Nubian Narratives. Unveiling Sustainable Practices with Ahmed Yehia, Eco Nubia Ecolodge, Egypt
Uh good afternoon dear audience of Samaran tourism Forum uh Merry Christmas and happy New Year this is uh not last our podcast next will be uh next Tuesday uh but we are very happy to be with you and that you are with us all this year it was
Productive year for us for tourism industry and the very end of this good year for tourism recovery all over the world I would like to introduce my my good friend first of all and I also can say he is a mentor for me maybe he doesn’t know about it but AED yeah from
Egypt uh this guy owns very Pro very like very early birth project in sustainability and uh this is second time when Ahmed is with us in our podcast first I was in post podcast season it was August 2020 uh in the middle of pandemic uh and
At that time Ahmed shared very uh very precious uh experience and at that time it was very rare experience on eco and sustainable approach which was like already proved by several years in his practice and uh you know ah today I quickly watched our podcast of 2020 and
I realized that at that time during my presentation of of yours I I used hype word hype uh in like close to sustainability of course it was my joke I didn’t find it it hype otherwise we would we would not provide that podcast with you but uh it was very very early
Approach of us to understand what sustainability is and sustainability like for me I opened it like a like a direction for development only in 2020 but you my friend you do it for many years already and uh I would like uh today to continue our conversation uh maybe we will come back
To some examples or some facts of your business business which you shared with us back to 2020 but let’s try to move forward and uh please tell us how is your business how is your uh sustainable development uh inside your business and outside your business is going on uh and
Also uh we we are expecting that you will share with us more information about your new initiative which is St sustainable tourism organization of Egypt I see you go forward you are not only implementing sustainable practices in your business now you you represent organization which is moving sustainability all over the country and
Maybe even outside the Egypt um so we are expecting uh you to share with us more about it so uh would you like to start from some like self-presentation maybe I missed some points points about you about your project uh thank you Misha uh and hello everybody who’s connected to this um
Webinar uh just a quick introduction because maybe people didn’t listen to my previous broadcast so um my name is Ahmed yya I’m from Egypt uh I used to work in different U uh Fields I started as an architect then I worked in computer science for a long time then marketing and strategies inside
International Organization then I decided to quit my corporate life doing a master degree called cultural heritage management where I got to know the terminology of ecotourism and I started my first company Eco Adventure in 2014 that was a tour operator for ecotourism destination and ecotourism eries and then
Uh I started my EOD business eonia in 2018 uh it’s a new company that focus in establishing and running ecologies uh our project eonia managed to win an award from a the world tourism organization in 2019 one year after it was open uh the award was the best sustainable tourism startup in the
Middle East 2019 uh it was amazing uh and the business now is doing good we had a drop during 2020 of course you know about it the pandemic uh but after that we had a great rebounds lots of customers decided to uh try this new thing that’s called ecotourism or sustainable tourism uh
Currently we receive a great amount of guests with the help of the international platform forms like booking.com Expedia Trip Advisor and so on uh and we moved our business from five rooms in 2018 currently we have 22 rooms in 2023 22 double rooms uh it can be double or triple
Rooms yeah approximately 50 45 50 people yeah you can adopt yes yes yes yes and we see this a very we see this a very good number for an ecolog because ecolog don’t work with the m tourism so we are not planning to go to 50 or 100 rooms 22
25 rooms is our maximum number for the restaurant we moved the restaurant from a 50 seat restaurant now the restaurant can accommodate up to 1050 guests to enjoy the view of the restaurant and the Newan food the Cuisine that we serve so things are moving fine so far
Misha uh uh the first question is uh tell us how uh guests who are not living in your Island because you are in Island you are in un insulated yes uh and inhabited Island how those who are not living in your Island in your Lodge are getting restaurant do you have like CH
Charter boards or whatever bringing people to Island and back after the lunch or dinner uh so we introduced something new for Aswan city which is restaurant reservation it wasn’t a common thing to reserve in a restaurant in Aswan City usually what happens people just drop by
Uh go to the restaurant open the menu and order in our case case because we don’t do a pre ready food or readymade food that just heated like restaurants do uh we have to do the meal from scratch that’s why the guest have to reserve one day before they arrive and
Because they have to reserve they contact us in our reservation number or reservation email when they contact us and they submit their order we send them directions how to reach us so where they should go with the taxi where they should meet our boat that will take them
To the island so we send boats for every guest that come to the restaurant to lunch or dinner at our restaurant it’s part of the package MH I see so you have your is it your own board or some locals they have they business and both both we
We we work with yeah we work with our poorts that belong to the staff and all the staff are newans they are from the local community so we the same still the same newans right yeah and and if we have many guests that our staff boat is
