That comment at the Travel Agents Federation of India (TAFI) annual convention here last week set the scene for a boisterous discussion amongst TAFI members on preparing for life after the “unending torture” of the IATA Agency Accreditation Programme.

Moderating one of the panel sessions, Kapil Kaul, CEO, subcontinent and Middle East, Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation, highlighted the myriad of changes occurring across a range of geopolitical, economic and industry sectors.

Citing the convention theme, “Addressing Change – Rebrand, Reposition, Reinvent,” Mr. Kaul told the agents: “Accepting change is no longer important. Now, accepting the challenge of change is what’s more important. We saw the change coming but addressing the challenge of that change was another matter.”

Mr. Kaul identified how the world and travel industry had changed over the last 10 years, in quite unexpected ways. After the Cold War, the United States became the undisputed global superpower. Now, he said, who would have thought that it would be facing the kind of problems it is.

The same applied to the European Union. “Ten years ago, Europe was a big dream. Now, that is no longer the case, to the extent where six to seven European countries are almost bankrupt.”

At the same time, everyone knew that China would be the superpower from a trade, geopolitical and strategic perspective. “The world knew that there would be a change in terms of geopolitical dynamics but nobody accepted the challenge of it.”

He said the same applied to airlines. Ten years ago, the game was all about Lufthansa, British Airways and the larger U.S. carriers. Now, he said, Emirates, Etihad, Qatar Airways are changing the policy of aviation globally.

Legacy carriers also ignored how Low Cost Carriers would dominate the skies. In India, with its 100 million annual passengers, Jet Airways was once the dominant player but today it is the low-cost carrier, Indigo.

Mr. Kaul cited the downstream impact on the travel agents in India. He told them that the real issue is not about reinventing their business model but ensuring that it will be sustainable business model.

Kapil Kaul

Asserting that the IATA Agency Accreditation Programme no longer possess an equitable opportunity to its stakeholders, he said that it was even more important for IATA to reinvent itself, and not just the agency programme.

“When airlines talk of zero commission, they cannot talk about an agency programme which disorients the entire model of equitable remuneration.”

Like in numerous past TAFI conventions, relations between the Indian travel agents and airlines and suppliers dominated all the discussions. While aviation trends and changes in airline business practises such as zero-commission are threatening the agents’ business models, opportunities are emerging in new technologies and new destinations, both of which are queuing up to have the agents either as clients or marketing partners.

Indian agents are still a force to be reckoned with. Because internet penetration is low, India is still not largely a do-it-yourself travel economy. About 85% of airline bookings still come via travel agents. Although that is down from what 95% a few years ago, the volume of business being transacted through the IATA Billings & Settlement Plan has grown from US$6.4 billion in 2010 to an estimated US$6.6 billion this year.

This makes India the second largest BSP in the world, after China.

There are certain benefits that come with being an IATA agent, primarily the ability to access seats on 235 member IATA airlines and pay all of them through a single settlement window in the local currency. Agents also have to post only one bank guarantee as against the multiple guarantees they will have to post in case of dealing with several airlines.

However, TAFI President Ajay Prakash said that the past year has been a very, very trying one for TAFI, with a lot of energy, time and money being expended on the issue of airlines’ cutting agents’ commissions. “It’s not over yet, but the point is life has to go on. You cannot be hankering over that which you do not have.”

However, the agents feel they are being short shrifted; their role in contributing to the growth of the airline industry ignored.

Said TAFI Committee member Sampath Kumar, “Long gone are the days when Agents valued “IATA Accreditation” which had some meaning, respect and value.

“Today being an IATA Accredited Agent has just become a symbol of torture unending. The Agent has no time to devote in what he or she does best — marketing, bring value to the distribution chain and serving the end customer/passenger…which is the very reason for our existence.”

A report, entitled “Hidden Faces of the Gulf Miracle”, was released by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) last week. Documenting stories of the “migrant worker misery which lies behind the gleaming towers of Gulf cities,” it calls on both the governments of the Gulf states as well as the companies now queuing up for the lucrative World Cup-related contracts to fulfil their responsibilities.

“Conditions for migrant workers in the Middle East are unacceptable,” ITUC general secretary, Sharan Burrow, is quoted as saying. “The World Cup is a time when the eyes of the world will be on Qatar and the other nations in this region. We will do everything to see that FIFA lives up to its responsibilities, that multinationals providing goods for the World Cup and their supply chains are actually respectful of workers’ rights.”

Says the report, “Dubai oozes glamour and bristles with superlatives: the world’s tallest building, most luxurious hotels and biggest shopping malls and vast artificial islands. In Doha, an ongoing building boom is poised to move up several gears as work kicks off on a massive infrastructure programme in preparation for the 2022 World Cup.

