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La
Ruta del Café is a sustainable community tourism initiative
utilizing the development of rural coffee-related tourism to
offset impacts of the international crisis in wholesale coffee
prices.
Egret
Communications co-leads a team along with Grupo Latino-Americano
de Exportadores which is working in partnership with governments
and coffee growing communities from southern
Mexico
to Panama
to build appropriately formatted and scaled tourism experiences
to augment coffee growing economics.
Tourism
will be “engineered” to benefit the coffee growers and
coffee-dependent communities, while providing a rich and
meaningful experience for international visitors.
Branding of coffee tourism experiences will be designed
to compliment branding of regional coffees. And both
tourism and coffee growing will be encouraged to adopt
environmentally sensitive practices.
The
Tarrazú coffee growing region of
Costa Rica
is La Ruta del Café’s pilot site.
We’ve developed templates for product development,
outlined infrastructure and training needs, identified markets,
designed sample itineraries, built partnerships, and captured
images for marketing. Initial
test marketing is underway.
Next
steps for La Ruta del Café involve assessment of tourism
potential in coffee growing regions from
Oaxaca
to
Panama
. Early stages of
this project have been supported by the Organization of American
States.
More
on this project at link
and on Costa Rica
Coffee Tourism |