Not enough then we hire poorts from the local community around us currently uh I didn’t mention uh how the progress in terms of staff so when we started economia 2018 we had eight staff with us eight people yes currently eonia have 36 stuff all nobian how many men and women if it is
Not secret no it’s not secret actually from the 36 we have uh eight women and the rest is 28 yeah 28 men and youth and last question about your stuff because it’s exciting opportunity to go deeply uh to your HR to your sustainable HR how many people now are on managerial positions I
Mean locals who were growing with you with your project are there any on M manager managing level actually from the uh ecolog director to the uh the the guy who carry the bags to the rooms they are all nobian they are all local community so they have all the
Hierarchy there are managers there are senior manager there are directors there are staff every everybody is no actually I’m not interfering now with the operations of economia I handed over all the operations to the local community oh therefore you you go and do some like enjoy
Job yeah now I’m thinking of opening our new new ecolog that will be in a different place wow same along the Nile or different location uh our pick uh we we have many spots uh in mind in Egypt but uh the the most interesting one that we would like
To start with is in a place called luxur luur city which is 200 kilm North of Aswan and it’s on the West Bank of luxur on the on the west and it’s in the middle of lots of Antiquities and temples and monuments it’s uh it’s an old village
That was uh abandoned by the people they left the houses the houses now nobody’s doing anything with these houses and it’s the same concept like Eon eonia so we are trying to convince the government to give us these houses because now the houses belong to the government not to
The local community ah uh this is a different with your present yes place but uh tell me back to 2020 you uh told us that U uh you you like a kind of R rented uh not rented but uh you promised to locals because okay let’s start from
The beginning your Island was abandoned but uh buildings were still uh the property of some local people uh living outside the island yeah and uh at that time you told us that in 10 years uh period you will give the property back to locals is this like still in power
And uh but time goes on and now it’s already like uh I see six years of six year of your project in four year yes uh you have to give property back to people but will it be still eonia e like it is now what is your
Plan so as I mentioned uh in our previous broadcast the agreement with the nobian was to run uh build and run the island for 10 years we managed to hire people that own the houses so they are working with us at eonia seven of our workers are the owners of the
Houses uh the nice thing is after the covid and after facing that pandemic for one year and they noticed the drop in tourism they decided to uh increase our uh leing time or our benefit of econia so they moved it from 10 years to 15
Years so now we have the right to run the place for 15 years uh as you mentioned six years passed this means means we still have 9 years the thing is they think uh that uh having our U contribution is an added value for them uh especially in terms of marketing and
Sales they are not still uh very good in marketing and sales and they depend on us on that so that’s why they think that partnership should continue and we shouldn’t end it after the 10 years so this is the the case right now but as I mentioned every year we develop
Something new so we are not keeping the thing as is we it’s an organic project so year one we had five rooms we have a small restaurant we have a beach area year two we moved it from eight rooms to uh 16 rooms uh and uh small restaurant and
Beach area 2020 we shut down we closed the the island completely 2021 we started with 16 rooms Beach area multi-purpose Hall a hall where people can do Gatherings and yoga meditation Retreats and so on and the restaurant became bigger in year four which was the exciting year
2022 we increased the number of rooms to 20 and we made a farm we we built a complete Farm on the island where we grow what we consume uh we have our vegetables we have our fruits we have our goats we have our chicken on the island so everything now is produced
Locally on the island and we increase the restaurant from a 50 seat to 150 seat so so this means that we are not leaving the island uh as is to deliver it after 10 years we every year we add something more we invest from our money
We invest more into the island so after 15 years we give them a very big fancy project wow and it’s it seems now that you are you are creating circular economy in your isand yeah because now I I I want to ask you some deeper questions about like uh okay uh Waste
Management it’s also important point you will tell us about it later but tell us about like com compost or what kind of Technology do you use because I think you you are self-sufficient you have created some bubble on the island yes separated from the from the world uh you you have water
Enough water from the Nile yes but the rest the rest of things and the soil I think is is not rich over there yes and uh you can like produce your own compost how how is your Waste Management operated and what kind of organic circular things you producing yourself
Like how you okay let’s start from the from the waist yeah how how do so it happen from year one from year one we decided that we are not throwing anything uh from our waste so uh we did our refiner station for the water of the Nile purifying the water in order for
The guest to use it for showers and whoever would like to drink it it’s fine if they drink other bottles of water it’s it’s available but the sewage we manag to collect the sewage into one system all the sewage and then we have check rooms for separation where we separate solid
And water the solid goes to a biog gas container as I mentioned before and the water goes to a Refinery station three stages of Refinery that produce a clean water back again so we we use this clean water to irrigate our landscape the things that don’t provide eatable things or fruits
