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cultural aspect. The second would be the nature, from very easy trekking or hiking to three-day or month-long trekking, depending on your aptitude. The third aspect would be meetings. We have excellent accommodations, five-star or even higher than five-star hotels where you can conduct meetings from as small as three, four or five people to large numbers. We host regional meetings, international meetings and summits. We have the capacity and services available. And for Thai people, I think it is ideal because you take about a three-hour flight, have a meeting for a couple of days and come back. It’s an effective usage of time.How do you maintain traditional values and culture in the face of global capitalism?One of our development philoso- phies, gross national happiness, isresonant with His Majesty the King of Thailand’s sufficiency economy philosophy. GNH is basically sustainable development, one aspect of which is a promotion and preserva- tion of culture. I think it’s very, very important and very fortunate for Bhutan that we have always inherited a legacy of sovereign independence, so our culture is living. We’re fortu- nate for this natural tendency from the people to preserve and promote our culture. And the government supports and takes initiative to further promote the preservation of culture and tradition, whether it’s tangible or intangible, and that should make economic sense. For tourism, like in Thailand, we are also encouraging communities to be part of nature-based tourism.Materialism is something we don’t reject, but it must be moderated. Globalism is something that we don’tfight but choose the good elements of. What is useful for Bhutan may be slightly different for other countries so we need to be in charge of our own destiny in that fashion.Why is it important for the government to measure happiness? We believe the end objective of any development endeavour any- where should be happiness. In Bhutan, we are very clear that we don’t mix the means and the end objectives. This was a development policy first initiated by His Majesty the King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, the present king’s father, who said that GNH is more important than gross national product. The thrust of the policy is that development has to be holistic while not ignoring the economic factors. There is a preservation of culture, protection of environment, good governance and, of course, economic24 Elite+