Kieran Fitzgerald, tourism and marketing adviser at Jiuzhai Valley National Park in China, describes his day
I HAD BEEN working at Merrill Lynch but didn’t enjoy it, so I signed up to a Fás overseas graduate programme instead. As a result of that I arrived here [at Jiuzhai Valley National Park, in China] at the end of November 2007.
The national park is 720sq km, so about the size of Co Louth, I reckon. It is a Unesco World Heritage Site, China’s number-one national park and a place Chinese people aspire to visit at least once in their lifetime.
It is spectacularly beautiful. What is particularly unique about it is the colour of the water of its lakes and rivers – so blue that visitors often accuse us of dying it. Actually, it’s got something to do with a high calcium content and a particular kind of algae, but, whatever the reason, it’s an amazing sight.
It is also home to the giant panda, as well as about 300 bird species and 200 other types of animal. We get all sorts here: golden monkeys, smaller red pandas, which look a bit like racoons, and deer the size of cows.
I have no typical day, but if I’m in the office I’ll cross the river from my apartment to the office in a matter of minutes. Much of my day is spent contacting journalists around the world and organising press trips. We’ve just had a 16-page spread in National Geographic.
I’m often away at trade shows and exhibitions, but if I’m in the office I spend a lot of time writing reports for the local government on the sustainable development of tourism.
For lunch I can go to the staff canteen, but they’re very big into MSG over here, so I prefer to cook myself. A local man delivers hunks of yak or a plucked chicken to my office, and I bring it home to cook for lunch.
At the moment we are working to get visitor numbers back up to where they were before the earthquake last year. Up to that point, 2.7 million visitors came annually. That figure now looks like being down to 600,000, a dramatic fall-off.
The most popular time to visit is October, when all the leaves start to change colour. It is out of this world.
Apart from revamping the website, right now much of my time is spent developing an eco-tourist resort in one of the previously unopened valleys of the park, and encouraging people to hike and camp for a while.
Unfortunately, 90 per cent of Chinese visitors arrive by bus, get out at the lake to have their picture taken and then get back on the bus and drive off. It’s crazy.
** Kieran Fitzgerald is tourism and marketing adviser at Jiuzhai Valley National Park, in China (www.jiuzhai.com/language/ english/index.html)
** In conversation with Sandra O’Connell