And we use the Nile water to irrigate our land for the remaining of the restaurant where we have the remaining of onion potato remaining of food whatever food that cannot be consumed then we use it to do the compost for our uh agriculture or our land uh the good
Remaining of food we distribute it to local community if they would like to have it so yeah we are trying to build a self-sufficient Island where the island don’t need to bring anything from outside currently we are in the process of developing a handcraft area where people where we invite Nubians to come
The Artisans to come on the island and start doing their handcrafts on the island with weaving Pottery whatever and then we sell these handcrafts for the guest in the same time the guest can try to do the handcraft themselves so they can get a crash course and start doing the craft
With the Artisan the noan artisan and then they can get their peace with them back home wow so this is our next Milestone on the island so making all these things can make the island one day a self-sufficient Island uh I’m sure you don’t use any plastic
Yeah unfortunately we do the bottles of water uh we do the wrapping for for for some Bott you mean big bottles like for drinking water uh small like these yeah but but we collect this plastic so we separate our garbage we collect the plastic on one side and the organic on
One side and the remaining on the other side and the plastic we give it to um uh a collector who uh uh re recycle these Plastics but not on our Island it’s outside on us one I see I see it’s uh like in usbekistan it’s the same people
Are taking people taking every plastic bottle yes because you this is Cash you can yes uh give it to some collector as you call it yeah and it is a cash but uh what are you doing with other non non plastic non so liquid in terms of money because plastic
Is liquid people are are taking it picking it yes but other garbage which is maybe brought by clients yes some plastic pack packing or other Solid Waste which is not so much uh required like by by Pickers so so we we divided the the our garbage into three the three parts uh Plastics
On one side that we give it to the collector uh organic we keep it on the island because we use it for our as a fertilizer or compost and then the remainings we give it to another collector who are responsible to uh get this waste uh uh in Aswan garbage Center
That where they uh either recycle it or dump it not sure what they do with it yeah yeah it’s like logical and and easy uh yeah good uh you uh mentioned the development now and I remember that the time you told us that you are positioning or like find yourself not
Like just DMO destination management company but this but this developing destination develop in and managing company so you are you are developing your product and you are managing it are you are you going to keep the same model in your future projects and how how it is now in
Eonia yes this is what we yeah this this is what we do we we we don’t we don’t just uh manage a destination we develop the destination then manage the destination but we develop the destination according to our uh rules or our P which is tourism and sustainable
Tourism because you can find another company who manage a destination but from a different perspective Mass tourism or luxurious tourism or whatever so in our case we are destination and development uh development destination management company that help in in in developing a destination using the principles of Equis the problem is we
Faced a problem with the policy level when I mean policy I mean the country is the country welcoming this type of Tourism or not in our case in Egypt case when I started 2018 I didn’t start from scratch because I had many people in Egypt who did
Ecologies long time ago so I I went to them I went I sat with them I had their experience and then I started my thing and they were a great help to me when I have a question or I have an inquiry so this is very rich but the problem is
Egypt is dominated by the mass tourism we can say 95% of Tourism coming to Egypt would go to the Sun and sea and cultural tourism in when when we say culture I mean temples and visit monuments and things like that pyramids while ecotourism uh yeah while ecotourism
Is not that famous in 2018 when I started that’s why there is no licensing for facilities related to ecotourism we faced that problem in 2019 when we managed to win the award from the world tourism organization the one who gave me the award was the minister of Tourism Egyptian minister of Tourism
And he asked me a very logical question at that time Ahmed how come you manage an international award and you don’t have license for your facility and I said because Minister you don’t have license for me and he said how come I said you have license for
Hotels one star two star three star four star five star and so on if I applied to have a license most probably you will give me a one star because the criteria for three star or four star or five star hotel I don’t have it in my EC Lodge you will be
Asking for air condition in the room I don’t have air condition you’ll be asking for a telephone in the room I don’t have a telephone in the you’ll be asking for a swimming pool I don’t have a swimming pool one star one star only yeah so so this criteria is not suitable
For me if you give me a one star I will not even put it in my reception because I’m selling my room with a festar hotel price1 $100 yeah right yes yeah yeah now it’s 120 so so so that’s why I’m I’m telling them no you don’t have a license for at that
Time the minister of Tourism her name was Dr R almashat she was cooperative so she decided to work with me okay Ahmed let’s do a license a new license in the Egyptian code for you guys for or whoever have an accommodation like yourself and when I count how many
People have ecologist in Egypt I would say we are between eight nine uh facilities so we’re not that big but we would like the industry to grow if there is a license this will encourage other people to open EES so we’ve been working on that from
