New strategic plan for Asean tourism under way
A new Asean strategic plan for tourism will be prepared that sponsors claim will help the region achieve an integrated community by 2015.
The plan will recommend policies and reforms in Asean’s tourism marketing, branding, product development, human resource development, quality standards, investment strategies, cruise development, crisis management and communications, infrastructure, and border, customs, and immigration policy.
The College of Innovation in Bangkok’s Thammasat University has been tasked with preparing the plan in full consultation with the industry.
The Asean Tourism Strategic Plan 2011-2015 has been commissioned and funded by the Asean Competitiveness Enhancement office, which is funded by US Aid with a political agenda to strengthen US economic and political interests in the 10-nation community.
ACE has set out the parameters for the university’s task, which will include a review of Asean declarations relating to tourism, consultation with public and private sector stakeholders, an assessment of projects initiated under the existing road map, the identification of priority activities, and the formulation of a vision and set of strategies that, are supposed to lead to regional integration of Asean tourism by 2015.
ACE suggested, earlier in the year, that the region should adopt “Southeast Asia” has its tourism brand, claiming Asean was an unknown identity to travellers worldwide.
The region’s tourism sector is required to identify and prepare new strategies and programmes for 2011-2015 for the establishment of the Asean Community in 2015. The plan will replace the Asean Roadmap for the Integration of the Tourism Sector which expires in 2010.
However, ACE activities and proposals appear to have no bearing on how the region’s travel industry functions and could be considered irrelevant to the day-to-day business of private sector travel companies.
The proliferation of academic studies keep consultants in business, but provide no practical support for ground-root tourism operators.
Travel entrepreneurs would challenge ACE to spend US aid on more worthwhile projects that focus on building quality, improving human resources and assisting communities to establish meaningful and sustainable tourism projects. But that would not require expensive studies and consultancy fees.
Instead, ACE uses US tax payers money to engage in a theoretical discussion of marketing concepts and strategy without any guarantees that the results will build a better environment for tourism in the 10-nation community.
ACE and Thammasat University are expected to present the “final” Asean Tourism Strategic Plan to Asean national tourism organisations one year from now.
The challenge will be to prove to private sector that the results justify the investment, or whether it the proposed road map offers any relevance or direction to private sector travel companies to drive business growth.
