Preparations in Ta Phin for Tuesday's arrival in Hanoi

Ms. Ngoc Anh helps the women prepare for their journey with a lesson about culture shock and the differences between life in Ta Phin and Hanoi.

CBT Viet Nam partners with the Sofitel Legend Metropole

This week is an exciting week for twelve Red Dao women as the Sofitel Legend Metropole will be hosting them in Hanoi in the remarkable next phase of the CBT Viet Nam project. The women will make the journey from Ta Phin to Hanoi in an effort to build relationships with local tour operators and showcase their handicrafts. Many of these women have barely ventured past the surrounding areas of their village, and this trip to Hanoi is a major step for these female entrepreneurs. The Metropole has been a longstanding pillar of the tourism industry within Vietnam; their generous offer to support the women during their stay is a significant step towards the development of community-based tourism.

Ms. Nhung LE, Marketing & Communications Manager at the Sofitel, gave the following statement:

“We would like to support this Community Based Tourism project and other sustainable tourism activities in order to help develop the equality of female income generation and skill growth throughout northern Vietnam. It is our desire, in our small way, to assist in fostering and inspiring the development of the Ta Phin entrepreneurs through showcasing the very best quality and experiences within the industry here in Vietnam. By providing an outlet for their goods to be purchased by local patrons and visiting guests, a sustainable partnership will be launched for the benefit and enjoyment of all involved.”

The Sofitel Legend Metropole is an award-winning French colonial-style hotel located in the heart of Hanoi. For more information, please check out their website.

Made it to Hanoi!

The team touched down at 10:00 pm this evening (about 8:00 in the morning Vancouver time). It feels good to be back; we are all incredibly excited to get started! Tomorrow, we will have to hit the ground running as there is lots of work to get done. Stay tuned for more updates from the team!

Introducing our latest addition to the CBT team!

We are incredibly excited to have Stephanie Wells join the CBT Viet Nam team for our upcoming trip.

Stephanie’s passion for tourism began when she worked at Walt Disney World Resort in Florida.  It was then that she caught the bug for travel and leisure and found a path to make a career out of what she loved. 

Since then, she has worked for several tourism organizations including Tourism BC, Tourism Whistler, Resort Municipality of Whistler and the Whistler Chamber of Commerce.  

Wells has been a faculty member since 2004 with course specialties in marketing, sales and promotions, destination and resort management. She recently returned from a trip to Krasnodar, Russia where she, along with 10 students and three faculty members, spent a week conducting training to 400 university students on leadership and volunteerism as Russia gears up for the 2014 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games in Sochi.

During her career she has written and delivered sales and customer service workshops, and has trained close to 2000 people.  Her focus has been to instill in others a sense of passion, customer service and pride for their surroundings and to be able to showcase them accordingly to visitors from around the globe.

Planning. Prepping. More Planning....Repeat!

The white board says it all: we have a lot of material to cover and tight deadlines to meet! It's crunch time for the CBT team as the hour of departure nears (merely 2.5 days!). Material is being developed as we speak to cover the project outcomes for this trip. On our training wish list are items like:

• Business/Tourism Association consolidation in Ta Phin
• Planning sessions with local government in Lao Chai
• Stakeholders workshops
• Product development in Ta Phin
• Environmental stewardship for Lao Chai youth
• And more!

Logistical planning for the trip is near completion. The students and faculty from Capilano University have been prepped, and are working with Hanoi Open University student and faculty to get all the details in place. Departure is so close I can practically smell the luke warm airline food. Now to get all my homework done!

Looking forward to hearing from CBT blog readers out there, share some of your Vietnam experiences or tell us about you favorite Vietnamese dish! We will need suggestions for our first night in Hanoi. Hit us up on Twitter @CBTvietnam or find us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/cbtvietnam

Phase 2 begins: First trip starts in 4 days!

The CBT Vietnam slogan for this month is: "if you're not running, something is wrong!" We're joking, of course! But seriously, Phase 2 of the PATA Foundation funded project in Northern Viet Nam is underway and it is going to be a busy one!

Returning to Vietnam will be Dr. Chris Bottrill, Dean of Global and Community Studies at Capilano University, Instructor Stephanie Wells, and students Jase Wilson and Taryn Bodrug. Once again we will be joined by Ms. Ngoc Anh (Vice Dean of the tourism faculty at Hanoi Open University - HOU) as well as a team of HOU student volunteers.

It is going to be an exiting, ground-breaking trip for our learners and community leaders in Ta Phin. We will be working on the following:

• facilitation of a business trip for 12 entrepreneurs to the big city of Hanoi;
• here our entrepreneurs will meet with private tourism companies to begin:
• partnerships will be created;
• and, negotiations will ensue.

Tourists to the region would usually book a hill tribe trekking tour that lands them in Sa Pa -visiting villages such as Ta Phin and Lao Chai for merely an hour or two. The home-stay operators from Ta Phin are collectively working towards creating packaged experiences where tour guides bring visitors directly to Ta Phin home-stays. This will be a fantastic development for our home-stay owners and the village of Ta Phin. 

In the village of Lao Chai, the CBT team will continue delivering training on entry level skills. Our goal is to help residents of Lao Chai to increase their capacity to pursue their own brand of successful community based tourism. This is not cut paste here - what works in Ta Phin can serve as a model for success but every case is different. The CBT team will sample what Lao Chai has to offer and connect with local stakeholders.

Our whirl wind two week schedule will start on Thursday September 27th and end October the 9th, 2012. Readers will not want to miss out on what is happening! Over the next few weeks we will be releasing new media and performing regular trip updates. 

So get onto twitter @CBTvietnam and facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cbtvietnam, let us know what you think! We want to hear your voice!

Project to continue!

Great news has been handed down to the CBT VN team recently. The Dean of Global and Community Studies at Capilano University (Dr. Chris Bottrill) has announced that an agreement has been reached with the PATA Foundation to continue the project in order to add to the recent surge of successes and momentum in the region of Ta Phin. Included in the extension of the project is funding for the village of Lao Chai.

The next two years will be exciting in the villages as the CBT team will look to further polish the host of products in Ta Phin and hand the project over to local ownership. The project in Lao Chai is in its infant stages, there is much work to do. Surely valuable experiences are just around the corner for Capilano University faculty and students, and likewise for our Hanoi Open University counterparts.

The CBT team would like to express our deepest gratitude to the PATA Foundation, and the hard work of all involved over the duration. We are all looking forward to what the future has in store!

Huge Thanks to the PATA Foundation!

To all you readers: help us out! Like our Facebook page here or follow us on twitter @CBTvietnam . There will be lots of updates to come! Stay tuned for more!


Also, check out our website at:
www.cbtvietnam.com

www.capilanou.ca