2019 and we just managed to have the government creating a new license for EES it was this year March 2023 well now Egypt have a license for ecologist ecologist can apply for that license and the criteria for the license is completely different than the criteria for
Hotels wow ahed and to for us to understand uh the scale of your achievement tell us how many other countries have such criteria or such a separated devoted license for ecologist do you know you are when we in many conferences here yeah when we start doing our own
License actually the government ask us okay guys you are the expert you put the criteria because we don’t have experts inside the ministry of Tourism to put criteria for ecologist we don’t know it so we managed to gather all the people who own ecologies in Egypt and we start
Doing meetings and workshops to develop the criteria for that license and of course we start asking who other countries have that criteria we found Oman Oman which is next to Emirates and Yemen they do have a criteria for ecologist uh we didn’t see any anything in Saudi Arabia at that time we didn’t
Find anything in Emirates at that time uh we found something minor in Jordan but not complete uh on the West Side Morocco Tunisia we didn’t see anything that meet the criteria other countries worldwide Costa Rica they are very advanced in ecotourism and they have a license okay the the actually the big
Umbrella uh that create licenses for sustainable tourism in the world it’s called GSTC I’m sure you heard about GSTC yeah of course but GSTC they don’t have a li a license for ecolog they criteria right and not for ecologist but for like generally for all players so so
So we’ll be working soon with the GSTC to create a license an international license for ecologism uh but even if you do it with jstc uh I am still like very much surprised with how did you manage to make it in Egypt yeah and this is big
Point I think now countries uh of our region countries of Central Asia can advance in promoting their brands as a sustainable by just adopting same criteria and uh start to issue licenses or certificate uh for uh for like sustainable or EA yeah accommodations that would be amazing yeah that would
But we have to differentiate yeah but we have to differentiate between two things Misha license and certificate yeah yeah yeah license actually it’s oh wow what are these balloons computer I think please yeah so license is the is something I should take from the government I’m in like the country
I’m inside in order to be able to work this is license so this if you are in usbekistan then you should have a license in usbekistan government certificate is different certificate is over and above the license I get certificate from GSTC or from T or from whatever uh certificate
Body who encourage customer to go to that facility because they are certified so we have two two levels of think license is level number one then certificate is level number two yeah license is a permission to work certificate uh is a like stipulation of of of your achievement of your Lev uring
Quality uring quality yeah uring quality or your achievement and something yeah okay good so and how many uh other ecologist were participated in all this process and uh is uh St Egypt uh the same organization which you like which was created during this process of working with Egypt government on this issue or
No no it it is so so the the work started when when eonia won the award in 2019 and then the interaction happened between me and the minister but I thought I cannot do this thing alone so I have to gather people to form a body
In order to talk to the government Ahmed y cannot talk alone to the government but if we have 10 or 15 people then we can for an alliance that can talk to the government so we did that in 2020 during the pandemic and that group was formed by uh
Eco owners by people who are expert in in ecotourism in general by people from the Academia professors in the universities who who teach sustainability and tourism uh by people with experts in handicrafts in general in Egypt from different backgrounds so we thought okay this is very valuable
That we managed to gather all these people and doing the life and doing the criteria for EIC so after finishing the criteria we decided to move that group of people into an legal entity which is NGO so we we formed an NGO and we thought about what should we name it and
We decided to name it sustainable tourism organization stto but then a bigger Dream came to us like why stto is just in Egypt we would like to see stto in other countries that’s why we decided to name our uh NGO st- Egypt yeah because in the future we
Would like to see st- Oman sto Das Saudi Arabia st- usbekistan D UK and now uh we’ve been working as an NGO for one year now we established the NGO last year in 2022 I traveled to Oman uh last year and I had a discussion with the omanis about
Creating NGO in Oman with the same name sto Oman and they got excited about that even the ministry of tourism in Oman is interested in in helping in doing this NGO So currently they are doing the paperwork for that and we are still waiting for the uh suan decision about
Uh in uh declaration for that NGO to have St Oman uh jordanians are willing to do sto Jordan and once we form these stos they can help each other so if Oman need help from stto Egypt then St Egypt can help if jordanians need something from Egyptians and so on and that’s why
I encourage if you have a good Network inside usbekistan for people who work in sustainable tourism why don’t you guys form stto usbekistan and then stto Egypt can help stos Pakistan in anything they they would like to to have or to do and if we have these stos if we have
The enough critical mass of stos like 10 stos worldwide in the future we can form stto Global sustainable tourism organization globally that are formed from the small stos in different countries so this is our big dream now yeah really uh and uh uh it will be the
Analog of DMO right because uh sto can do the same job like DM but in a new in a new sustainable appro actually we are we think about stto in in a different DMO would work on ground like do things on ground like Marketing sales development
