Panamagic

Small scale accommodation (bed and breakfast and luxury tented accommodation) with restaurant services in a botanical forest-garden (indigenous reforestation) at the Pacific coast of Veraguas province, Panama. We organize tours and activities for people interested in nature, such as hiking, bird-watching, snorkeling, turtle protection and on-farm-visits in the neighbourhood to experience Panamanian rural live.

The tours will be organized and conducted in close collaboration with members of the local community who, through on-the-job training, will be able to do the tours independently after three to five years. We see ourselves as the centre of a network of small ecotourism businesses in the area.

We also provide bird watching tours in central and western Panama and offer to design custom-made tours to Coiba Island and the Darien.

As a sideline, we sell indigenous trees to people who want to compensate their CO2 production

We market through our web site www.tanagertourism.com (under construction) and through linking it to websites of the Panamanian NGO Mar Viva, the Summit Gardens and the Panamanian Tourism Institute. We are also working to establish a ‘network within the internet’ by providing links to and from other small businesses that provide similar products in other parts of Panama and in Costa Rica. We intend to link up to www.worldhotel-link.com .

We will distribute folders to specific hotels in Panama city, Boquete, Bocas del Toro, San Jose and Golfito (Costa Rica) that attract customers likely to be interested in our products and to local travel agents in Panama and Costa Rica.

We will also use a direct marketing system through e-mailing our private social network in Panama, the Netherlands and in other parts of the world to attract customers and buyers of trees. We expect that our satisfied visitors will help promoting our product.

We will strive to provide a service that is of better quality and environmentally and socially more sustainable than that of our potential competitors and thus set an example and bench mark for true ecological tourism that lets the local community participate.

Comfortable, ecologically sustainable accommodation and tours guided by biologists to the Cerro Hoya National Park, Coiba National Park (World heritage site) and the gulf of Montijo (RAMSAR wetland). Cerro Hoya and Coiba feature three endemic and many rare birds such as the Painted parakeet Great Green Macaw and Coiba Spinetail

Both main partners have a degree in biology (entomology resp. plant pathology) and fifteen years experience in rural development in developing countries. We are fluent in Spanish and both have extensive knowledge of the links between natural resources and rural household economies. Both partners are enthusiastic naturalists, C.A. Groenendijk is an avid bird watcher and Elizabeth Roos has an extensive knowledge of trees. We established and owned our own consultancy company in Mozambique.

The company will provide direct employment to 10 people in year three.

Indirectly an estimated 20 people will provide services to the business such as snorkelling trips, hikes, receiving visitors on their farm and selling food and other inputs to the company.

By selling farm visits to tourists, local customs and traditions can be maintained. And by providing interesting employment with fair wages and business opportunities, young people will have an incentive to stay in the area.

We intend to support the local school by teaching classes on biology and environment and will sponsor activities for children such as drawing competitions and sports clubs.