Ecuador Launches Arty "Feel Again" Tourism Campaign

By Russell Maddicks

Following the success of its ambitious All You Need Is Ecuador campaign. which featured the well-known Beatles' song All You Need Is Love, Ecuador's Tourism Ministry has now launched an even more ambitious campaign with the emotive slogan: Feel Again!

The $10 million campaign begins with a major art project featuring 18 contemporary artists, photographers and travel bloggers from four countries who flew into Quito on 21 September for a 7-day expedition to experience one of Ecuador's four worlds: the Andes, Amazon, .Pacific Coast, and the Galapagos Islands.

Tourism is an important source of non-oil revenue for Ecuador, coming in third place after bananas and shrimp and generating some $1.5 billion in 2014.

The idea is for the invited artists to explore the sensory experiences of travelling in Ecuador - the sights, sounds, smells, tastes and feelings that make travelling such an awakening, empowering and life-changing experience - and then produce work that reflects those experiences.

The artists will also engage on social media with their followers in a way that hopefully inspires others to visit Ecuador and sample its food, culture, history as well as its diverse landscapes and wildlife.

Team USA includes Andrew Norton, Brendan Van Son, Marc Reisbig, and Scott Pommier, and they will be exploring the Galapagos Islands.

Team Canada includes Benoit Paille, Jeff Bartlett, Jesse Louttit, and Rick Leong, and they'll be heading to the Pacific Coast,

Team UK includes Conor MacNeill, Esther Teichmann, Jason and Keiko Hindley, and Sara Thomas, and they'll be immersing themselves in Ecuador's mega-diverse Amazon region.

Team Germany includes Johannes Conrad and Michelle Phillips of Studio Yukiko, Rocket & Wink, and Steve Hanisch, and they will be experiencing the high Andes.

All the teams will be documenting their journeys in real time with stories, photos, videos, sounds, and artworks published on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and other social media platforms.

The best way to follow the artists' progress is through Ecuador Travel's accounts on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, where you can use the hashtag #FeelAgainInEcuador to get the latest updates.

The invited artists posed with Ecuador's Tourism Minister Sandra Naranjo at the Feel Again! project launch in Quito's historic centre.

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Guayaquil Prepares for FITE 2015 - Ecuador's International Tourism Fair

By Russell Maddicks

Ecuador's Pacific port of Guayaquil - the country's largest city and the main hub for flights to the famed Galapagos Islands - is gearing up for a flood of visitors for the annual International Tourism Fair, FITE 2015, which will be held from 22-25 October.

This is the most important tourism fair in Ecuador and the four pavilions that will be erected for the event in Parque Samanes - the third biggest park in the Americas - are expected to attract some 60,000 visitors over the four days. 

FITE is aimed at locals trying to get a good deal for their next holiday, visitors and expatriates seeking inspiration and information about destinations in Ecuador, and tourism professionals and travel firms interested in making new business contacts. 

This year, the slogan for the event is "Life is a Journey: Live it at FITE" (La Vida es un Viaje, Vívelo en FITE).

Ecuador's top attractions from the Amazon, Andes, Pacific coast and Galapagos Islands will be represented by regional tourism boards, tour operators, travel agencies, hotels, guesthouses, and jungle lodges.

There will also be music and costumed dancers from the country's many folk festivals to enliven proceedings, and stalls offering a diverse range of Ecuador's traditional culinary dishes and drinks for gastronauts.

If you want to try a coastal ceviche, for example, or a tasty plate of hornado (pork pulled from a whole roasted pig), served up with mote (hominy corn) and llapingachos (fried potato and cheese patties), then FITE is the perfect place to visit. 

You can also buy traditional handicrafts from around the country, including high-quality toquilla straw hats - erroneously known as Panama hats - and meet women from the small villages around Cuenca and Montecristi who spend months weaving them.

There will be stalls representing international airlines and tourism boards from 30 countries, including South American neighbours such as Peru, Colombia and Brazil, and far-flung nations like China.

According to Jaime Rull Mayoral, who has been organizing the FITE since 2002, this year there will be a special focus on adventure tourism, including hiking, mountain biking, abseiling, paragliding, bungee jumping, ziplining, and rafting, as well as equestrian and rural tourism options, and beach and water sports.

The four pavilions will be Adventure Tourism, Nautical Tourism and Water Sports, Equestrian and Rural Tourism, and a quiet space dedicated to business meetings, mini-conferences and talks aimed at those in the tourism trade. 

During FITE there will also be a two-day Extreme Sports and Adventure Tourism Congress bringing together tour companies, experts, and practitioners of extreme sports. The congress will offer an overview of new products and trends, highlight the importance of good practice and rigorous safety preparation to reduce risk, and stress the importance of sustainable, eco-friendly approaches to minimize the impact on the environment.