And so on while our NGO is working in the policy level which is a higher level in the lows in the alliances in the uh networking uh in so so this is and we you cannot do a DMO without fixing the policies first like you can do uh great
Work on on ground but when you try to get a license for that work you don’t find a license for that work so you have to work on the policy level with the government of the country on how to change that policy uh and in order not
Toop from scratch this is why we encourage stos to deal with each other so if St o Pakistan would like to create an ecolog criteria stto Egypt did already did one so sto Egypt can send the criteria to usbekistan and the usbekistan sto start to modify that criteria to be suitable for usbekistan
Projects and so yes not not to invent the wheel right right uh but uh during uh elaboration of your criteria did you take an example from other countries or you did it from the scratch yourself no we don’t start from scratch never uh so we start exploring the literature everything that was written
About ecolog license or ecolog criteria globally globally yes so what we found we we found that there was a and a very famous NGO called the international ecotourism Society TI they exist from long time ago and they they put an ecolog criteria in 2002 so we downloaded that criteria and
We used it as a reference then we found the US Aid doing an ecolog criteria for the Red Sea in 2008 project so we downloaded that one so we have two 2002 2008 US Aid then the gis Z did a very nice criteria for ecologist in 2015 for so we had
Old for Egypt yes for Egypt for Egypt yeah but but both us Aid and GIS Z when they did their own criterias they referenced others criteria so they didn’t start from scratch too so we downloaded all that R we gathered it we formed a wall with lots of sticky
Notes and flip charts and we start moving things so our criteria is a mix and development for four other criterias that was developed before us ahuh okay uh and coming back to to ecolog like a business uh but but in terms of sustainable of sustainability it seems for me now that
Uh that we can call uh this type of business we about Hospitality now yeah like a blue ocean because uh red ocean it’s when you are fighting for your star yes you have to have elevator uh swimming pool this that yes yes to to be like the star you you think you you
Deserve to be yeah and here we have an entire blue ocean without competition at all yeah where you can earn like you like you do uh $120 per night per room uh uh like in a in a in a property made from the clay and and local like local trees and and
This that so it means that if it is properly institutionally fixed yes and licensed uh it could be a new wave of like blue ocean businesses which will not be competing so so much because it’s still like I don’t think it will be Mass Market as you say in Egypt the mass
Market is 99% is different type of hotels but anyway you have found your your your need your way and how many other ecologist are are in Egypt in numbers like 40 20 those who are working with you on this policy and maybe in your chain uh okay as I mentioned we don’t
Have that big amount we are between six and seven real ecologist like they have all what in what what is in that criteria but the problem is ecolog became very sexy ward in in tourism in Egypt in the last 10 years that’s why lots of people are now
Putting in their signages in front of the building that they are ecolog while they are not and that was a big problem because if the guest is really educated about what is e and he went to a facility that they named thems ecolog and then he found out that they don’t do
Anything related to ecolog he lost the trust of the word ecolog so when they come to us they come with a doubt are you a really ecolog or you are just green washing like we call it green washing like people who are trying to be
On the side of Green so so that’s why we really cared about putting a license for ecologist that nobody is now allowed to put the name the word ecolog in their signes if they don’t meet the criteria ecolog is a profitable business because we calculate our eida margin our
Profit margin and and and and actually in terms of margins like percentages we are better than hotels so Hotel margin can be uh 30% aeda or 35% uh we can in terms of aeda which is a terminology in finance we can reach 40% but of course 40% of our sales our
Sales can be uh like 5 million Egyptian pound so the 40% is a small number compared to a hotel that their sales can reach 100 million pound so it’s it’s a different but in terms of profitability no ecologist is more Prof profitable than hotels this is what we proved are
You comparing now with the same uh Hotel I mean number of rooms with with a hotel with a same we don’t have in in Egypt we don’t have hotels that 20 rooms all hotels are 50 plus yeah yeah yeah it was my question so but you still have a very
Very limited number of rooms and at the same time yeah quite quite good profit uh uh exciting but uh my question about I I I want to come back to certification point because this is very sensitive now we are on the very sensitive field of green washing and the difference between True
Green business and green washing uh I think that International and even some local certificates can also uh like certify that you are you are green company or sustainable company not only license right because we have some some certifications for like good Seal program and other yes travel life and other programs certification programs
Which can certify that you green hotel is it correct without any licensing but by certification you can at least avoid uh avoid green like that someone will say you you in washing cast uh I think uh the guest is the one who decide if you are green washing or
Not uh but the thing is in in in that case the guest have two tools to to decide whether they will go to your facility or not these two tools are number one is certification if you do have a certification and you presented that certification on your website or on
