The Roots Routes

Background

Thailand is one of the largest tourism industry in the world, the canal network in Bangkok are situated abundant of hidden hydro-cultural communities alongside several old canals. Nowadays, this system plays an important role in cultural tourism since these canals illustrate the urban settlement transformation of the city through the varying periods of time when the canals were constructed.

With the role of historic communities and canal tourism that progressively become an alternative choice for the industry because it reflects the historical relationship not only between human and landscape but also human occupants and settlement through the different scenario of cultural spaces as well as with the slow pace of travel that offers tourist to interact with and experience the local way of life and distinct cultural landscape.

The growing of canal tourism has stimulated many communities in terms of cultural values; living cultural heritage. The communities have settled along waterways with its own distinct and still remain their distinctive culture in both tangible and intangible values even though they are almost extinct due to the urban sprawl. Therefore, the heritage conservation framework should integrate the local communities with sustainable tourism in order to run the mechanism under the inclusive development. Those historic water-related sites could be developed into Living museum or an Eco-Museum which should be connected together as a living cultural heritage network for even more concrete and encourage the exchange between the historic communities. The project would help the communities to survive themselves through the globalization.

Along the way: UNDP Youth co-lab 2018 “sustainable tourism award”

The project was selected as one of the 20 finalists of Thailand innovation Platform competition and was awarded for “Sustainable Tourism Award” under Youth Co:Lab 2018 which was co-organised by United Nations Development Programme and Citi Foundation with support of National Innovation Agency (NIA) and AirAsia, a four-day event held on 25-28 October 2018 has brought together over 100 participants from government agencies, civil society organizations, private sectors and social entrepreneurs to discuss the important role of young people in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and develop the potential of youth in realizing innovative solutions to tackle social issues.

(Source: https://www.facebook.com/UNDPThailand/)

In July 2020, The Roots Routes has been shortlisted in Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) Travel Tech startup season 2 . Motivated by this, we further developed project and joined the UNESCO TechCul 2020 Ideathon which had as its goal to develop new technology-based solutions and business plans to tackle cultural heritage threats in the Asia-Pacific region. After moving on to the final round of the competition as one of 25 teams, our pitch was able to convince the jurors for five prizes. 3 of which were Thai National prizes supported by National Innovation Agency (NIA) , Digital Economic Promotion Agency (DEPA) and Tencent. The second prize was ichLinks Prize from ICHCAP and lastly Jury Prize supported by British Council. These include monetary support as well as mentorship and participation in an incubation program to be started in the first half of 2021.

Our next step is to develop a prototype and engage the communities in our project. This way we plan to establish a mutually supportive relationship with the communities and get them on board for the development of our itineraries. The aim is to work alongside them in order to foster an understanding of how they can communicate their cultural heritage to explorers.