“What the tourists, sports fans and business travellers jetting in to the Gulf states may not see are the millions of migrant workers whose toil continues to build the new towers, shopping centres, hotels, stadiums and museums sprouting across these Arabian boomtowns.

“The army of men from India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Somalia and a slew of other developing countries has been lured to the oil-rich nations of the Gulf on a promise of fat wages. Far from the air-conditioned malls and beachfront condos, they inhabit overcrowded barrack-like housing, in sprawling, dust-clogged, male-only suburbs like Dubai’s notorious Sonapur or the Industrial Area on the outskirts of Doha.

“Bussed home exhausted after long hours working in often blistering heat, the men are squeezed into up to ten to a room in company accommodation. Food is basic, sanitation often rudimentary and air-conditioning when it exists is sometimes ineffectual when summer temperatures soar over 40 Celsius. Many work at dangerous jobs with little or no health insurance.”

Based on interviews with many of the migrant workers, the report says they are willing to put up with the heat and harsh conditions for the chance to support their families with wages way beyond what they can earn at home.

However, it adds, “All too often, salaries are paid months overdue. Conned by unscrupulous recruitment agents, workers arrive in the Gulf to discover they are paid considerably less than they were promised back in their homelands, leaving the traumatised migrants struggling to pay off the debts they ran up to fund their passage to the Gulf let alone provide for their struggling families.”

It adds, “The migrants have few chances of escaping from abusive employers. A system known as Kafala binds foreign workers to the local companies that sponsored their travel to the Gulf nations. The workers need their employers’ authorisation to switch jobs, and companies frequently hold migrants’ passports to ensure they don’t leave the country before the end of their contacts.”

It notes that trade unions are effectively banned under the laws of the UAE and Qatar, so migrant workers have little chance to organise protest against their conditions.

The report says remedial steps are being taken, but much more needs to be done.

“Faced with international criticism, the governments in both Qatar and the UAE have taken steps to improve conditions for migrant labour. Both have introduced legislation to grant workers more flexibility to change jobs, although they reject talk of scrapping the Kafala sponsorship system altogether.

“Tighter rules have been brought in to control unscrupulous recruitment agencies, safety standards have been improved and workers have been granted extended statutory breaks from the blazing afternoon sun through three months of summer.

“The UAE’s Wages Protection System phased in since 2009 obliges companies to pay workers through electronic bank payments which can be monitored by the authorities. The move has been widely praised, but it has not stopped late payment of wages being the biggest complaint in the migrant hostels. The building of better housing for some has not prevented hundreds of thousands living in squalid conditions.”

The Qatari authorities say there will be improvements to migrant housing. A new Labourers’ City has been announced to house 53,000 workers at a cost of three billion Qatari Riyals ($US800 million). The project is designed to have cinemas, sports fields, mosques and landscaped gardens.

“The Emir’s influential wife Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser is said to be taking a personal interest in proposals to build new-style housing complexes with a social department in each compound and on-site counsellors to provide psychological support and skills training, so they are better equipped for the job market when they return to their homeland,” the report says.

It can be downloaded free here: http://www.ituc-csi.org/IMG/pdf/VS_QatarEN_final.pdf

Published by Wellness Tourism Worldwide, a newly formed alliance of wellness and tourism related businesses, organizations and institutions, the research also forecasts that private health insurance will play a more important role in providing policies that cover wellness travel.

Entitled “The 4WR: Wellness for Whom, Where and What? Wellness Travel 2020,” the report was prepared by Xellum Ltd. (Hungary) with the support from Global Spa and Wellness (USA) and the cooperation of Hungarian National Tourism Plc.

It was an attempt to better segment the various emerging products and services globally and break them down into areas of specialisation by geographical region. It also seeks to identify the biggest opportunities in wellness tourism over the next 10 years by drawing up input from 140 experts representing stakeholders from wellness, tourism, spa and healthcare industries in over 50 countries.

The bottom-line objective is to help developers, managers and policy makers build on or develop individual competitive advantages and avoid costly common mistakes.

It says that although wellness tourism is, and expected to remain, one of the fastest growing forms of international and domestic tourism, there is one major risk: the globalization of standardized and uniform products and services. Today, the report says that the most popular wellness tourism services are: beauty treatments (89% of the respondents named it as popular or very popular); sport & fitness services (89%), leisure and recreational spas (85%), and spa & wellness resorts (83%, respectively). Yoga and meditation (60%) are also very well established and popular.

However, the report found that each individual region also had key products and services that were considered important assets for tourism. For example:

• In Africa, the natural environment and traditional spirituality received relatively high importance.

