Ministers play with shades of meaning
January 26, 2010 by Imtiaz Muqbil
Filed under News
A website, funded entirely by US taxpayers, gained the support of 10 Asean tourism ministers at the Asean Tourism Forum in Brunei, yesterday, but tourism ministers stopped short of endorsing the new Southeast Asia – Feel the Warmth campaign and website, choosing instead to “support” it.
The official press release now says “Supported by” on homepage. The ministers however recommended some changes to be made to the website’s look and details, including pictures used to represent the different Asean member countries on the landing page.
At a press conference, the ministers dodged questions about whether they would now create a website that would give equal weight to a campaign promoting Asean, the actual name of the association, especially as many of them have bought into the ACE Project’s claim that “Asean” reflects a political entity rather than an invitation to visit the region.
They also ducked a question seeking assurance that their national tourism organisations would provide fair and equal treatment in terms of marketing support to all operators of travel websites in Asean, including those which will be direct competition with the new website’s operational partner wego.com.
Asked about the historic legacy and brand impact created the spectacular Visit Asean campaign in 1992, not a single tourism official showed any interest. Only a few of them were around in those days, and to them it’s just a distant memory. Asked about the fact that Asean heads of state had signed an agreement in 2002 pledging to promote the Asean brand and Asean as a single destination, one senior tourism minister said, “Our leaders sign these agreements all the time. It does not mean we always have to follow them.”
Myanmar tourism officials have said that they intend to keep a close eye on the project to ensure that they get their due coverage and are not sidelined, especially as the project has been designed and funded by the US Agency for International Development.
US agencies are forbidden by law from directly working with entities in Myanmar. The fact that USAID is funding a project that by definition must give equal space to Myanmar is likely catch the attention of pressure groups in Europe and the US.
In January 2009, ACE and Aseanta signed an agreement to work together on a new branding and marketing campaign that would encourage travellers to visit multiple Southeast Asian destinations, stay longer, and spend more money in the region.
Lonely Planet is supplying information on more than 8,000 attractions and things to do in Southeast Asia. Singapore-based travel search engine, Wego, created the integrated map, trip planner, and meta-search engine. Another Singapore firm, Qais, developed the site and will build traveller awareness of SoutheastAsia.org through an e-marketing campaign, which also starts with the 25 January launch.
The initial phase of the SoutheastAsia.org launch is centred on a contest to populate SoutheastAsia.org with user-generated text, images, videos, and articles. The user-generated content will supplement content from Lonely Planet, Asean’s NTOs, travel writers and other contributors. Contestants submitting content can win prizes. The website and broader online marketing campaign will be fully launched at ITB Berlin in March.
In a statement that caught a number of Asean government tourism officials off-guard, the official press release said, “Aseanta has agreed to establish an Asean Tourism Marketing Centre, initially within the ACE project in Bangkok. The centre’s ACE-funded staff will coordinate with Wego and Qais to build awareness of SoutheastAsia.org and handle consumer queries.”
A fact that emerged during a press conference is that ACE project director RJ Gurley actually ”works for US-based Nathan Associates” along with other ACE project executives based in Bangkok. Up until now the role of Nathan Associates was not clear, other than statements that suggested it had a management role in the development of www.southeastasia.org.
RJ Gurley is identied on the company’s corporate site as “chief of Party.” under a section called projects and cases. A senior executive of Nathan Associates, based in the US, is the project director.
Tourism Brunei director general, Sheikh Jamaluddin said he had no idea what this was about, and that no briefing on this had been provided in the earlier presentations.
He said he would be asking the Aseanta executives about this centre, especially to establish what is to be its brief, terms of reference and scope of responsibility.
ACE has financed the development of Southeast Asia: feel the warmth, SoutheastAsia.org, the e-marketing campaign and the staffing of the Asean Tourism Marketing Centre. While SoutheastAsia.org has been created with a flight and accommodation search interface (meta-search engine), bookings and payments will take place on the website of the travel supplier.
Aseanta’s only source of revenue from its official website is derived from a commission paid on bookings secured through Wego.Com.
Like ASEAN itself, it’s a good idea that won’t get anywhere. Like your esteemed editor when he tried to cycle from one ASEAN nation to another. More meaningless claptrap, unfortunately.
The ongoing confusion over this flubbed launch shows up its very deep fault lines. Nobody in Asean actually asked for the US taxpayer to cough up to fund some quite rich states and their tourism promos, and I am sure the folks in Moline would be way annoyed to hear their trailer park taxes are being used to fund this folly. In this recession there is no way even one of the Asean members will encourage folks to visit other countries, but such is the naive response to the half-baked proposals. The website looks like a cheap imitation of the PATA excuse, lacking direction, clear facts and a genuine call to action.
When you know the players, you know why it is such a towering joke.