Siliguri, Jan. 28: A Siliguri-based company has been selected as one of the 12 finalists for the Tourism for Tomorrow Awards.

Touted as the Oscars of the travel trade, it is given by World Travel and Tourism Council.

In the final list that was announced on January 25, Sunderbans Jungle Camp of Help Tourism, a tourism-development, promotion and operation company, is competing with El Nido Resorts of Philippines and Nihiwatu Resorts of Indonesia in the Investor in People category.

“An international committee of experts selected the 12 finalists from over 130 applications from more than 40 countries representing travel and tourism on all seven continents,” a media release put up at the council’s website said. The council’s mission, according to the website, is to raise awareness about the full economic impact of the world’s largest generator of wealth and jobs — travel and tourism.

“Today that means not only providing an outstanding tourism product but doing so in a way that helps to protect the cultural and natural heritage of our planet,” said Costas Christ, “judging chairman” of the awards, as quoted in the release.

If Sunderbans Jungle Camp manages to win the award, it will be the first Indian endeavour to ever make it to that category. The other initiative from the country that made it to the list of finalists was Kerala Tourism in the Destination category in 2006.

“Despite bureaucratic and other organisational challenges, the small Sunderbans Jungle Camp manages to operate a sustainable tourism best practice model in one of the most remote impoverished regions of India — the Ganges river delta. Sunderbans Jungle Camp is providing a light at the end of the tunnel with its promotion of sustainable tourism as an alternative to a subsistence livelihood among local people which has contributed to environmental degradation and poverty. Their sustainable tourism approach is helping to provide a successful, alternative economic and social benefit model to local people”— this is how the Help Tourism initiative has been introduced in the council website.

Asit Biswas, the managing partner of Help Tourism, said it was about five years ago that then forest minister Jogesh Barman had invited the company to replicate its community-based tourism models of north Bengal in the Sunderbans, more than 600 km from here.

“With the help of the forest department, the Bali Nature and Wildlife Conservation Society was formed. The members are mostly from the local community, many of whom were poachers and women who eked out a living by netting shrimps. We invested in the resorts, which are managed and looked after entirely by the local people. The profits from the venture are used for local development, including children’s education and healthcare,” he added.

The winners will receive the awards on May 11 in Lisbon, Portugal.