleste.tl PDF
Further reading
- Kalkula Kustu: Costing Manual for Tourism Businesses (ILO, Tetum)
- The Potential for Cultural Tourism: Bobonaro, Ainaro & Lautem (ILO-supported)