• In Southeast Asia, spirituality achieved the highest importance and the highest absolute rating among all the regions, while medical treatments and services as well as alternative treatments were also important. In the Far East, spirituality and complementary and alternative methods were rated as important assets.

• In Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific, the natural environment and traditional and alternative treatments are important assets, whereas medical services/treatments have the lowest ratings.

• In Europe, nature and the environment are important in every region, particularly in southern Europe. natural healing assets are significant in western and central eastern Europe. Both non-invasive medical treatments (e.g. rehabilitation) and surgical services are important in every sub-region (except southern Europe).

• In the Middle-East, natural healing as well as traditional services, seem to be important, as are medical services.

• In North America both invasive and non-invasive medical services are considered to be the most important assets. Alternative treatments and the natural environment also enjoyed high ratings, and spiritual treatments appeared to be more important than in Europe.

• In Central and South America, the natural environment, the traditional and complementary treatments were important, and medical assets got low ratings in both regions (those results highlight the significant differences in terms of the availability of medical services for tourism purposes and for local needs).

Says the report, “The currently most important assets are very different from region to region, which could serve as sound foundation for international wellness tourism, if they were utilized in a competitive fashion since international wellness travellers typically look for special qualities and local experiences.”

Comparing current data with future trends, the supply of wellness tourism services will change significantly in the coming 10 years. According to the report, traditional, lifestyle defining approaches (e.g. yoga) will become widely accepted in wellness tourism services in North America and Northern Europe.

Wellness hotels and resort spas are already are and forecasted to remain the most popular wellness tourism product in several important continents and regions by 2020 including Africa, South America, Central America, Australia and New Zealand.

Spirituality remains dominant in Asia. In central and eastern Europe, therapeutic services and treatments are mainly based on the availability of natural assets (e.g. thermal waters) and will stay/or become the most important.

Products that will be available globally and will lose their differentiating qualities by 2020 include beauty treatments, massage of any kind, sauna of any kind, day-spas, and some spiritual practices (e.g. yoga or meditation).

It says there is a clear interest in the market to see new services and products that can differ from standardized services. The wellness tourism industry needs to better inform the market about the available assets and products, since many new products are not known and concepts are not yet generally accepted.

A free copy of the full report can be downloaded via www.travel-impact-newswire.com

The numbers are growing in line with significant improvements being made in infrastructure as well as the quality of supporting travel and transportation arrangements. Roads, airports and railway services are being upgraded.

Dozens of hotels have emerged to cater to Asian travel markets and this can be seen even in the names of the hotels. One of them in Bodhgaya is appropriately named Thai International.

The circuit incorporates various holy sites in Bodhgaya, Sarnath, Rajgir,

Varanasi, Nalanda, Lumbini, Kushinagar and Sravasti, all associated with places where the Buddha was born, preached, attained enlightenment and died.

Following the footsteps of the Lord Buddha, the sites in the tour are attracting several hundred people a day. Most of them appear to be Sri Lankans who also come in the low-season summer months to take advantage of the lower hotel deals and air-fares.

In the winter, from October to March, the regular traffic starts, including Thais and visitors from industrialised countries, both regular visitors and new convert Buddhist devotees. Late last month, my group alone included people from Mexico, Mauritius, Italy, Hong Kong, the UK, Canada and India.

Separately, two other large all-Thai groups were also travelling on the Mahaparinirvan Express, a special rail-journey organised by the Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation, a division within the massive Indian railway system that caters to foreign visitors.

The train involves leasing the rolling stock from the railway enterprise. The price of roughly US$150 to US$160 per person per night is affordable to a middle-class market, and prevents the circuit from becoming too elitist.

Leading one of the groups was Nisco Travel managing director, Narierut Pantong, which specialises in Buddhist tours. She says that everything is getting better by the year; the roads, quality of hotels, food and the tour arrangements.

“When I started these tours several years ago, the toilets on the train were always in a mess, and the hotel food was terrible. Now the Indian Railways people have evaluated the feedback and taken positive steps,” she says.

Nalanda, site of what is claimed to be the world’s oldest university, has been cleaned up extensively, with security guards posted to stop graffiti scrawling, one of the biggest problems facing the sites.

The Thais are coming in droves, to the extent where the young urchins in one village near a holy spot can even now count in Thai. The entire area is dotted with numerous Thai temples and monasteries, which are well-maintained, thanks to the huge funds coming in via donations as well as purchases of souvenirs, amulets and Buddha images.

At one stop just before crossing the Indian border over to Nepal, a temple-cum-monastery also functions as a rest and refreshment stop. It is manned entirely by Thai monks.