Booking.com that you are sustainable business this will encourage guest to go but the other level which is very important is the feedback the reviews of course how people speak about your facility I can do a facility I’ll be doing green washing but the comments of the guests who will arrive to me will
Show that I’m doing green washing because they will not be happy of what I’m doing so so it’s it’s a tricky business now because reviews are becoming very strong tool in sales and marketing so if my reviews are saying that I am green washing whatever certificate I will have people will not
Come okay and what can you say about uh sustainable travel program of booking.com uh of course I’m sure you have three leaves yes three green leaves yes but you knowed what I recently realized that uh uh many hotels even in usbekistan many hundreds of hotels in each tour Center yes like some aranton
Bhara have some leavs and uh when you come inside and uh talking with owners or with stuff you understand that people have even no idea of what this program is so booking.com doesn’t require now any kind of certificate or any other proof they just say in the disclaimer
That we trust to the information which was provided by this hotel and this hotel is like striving for sustainability doing many things but they don’t prove it how do you think will they start to request some proof like certification uh because it’s not uh how to say it’s not just Justice yes there
Is no justice because you do your job and other guys they are not doing any kind of activities maybe one or two pieces of of some criteria yes they don’t have plastic bottles okay it’s not enough yes to say I am sustainable and both of you have like three leaves yeah
Uh of course reviews reviews is a tool yes to prove yes but anyway without reviews how can we like yeah I I know about the sustainability program of booking.com the the three green leaves and it’s easily can be obtained from any facility if they just
Put uh that we recycle blah blah blah we do blah blah blah then it’s they can get it uh and what I see is booking it’s it’s it’s a nice movement booking was for forced to do that so now the green and sustainable travel is booming and
Growing and people would like to go to sustainable destination and green destination that’s why booking is forc now to use these tools but he knows that they cannot limit it to a very small number of hotels they would like to do a competition between hotels who who will
Be more greener than the other but they are not asking for any certification because all again we are we don’t have a certification body that we can use in in in terms of Egypt we don’t have a local certification body that we can use and give it to booking.com as a proof that
We do have certification and they cannot enforce us to go to GSTC to have a certificate that cost this amount of dollars in order to uh be a sustainable so so I think booking.com is just moving with the movement with the movement of sustainability but I’m sure lots of
Green washing is happening as you said and booking.com cannot control that they they cannot so the only way to know if this facility is doing green washing or not is the feedback of the guests that they have at least now we have something to differentiate our facility than
Normal facility which is the three leaves of booking.com but still we are trying now with booking.com to add EES as a type so people can apply to be a hotel on booking.com a private apartment or a private facility or an ecolodge because booking.com they don’t have
Ecodes they have the word Lodge but not e Lodge uhuh even an EOD on booking.com this will be a great added value and nobody’s allowed to have that degree if they don’t prove that they are a real ecolog oh so this is another level of our work as sto to work with booking.com
And Expedia about this new uh level and I’m sure GSTC can help with that if we manage to create an ecolog license in GSTC this will convince the platforms to create uh a new type and they call it ecologist but because there is no criteria for ecologist in GSTC STC which
Is the biggest certificate body for tourism then that’s why booking.com Expedia and others will not do an ecolog type now and uh uh for you uh e is it exactly the type of building that you you have or it could be like normal Building made of concrete and uh I don’t know like
Bricks uh but uh but uh keeping or using all other sustainable tourism criterias in in the period no in our Yeah in our in our criteria the ecologic criteria that we put it for Egypt you have to have natural material you can normal plates yeah but we don’t limit to a a
Certain material so you can use wood you can use rocks you can use mud you can use Palm you can you can use any material that you have in your country like in Mongolia this York YK that they use yeah it’s definitely it’s a natural material that they are using so it can
Be an ecolog but building with cement concrete and the normal Pricks no we are encouraging people to destroy the nature more because this material is not coping with the nature and by the way there is an important thing in the ecologic criteria you cannot get a material that
Is not suitable for the Natural Area that you are having so you cannot use uh Palm uh products in an area they don’t have even Palm in their area so where did you get the Palm from you cannot use wood to build an ecolog in an area that
They don’t have trees so where did you get the the wood from we encourage people to build from within you go to the area you see what are the natural resources in that area and you use the natural resources whatever the natural resources are so we don’t limit it to a
Certain material but we encourage to use the natural resources of the area in WoW uh exciting and the the same time you are protecting uh like a historical or heritage heritage of of of construction yes because people were constructing buildings for ages in this area using some certain local materials now if you
Wanted to build a cage you you go to to history to the people to Villages and see how do they do it and implement it in some mod yeah building an ecolog Misha is is not something easy actually because you have to do lots of research before building