Ecuador has experienced a significant increase in tourist numbers over the last five years with over 1.5 million tourist arrivals in 2014 (200,000 more than in 2013), a record that the government predicts will be beaten in 2015. 

The country has built up a good reputation among travellers over the last five years due to the number of varied and interesting places that can be visited in a fairly short period. 

At the same time, new tourism initiatives like the Tren Crucero, the reopened train line between Quito to Guayaquil, and the Ruta de Spondylus, following mile upon mile of Pacific beaches, are further opening up the country to repeat visitors, who can now easily combine trips to the Galapagos Islands with mainland adventures in the Andes, the Amazon region, or along the Pacific coast.

Ecuador is also considered safe compared to its larger neighbours, has great food, brilliant birdwatching, fascinating colonial cities, good hiking, world-class surf, a historic railway system, and an efficient transport infrastructure that makes it easy to travel around.

Having the dollar as the national currency also makes Ecuador an attractive destination for travellers and expats, as it removes the bother of changing money and helps when transferring funds, budgeting and comparing prices. 

Nurturing this tourism boom, the government, through the Tourism Ministry, has invested heavily in a series of award-winning and highly successful international campaigns such as All You Need is Ecuador, which was launched around the world in 2014. The new campaign Feel Again!, looks like it will be just as successful.

For more information about FITE 2015 visit the FITE website or their page on Facebook.

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Purchase a copy of my book Culture Smart! Ecuador

Andes, Amazon & Pacific Coast: A Taste of Ecuador in 5 Iconic Dishes

Roast guinea pig, or cuy, is an Andean staple dating back to Inca times.

By Russell Maddicks
For anybody interested in the hugely diverse dishes of Ecuador, I'll be giving an illustrated presentation on Ecuadorian travel and food at the London Globetrotters Club on Saturday April 11, 2015, at The Church of Scotland, Crown Court, behind the Fortune Theatre in Covent Garden.

Admission costs £3 for Members and £6 for Non-members. You do not need to be a member to attend, and they do not sell advanced tickets, so just come on the day. Doors open at 2:15pm and the program starts around 2:30pm with each talk lasting approximately 40 minutes.

Squeezed between Colombia in the north and Peru in the south, Ecuador is named for its location on the Equator and encompasses high Andean peaks, steamy Amazon jungles, and a long Pacific coast, as well as the world-renowned Galapagos Islands some 1,000 km off the coast.

The landscape is so varied that Ecuador has been described as a microcosm of every microclimate found in South America.

This diversity makes it a magnet for tourists, mountain trekkers, birders, volunteers, and increasing numbers of US retirees looking for a warm, culturally interesting, economical, and safe place to spend much of their time.

What many people don't appreciate is that the country is also a foodie's paradise, with a cuisine as varied as the terrain.

Signature dishes range from the sublime - such as Andean locro de papas (a creamy potato and cheese soup), coastal ceviche (fish or prawns marinated in lime), and hornado (whole roast hog) - to cuy (roasted guinea pig), a must-try Inca delicacy for all adventurous carnivores.

In this presentation, I will give a visual tour of all the top travel spots and unique adventure opportunities on offer in Ecuador with a special focus on the tastiest treats available in each region of the country.

About the Speaker: Russell Maddicks is a BBC-trained writer, translator, and journalist. A graduate in Economic and Social History from the University of Hull, England, he has spent the last twenty years traveling, living, and working in South and Central America, most recently as Latin American Regional Specialist for BBC Monitoring.

A fluent Spanish speaker, he has made many extended trips to Ecuador, one of his favourite South American destinations, where he has explored the length and breadth of the country both for work and for pleasure.

He is the author of Culture Smart! Ecuador (2014), Culture Smart! Venezuela (2012) and the Bradt Guide to Venezuela (2011). He has just started work on a new book about Nicaragua.

http://globetrotters.co.uk/blog/london-meetings-saturday-april-11-2015.html

Amazing Images From Ecuador for #AllYouNeedIs Campaign

 

The new #AllYouNeedIsEcuador tourism campaign is well underway and the images coming out of Ecuador are truly inspiring.

This photograph of a caiman is a great example and I'll be posting some more here when they come through.

Like all the other promo pics it focuses on the idea that Ecuador offers four worlds in one: Amazon, Andes, Pacific coast and Galapagos.

The global #AllYouNeedIsEcuador promotion campaign kicked off on 1 April with the unveiling of 19 giant letters in 12 cities around the world and 7 cities in Ecuador. The video accompanying the campaign makes clever use of the classic Beatle's song "All You Need Is Love". 

For more information about visiting Ecuador and inspiring photographs and videos of the country visit http://allyouneedisecuador.travel/en