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1. PROGRAM OBJECTIVES
The Maya World Sustainable Tourism Program seeks to make a significant
contribution to the social and economic development of the Maya
World region, through the enhancement of tourism activities, all
based on the preservation of the very rich cultural heritage of
the region and the protection of a highly threatened natural environment.
The participation of indigenous communities, especially those
of Mayan origin, has been considered as the most direct and immediate
way to ascertain the Program´s core objectives.
2. PROGRAM BACKGROUND
The Program is a creation of the Organization of the Mayan World
(Organización del Mundo Maya - OMM), with the specific mandate
of coordinating tourism development in Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala,
Honduras and Mexico. Each country is represented at the OMM through
its Tourism Ministers. The actual day to day operation of OMM
is achieved through a Permanent Secretariat (Secretaría Técnica
Permanente – STP).
In a follow up to substantiate its creation, OMM prepared a proposal
to the international financial community to provide the necessary
funding to define, design and develop the Program. This initiative
received a response from the Inteamerican Development Bank (IDB),
which in 1998 commited non-reimbursable funding in the amount
of US$ 1.9 million. These commitments were made with contributions
from the Governments of Japan, who is the largest donor of the
group, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Norway, Sweden, Korea, the
Special Operations Fund from IDB and a local counterpart provided
by INGUAT, the Guatemala Tourism Institute.
During the first semester of 2001, the STP started the procedures
to bid an international tender to contract the design and feasibility
of the Program. This tender was awarded to the APESA – BCEOM –
IIT Consortium, with APESA as the leading firm and substantial
knowhow provided by BCEOM, a large and very prestigious french
engineering firm and the Interamerican Tourism Institute of Washington,
D.C., with an important 20 year track record in tourism development
and training programs in more than 12 Latin American countries.
The terms of reference were based on a set of pre-selected projects
which each country has presented and which comprised a circuit
of tourism attractions. The Consortium suggested in its proposal
that this pre-selection be the subject of an expert appraisal,
before starting the actual design work of the Program.
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