An ecology and we we we we always refer to ecotourism with the three pillars three main pillars nature is one pillar you have to study the nature of of the area that you have local community the people who live there because you will be using them as emplo as people who
Will work on on the ecolog and then cultural heritage what is the history of these people because you will be using their own cultural heritage inside the ecolog ecolog in uh in Egypt should not promote the cultural heritage of people of Emirates and ecolog in usbekistan shouldn’t promote the cultural heritage
Of people of Europe no they they promote the Heritage the cultural heritage of the people of obis not even the people of usbekistan the people who are living around that natural place specifically so so in our case when we studied the Nan Heritage we found it so rich so so
Rich in terms of food that’s why when we built sole our restaurant sole M and we introduced the nobian food the nobian was actually re reluctant or they they thought would people actually love this type of food because we don’t serve this food to guests to to tourists and I said
Why don’t you they said we think that they will not love it when we built our restaurant sule and people start to come and eat the nobian food they got shocked oh wow what is this this is a very good food yeah experience starts right experience starts exactly exactly and
Then they stop how come they are you are not serving your food for that long time and they said oh we had the perception that you you will not love our food so this is this is a shock when we studied the nobian bed the bed that people sleep
On which is a very strange beled in the noia we found that the Heritage goes back to the ancient Egyptians the ancient Egyptian bed that we founded in tombs in Egypt they inherited that bed they did some modification to that bed and they used it now we managed in certain rooms
In our ecolog to make a replica a a perfect replica of the ancient Egyptian bed that we found in the tombs because this is the grandfather for the bed of the new beans so wow you you show this bed to us now you were going by the way to sh some
Pictures uh yes let me share something with you wow and I’m excited to see what kind of bed was okay can can you see now uh in in the yeah now I can see your your presentation okay let’s let’s go quickly so this is the location of kobia on the
On on an island in the middle of the water and then this is the view of the old houses of the noan after we rebuild it and they are facing the temple can you see the picture Misha yeah yeah yeah and I see the temple in the okay perfect
Okay yes yeah yes exactly so this is our Island now with the farm on the right side there is is the farm where we grow what we eat and this is the history of yeah when we started in 2017 the construction until October 2023 this is the full
History of economia and this is the zoning what we do we have a multi-purpose Hall on top of the mountain we have accommodation inside the houses we have a farm we have a restaurant we have a store for selling handcrafts we have uh the handcraft area
And we have a Beach area for people to swim and uh this is the way they do the bread in the old NOA we are Reviving that bread making mechanism so we are doing it right now uh the staff they are all newans from different backgrounds none of them is graduated from tourism
Uh Institute they are all normal uh local community some of them actually they didn’t go to school now they have enough experience and skill to teach yes of Tourism yeah with training with training yes this is the view of the restaurant where people can have breakfast lunch dinner exciting yeah
Activities we have many activities right now like bird watching handicraft swimming kaying sailing hiking uh Village tour yoga and so on climing and yeah this is the famous circle for the 17 goals of sustainable development goals and we did something very interesting now we actually managed to know eonia
How much eonia satisfy each goal in percentages I remember from the previous webinar yes and but now we we make it in terms of percentage because some some uh goals we satisfy 50% some goals we satisfy 90% some goals is temper and actually this is very interesting because it gave us
Some insights on what should we do for the future like you can see here that goal number three and goal number four we are taking a very low score on goal and goal four there is a room for development there is a room for improvement we can do something about
Good health and well-being and we can do something about education which is goal four we are thinking now of building h a sustainable Institute a small sustainability Institute on the biger island to teach sustainability so this will in this will help us yes can we stop one moment here uh uh look from
Business perspective but you you are still business yes and very profitable business uh from a business strategy perspective uh it is usually said that you have to pay attention to your strong points yes mainly and uh let’s say you have like one two three four four or
Five or maybe even six strong points uh according to sustainable goals yes you are you are like 100 or 90 or 80% satisfy six of them uh if you pay a lot of attention to the rest of 11 uh is it not uh a risk for you to
Lose your position in in in first in first six yes which is your strong point which is your main which is which is main driver of your development right uh actually uh and my opinion no because uh we got a high score for things that already fixed from day one
Like water and sanitation we already did the refinery of water we did already did the uh recycling of sewage so we don’t need to do anything about it anymore so when once we satisfy a goal it’s checked it’s done let’s go to the other one so
So they can be all satisfied in one day okay I see I see and then come come to the pictures this is our farm and uh this is the view of the island let’s go to the bed ah on the uh last picture down to the right do you see that bed
Yeah yeah I see but not not clearly but okay I will increase it something like uh uh mat or okay I’ll I’ll try to get a better picture oh okay now it’s bigger stri yeah strip mattress it’s actually without a mattress they used to do it with
