Gopinath Parayil, the founder and chief executive of India’s leading responsible travel company, The Blue Yonder, has joined the speaker platform for November’s World Green Tourism Abu Dhabi conference and exhibition.

Award-winning Parayil, who set up his company in Bangalore in 2004 to create specialised tours to Northern Kerala’s neglected Bharatapuzha River region, will present his experience as a case study in how low impact environmental tours can deliver social and economic benefits to local communities.

“Parayil is something of a pioneer whose innovation has now been recognised with the 2007 Condé Nast Traveler World Savers Award and the prestigious Responsible Tourism Award,” explained Rick Theobald of Streamline Group Marketing which is organising the event.

“He will be able to demonstrate the proven case for socio-economics and how responsible tourism can aid heritage survival, which is important to the modernising communities of the Middle East.”

The Blue Yonder’s tours have created work for locals in the Bharatapuzha River region with residents now working as tour guides, folk musicians, ritualistic healers, artisans, interpreters and boatmen. The tours also raised much needed funds for the Nila Foundation which works to revive and regenerate the dying river.

The Blue Yonder has since gone on to launch responsible cultural and heritage tours to Karnataka, Sikkim, Spiti Valley, Sunderbans and Rajasthan.

Parayil joins, at World Green Tourism Abu Dhabi, another industry pioneer, the adventure-travel entrepreneur Bruce Poon Tip who founded the award-winning Gap Adventures, now the world’s largest adventure travel company. Tip is to deliver a key note address at the event, which will run at Abu Dhabi National Exhibition Centre (Adnec) from November 22 to 24.

“The pioneering spirit these two speakers represent will help stamp the event with a forward-thinking approach to Green Tourism which we want the event to evoke,” said Mubarak Al Muhairi, director general, Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority (ADTA), which is supporting the event under its Advantage Abu Dhabi programme.

World Green Tourism Abu Dhabi is the first global event in the Arabian Gulf dedicated to the investment and development of sustainable tourism.-TradeArabia News Service