La Silla Vacía
Partnering with an independent media outlet to design experiential tours in Colombia.
Visiting these ancient Indigenous pictograms in San José del Guaviare is part of one of our tourism experiences with La Silla Vacía (photo: Chris Bell).
WhereNext’s sustainable tourism consultancy partnered with La Silla Vacía, a groundbreaking Colombian news website, to design and market a series of experiential travel experiences to off-the-beaten-track regions of Colombia.
The Client
La Silla Vacía (“The Empty Chair”) was founded in 2009 by Colombian journalist Juanita León García.
La Silla Vacía has provided a view into the inner workings of Colombia ever since and has become a must-read for anyone involved in the political, social, and economic future of Colombia. In furthering its mission to support remote communities and indigenous peoples, La Silla worked with our Chief Strategy Officer and former Vice-Minister of Tourism for Colombia, Julian Guerrero, and our Sustainable Tourism Consultant, Cristina Arbeláez, to design a series of travel experiences to market to their subscribers—known as SuperAmigos—and readers.
Designing and Marketing Sustainable Tourism Experiences
These tours aimed to offer an experience beyond the traditional tourism market in Colombia.
Our team designed a proposal for La Silla Vacía that included a series of sample itineraries, including musical, cultural, anthropological, astronomical, and post-conflict routes in distinct regions of the country.
For each itinerary, we also included options for expert tour guides. The idea behind this concept was to offer added value to travelers: each tour would not only be accompanied by local guides and agencies but would also be led by specialists in their field. Professionals would lead tours in anthropology, archaeology, post-conflict studies, music, and botany. This would allow each participant to enjoy a truly immersive and enriching experience beyond what is typically available in the tourism market.
This commitment to informative and educational travel experience aligned perfectly with the journalistic mission and reputation of La Silla Vacía. The tagline for the tours was “Telling Stories, Creating Connections.” This expression encapsulates not only the mission of the client but also our goal in creating these experience-based tours to lesser-known corners of Colombia.
WhereNext and La Silla Vacía: “Telling Stories, Creating Connections.”
The Tours
We started out with the launch of three tours with La Silla Vacía. The first, to the Guejar River in Meta department, sold out soon after its announcement and took place in February 2022. The second tour to the Colombian Amazon is awaiting dates for its official launch, while the stargazing adventure in the Tatacoa Desert is scheduled to depart in November 2022.
Rafting and Reconciliation on the Guejar River
The first of our tours for La Silla Vacía was a three-day rafting and post-conflict tourism experience in Meta department, in the foothills of the Eastern Andes, where they meet the Orinoquia plains and Amazon rainforest. The crystalline waters of the Guejar River run through a stunning, jungle-clad canyon, and the river is undoubtedly one of the best spots in Colombia to go white-water rafting.
Since the starting point for rafting the Guejar River in the small town of Mesetas, which was until recently off-limits due to the Colombian conflict, we combined the rafting experience with a post-conflict tourism experience operated by former FARC guerrillas. Participants hiked a jungle trail previously used by armed groups and met with former guerrillas now working as local tourism operators.
Our guide was the founder, Juanita León herself. Beyond founding La Silla Vacía, her accounts of the Colombian conflict and FARC peace negotiations were published in her book País de Plomo (“Country of Bullets”). Few would be more well suited to educate travelers about the transformation of this formerly conflict-ridden and prohibited territory.
“The trip to the Guejar Canyon was a unique opportunity to understand how peace in Colombia is having a transformative impact on destinations previously affected by violence. The rafting experience guided by former guerrilla members was memorable both because of the five-hour river adventure in a unique natural setting and the stories about how, through tourism, communities have found a means for reconciliation.”
For the first WhereNext-Silla Vacía tour, our CSO Julian Guerrero joined as our representative in the field.
Discover the Ancestral Amazon in Guaviare
Our second tour launched by La Silla Vacía is an adventure in Colombia’s lesser-known Amazon region of Guaviare. This five-day immersive experience includes visits to a series of important archaeological sites where pictograms dating back thousands of years have been discovered in recent decades. Our itinerary also includes ecotourism experiences, including a visit to an oxbow lake to observe Pink River Dolphins and tours of ancient rock formations that form part of the Guiana Shield.
The stunning red rivers of San José del Guaviare get their color from Macarenia Clavigera, an endemic Colombian algae (photo: Chris Bell).
The tour leader is an archaeologist conducting excavations in the Serrania de La Lindosa rock formation. He brings privileged and deep access to the natural and human history of the area.
Travel Through Time in the Tatacoa Desert
The final tour launched as part of this partnership is a three-day expedition to the Tatacoa Desert in the department of Huila. This trip focuses on astronomy and paleontology since the desert is a world-important area for both fields. The itinerary includes stargazing sessions with astronomers and guided paleontological tours through the desert. Travelers even have the opportunity to participate in an archaeological dig.
For this trip, our leaders are Andrés Vanegas, Founder and Director of the Tatacoa Natural History Museum, and Jesús Mario Vargas, the Founder and Director of the Interstellar Orion Astronomy Camp in the desert.
‘Travel Through Time in the Tatacoa Desert’ - a WhereNext-La Silla Vacía Tour
The Results
The first of our tours to the Guejar River sold out soon after being launched on the Silla Vacía website. After the success of this trip, we scheduled the other two itineraries for 2022. The journey to the Tatacoa Desert is open for inscription, and the Amazon adventure will soon follow.
Learn more about WhereNext’s Sustainable Tourism Consulting practice HERE.