Drops so it’s uh maybe it’s not easy to move picture I’m I’m I’m moving now oh yeah it’s here yeah so this is the ancient Egyptian bed they used to do LS of yeah they used to do it with logs of wood and then between the wood they do waving with with the
Threads so the threads are the mattresses people used to yeah I didn’t look at the this construction I was looking at the carpet down no no no the construction now I see the construction is a bed yes and carpet is a carpet wow yeah exactly and this is another photo
Of the bed but from this is when we put a mattress on the bed so we give the guest now the choice would you like to sleep on it like the ancient Egyptian sleeped on it without a mattress or we can put a mattress for you so you have the
Choice so so this is uh the the bed and uh maybe uh we can continue the photos if you’d like to see the rest of the photo uh the bir and this is the views of the island was this kind of available for far only we we found it actually we found it
Actually in in a queen T it’s called H haris Queen she is the mother of hofo one of the Kings who built one of the pyramids so it was a royal bed yeah Royal bed okay now every your customer guest is a they are Royals now
Yes yeah and and and this is our farmer with some tomato and the views and this is our Awards so far so it wasn’t only the unwto we received an award from Ministry of environment in Egypt the world tourism Day in 2020 we were featured on that world tourism day
A magazine called startup Guide magazine we were featured in startup guide Guide magazine during the climate change conference in Egypt cop 27 we were featured uh booking.com they gave us the uh what was it Award of traveler review award by booking.com we were featured on
CNN they did a full uh program about us about how we revived the nobian food and it was uh streamed on CNN International uh African Development Bank also did a feature about us and they presented it in one of their conferences we are on trip advisor we are traveler choice on
Trip advisor for in Aswan and we received the leadership uh award from Mila Network which is sister of sa Network yeah these are exciting number of awards unfortunately there is no any kind of local award yet Egyptian one but minister no minister of environment ah is there one of them ah
With the with the eagle I yeah yes yes because I I couldn’t read what is written over there yeah is also over there wow ahed again so big so big volume of insights from your side thank you I have a proposal to you uh to consider um to come to Samaran tourism
Forum next February from 9 let’s say 8 to 10 February next year uh we are trying to tune our Forum to be sustainable in uh in different uh like uh from different side perspectives uh and uh we have uh dedicated sessions for them but I think
Together with you we can set a separated session which will be dedicated to your sto Egypt experience and at the same time we can uh not only announce this idea yes but uh but gather like a make it like a round table and gather uh people interested uh in this and maybe
Some governmental people will join us educational people uh we can like replicate somehow how you did it in in Egypt to make our way shorter because we don’t have another I will be I will be happy to do that Misha definitely yeah it will be my let’s discuss this
Opportunity just after our webinar sure but the the point which I wanted to stipulate now we don’t have another 5 years for this so now things like this have to to go quicker because sustainability as you say it’s a it’s coming like a tremendous Trend yes and
Nobody still can measure it yes but people are feeling that this this wave this tsunami is is coming yes together with with the request of uh of guest so uh I think we we have to like to forward uh this topic and uh let’s discuss it after webinar and now thank you very
Much I do hope this is this is not last your visit to us even in this webinar format let’s say uh in in a couple of years we can again meet and talk about your advancement because uh it’s very important not to learn from the beginning but to learn together with you
Together with you with your now two and maybe at that time three organizations two ecologist and one in how do you do it in Egypt thank you very much thank you thank you so Merry Christmas and happy new yearry Christmas yeah and Happy New Year for you too Misha thank
You bye bye bye bye bye bye bye bye byebye everybody bye
Join us in this enlightening episode of the Samarkand Tourism Forum Podcast as we welcome Ahmed Yehia, the pioneer behind Eco Nubia and STO-Egypt. Ahmed, a recurring guest, having previously joined us in 2020, returns to share the remarkable progress and sustainable developments at Eco Nubia Ecolodge.
Eco Nubia, set on Bigeh Island of the Nile River in Aswan, is an exemplary model of sustainable tourism, integrating eco-friendly practices that enhance guest satisfaction and positively impact revenue. In this episode, we’ll discuss these practices and their influence on the lodge’s success, and how they’ve fostered a deeper appreciation for sustainable living among guests.
Further into our conversation, Ahmed will delve into the role of STO-Egypt, an organization he founded to promote sustainable tourism. STO-Egypt focuses on encouraging and guiding individuals and organizations in Egypt to adopt sustainable practices, thereby contributing to the overall growth and health of the tourism industry in a responsible and environmentally conscious manner.
This episode, hosted by Michael Shamshidov, co-founder of the Samarkand Tourism Forum, promises to be an insightful journey into the achievements and future aspirations of sustainable tourism in Egypt. Don’t miss out on this engaging discussion, and remember to subscribe for more content from the Samarkand Tourism Forum!
For those who want to get warmed up, here’s the link to our first podcast with Ahmed Yehia Ismail from, what now seems like the distant, 2020 https://www.youtube.com/watch?si=a-U6JDJO47XrnF8E&v=JeGEGEORdGw&feature=youtu.be&themeRefresh=1