The partnership between tourism and science may represent “the greatest
untapped reserve for funding an exposure to science, the greatest untapped
resource for revolutionizing the business success and quality of the hotel
industry, and thirdly, it is also the greatest untapped means of
elevating conservation to a powerful economic force.”
Dr. Hana Ayala, President & CEO, PANGEA WORLD
quoted in the journal Science (28 April 2006, p. 542)
IQ RESORTS® is the “signature” endeavor of the PANGEA WORLD corporation. This globally-scaled endeavor seeks to bring world-class hospitality and frontier science into a strategic union that effects formidable benefits for both and which can uniquely secure and validate prime reservoirs of the world’s natural legacies. IQ RESORTS®’ legacy-oriented business model was formally introduced at international events hosted by the Willard InterContinental Washington in March 2007; by the United States National Academies of Sciences and Engineering at their West Coast Headquarters in April 2009; and by the United Nations International School in New York in September 2010.
The IQ RESORTS® aspiration is founded upon the principles and credentials of PANGEA WORLD’s TCR economic-development model (“Tourism for Conservation through Research”). This model’s core instrument of TCR Heritage Themes captures the dynamics and interrelationships among multiple pools of natural wonders in a manner that systematically augments the scientific, conservation, and economic importance of the interlinked heritage assets.
The TCR—inspired by the heritage bounty of Fiji and the Pacific island region and developed into a pilot national project in the Republic of Panama—has been endorsed by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), and other international agencies whose former executives are now among the PANGEA WORLD Fellows.
The IQ RESORTS® endeavor draws upon the TCR model’s premise that the international resort enterprise, often already geographically tied to precious eco-zones, is superbly positioned to become the principal business partner in science-mapped consolidation of natural resource-based knowledge, which holds immense potential to enlighten and inspire without depreciating in value for other sectors of national, regional, and global economies. But it also stresses that neither the resort industry’s business models nor their planning, design, and management philosophies and expansion strategies have capitalized on this privileged position.
While also intended to enrich carefully selected existing resorts of highest quality and environmental foresight, the IQ RESORTS® concept is tailored to new, PANGEA WORLD-guided projects at the crossroads of ecological and evolutionary paths that disregard national borders. These naturally unbounded locations are central to the transnational identity and reach of the IQ RESORTS® business and philanthropic incentives and rewards. They place the IQ RESORTS® endeavor in the very heart of PANGEA WORLD’s mission “to harness the wonder of Earth’s evolutionary and ecological fabric to rewrite the geography, diplomacy, and conservation potential of the knowledge economy and set new standards of sustainability at world scale.”
