End of temple run

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End of temple run

DON ROSS (Bangkok Post)

A Bangkok hotelier dreamed up the idea of jogging around rural temples back in 2002, probably because he was an avid marathon runner who thought Thailand needed a distinctive event that would set it apart from the standard city events around Asia.

The drive to complete 42 kilometres in less than four hours is just as popular as ever, but last week the curtains fell on the 2007 Thailand Temple Run when ING Life pulled the plug on its sponsorship, just days before the deadline to renew the contract.

When the run was conceived the organisers wanted to blend an international standard marathon with the scenery of rural Thailand and its temples.

There were distracters, who thought a competitive event should not weave its way from one village temple to the next. They argued that serious marathon runners don't bother to look at the scenery.

Certainly the novice runners do. It takes your mind off the business at hand - jogging on 42 kilometres of concrete roads through a city usually still fast asleep in pre-dawn stupor. A rural marathon start is sometimes blessed by the sound of farm animals stirring, or the shrill clarion call to start your day of pain, courtesy of the village cockerel. Definitely an improvement on the starter's gun or the sound of the city's garbage trucks crunching yesterday's consumer goods in their gargantuan steel jaws.

Somewhere during the road pounding, you lose interest in sightseeing. Your focus shifts to your feet and the couple of metres of pavement in front. What temples, what bridge, who really cares any more? Your marathon could be anywhere in the world by the time you have staggered through the halfway point.

Yet despite the propensity to focus on your feet, the annual Thailand Temple Run attracted serious runners who could look further than the white line on the tarmac and appreciated the paddy field backdrop.

In its early years, runners were entertained by a village band as they ran past the local temple. Some of the water stops were in temple compounds where villagers entertained the weary with a ramwong dance.

In subsequent years the temple run developed serious overtures as it attracted international runners. They wanted water stations without the dancers and the diversions through temple compounds were replaced with a streamlined route that skirted the temple boundaries. With that came the need for sponsorship and that path eventually led to the door of ING Life in 2005.

In an announcement released earlier this month, race director, Raimund Wellenhofer said:

"ING Life, the event's title sponsor for two years decided to discontinue its sponsorship and organisers have been unable to find sufficient sponsorship to meet the budget."

The sixth annual temple run was scheduled for March 18, 2007. It would have probably attracted around 3,000 runners including 700 international participants from over 40 countries.

"We are very disappointed about this. We had set ourselves a deadline of October 31 to find sufficient sponsorship and we were unable to secure a sponsor," said Mr Wellenhofer.

Despite the setback, Mr Wellenhofer continues to hope that a sponsor will emerge to get the temple run back on track in 2008.

It illustrates the difficulty organisers face to secure sponsorships and it will probably not get any easier now that beer and whisky producers can no longer take this promotional avenue.

Mr Wellenhofer, who heads Go Adventure Asia, will now focus on the Phuket International Marathon, which was successfully inaugurated in 2006 and will take place again June 17, 2007.

While a Thailand event takes a dive, neighbouring Laos is launching into the biathalon business combining a cycle race and half marathon July 28, 2007. It will coincide with the Lao Eco-tourism Forum a three-day national event now in its third year. The organisers say they will lift the event's profile to a regional level next year.

Under the theme of "Bridging the Mekong Region", the sports event will start at Udon Thani, with a 58-km road bike race to the Friendship Bridge at Nong Khai. At the bridge around 2,000 runners will join the cyclists for the 21-km run to Vientiane,

Participants have options allowing them to join the biathalon or just take part in cycling or running component.

The event will underscore the country's strategy to concentrate on "sustainable and community based tourism". Deciding that eco-tourism was the direction to take, the government's Lao National Tourism Administration intends to turn the event into a regional showcase for eco-tourism products in the six Mekong region countries - Thailand, Lao PDR, Vietnam, Cambodia, China PRC and Myanmar.

If you have ever organised a tour for friends then you have probably spent time cutting and pasting information from web sites, adding photographs and then emailing the composition to the tour participants for their feedback or approval.

A new online travel tool appropriately called Grabber helps speed up the process by consolidating the information from various Internet sources and placing it in one profile page on a community web site for other tour group members to view.

Released earlier this month at the World Travel Market and presented on the global travel news network eturbonews.com, the new tool allows travellers to plan their trips using two important inputs: professional travel information (guidebooks, travel agencies, and web sites) and recommendations from friends, family and colleagues. Grabber automatically stores the results on a single site hosted by gusto.com.

It essentially gives travellers yet another tool that allows them to adopt the role of a travel consultant or planner a task that has so far stayed within traditional travel agency space.

Gusto.com CEO and founder, Jeff Wasson told online publication, eturbonews: "The missing part in the use of the Internet for travel is the ability to capture relevant Internet-based travel content in a single source that is viewable to others. The days of cutting and pasting web links in emails to share the building of an itinerary with fellow travellers are now over."

Mr Wasson added: "We responded to research conclusions. There's a need for new efficiencies and the ability to capture and share all content at all stages, from trip planning to after trip reviews and photos. With the Grabber we deliver a needed tool."

Of course, the gusto.com community website is where you store the information. This helps to attract more users to the site. So in another sense, the tool lives up to its name by grabbing more members to the community network as the travel planners invite friends to view the results of their travel research.

Higher membership and traffic creates revenue channels for the site's owners.

You can check out the tool at http://www.gusto.com.

Don Ross can be reached via his email address at: info@ttreport.com.