In Sravasti, Uttar Pradesh state, where the Lord Buddha spent 25 monsoon seasons, a huge Buddha image and an 110-metre high stupa now under construction comes under the aegis of the World Peacefulness Foundation, whose chairman and patron is Maha Upasika Sitthipol Bankot.

The entire area of several thousand square metres began with the planting of 9,999 banyan trees, creating a natural forest and a fresh-water reservoir. A huge meditation centre houses six large halls of approximately 3,000 capacities each.

The area boasts several more such temples and monasteries of various Buddhist denominations from Sri Lanka, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Tibet. Some are supported by governments but many are self-funded via donations and private sector contributions.

But there is a considerable way to go. Some hardship is a necessary part of being on a pilgrimage. The Buddha sought to keep the focus on human suffering and there is plenty of that in India, both in the villages as well as all along the roads and pathways.

The signage and waste disposal facilities are still poor. Civic sense remains a challenge. Garbage is strewn in many places, with plastic bottles even floating in the ponds within some of the sites. Beggars and vendors are waiting outside the holy spots, ready to swarm over the pilgrims.

Carrying capacity will soon become an issue. The temple area at Bodhgaya, the site of Buddha’s enlightenment, can barely cope with the numbers and will soon come under more pressure as the hundreds of daily visitors soon become thousands.

Indeed, Bodhgaya is expected to see much improvement following a change of government in Bihar state, one of the country’s most impoverished thanks to the corrupt former administration.

Navigating this itinerary requires being under the care of a good tour management system so that the devotees can remain focused on their primary purpose for being there.

The Mahaparinirvan express itself is now undergoing ISO certification. Other states are also looking at starting up similar rail journeys. With us for part of the tour was the head of Punjab Tourism, which sees considerable potential for a rail trip through the Sikh holy spots, starting with Amritsar, home of the famous Golden Temple.

Speaking at a session on business and trade associations during the ITB Asia trade show here last week, the Indian Academy of Aesthetic & Cosmetic Dentistry secretary, Ajay Kakar, said his appeal for transparency on major internal operations issues such as finances had initially met with stiff resistance from the directors but is now “winning rave reviews.”

It is also attracting the attention of India’s 22 other medical associations who are seeing the advantages of moving away from a culture of minimum disclosure, cronyism and personal gain.

The 50-year-old Mumbai resident spoke on the topic of “Communicating the Value” of industry associations to their memberships. The issues he raised will sound all too familiar in other travel industry groupings facing similar challenges.

The UN World Tourism Organisation has enhanced transparency by posting the entire documentation of the recent General Assembly on the website. UNWTO secretary- general, Taleb Rifai made it a cornerstone of his election platform two years ago, and to a significant extent, he has delivered.

The Pacific Asia Travel Association nearly came undone over this issue and former CEO Greg Duffell worked to fix it. However, its new Strategic Focus document, based on the theme “Building the Business,” does not once mention the words, “transparency”, “accountability” or “trust”, indicating that the new CEO, Martin Craigs, will have his work cut out for him when he takes office next month.

Dr Kakar made it clear that transparency in managing the internal operations of an association was as important as delivering services to members.

He said that communicating value is not just delivering a standard message; it is about identifying what one perceives to be valuable.

“It is tailoring a specific, targeted message to a targeted audience member” in a personalised and customised manner, with real information on specific deliverables.

In a subsequent interview, he emphasised that he was speaking only about Indian medical associations, most of whom “are just totally non-transparent.” This was quite obvious during his 14-year membership of the IACD. “We were not getting membership retention or attracting new members. We were losing their trust.”

In 2007, after being elected as IACD secretary, he launched the push for more transparency, telling the directors that if the 10 of them could have access to the finances, “why shouldn’t the remaining 900?”

Insisting that the key issue was about earning membership trust, he said it took him four board meetings to overcome the opposition and convince the directors that this was good for them, the members and the association at large.

“It meant complete transparency. I took a lot of flak from the existing members. But now everybody wants it. Transparency was a big winner.”

Dr Kakar said in 2007, he submitted and won a bid to hold the 2009 International Academy of Periodontology convention in Agra, the first time it had convened in India.

“I knew that part of the reason why the convention had not been held in India earlier was a suspicion amongst the IAP selection committee members about what would happen to the money from registration fees, and so on.”

In terms of pure tourism product, he said, India was unmatched. “We have the best hotels in the world so that’s not an issue. If Indians want to bring more international association business to the country, they will have to convert the way they do business.

“I think it’s a good model even for government to work. If the politicians and government officials improve their transparency, it will solve the corruption problem in India.”

He said politicians are notorious for going off on “study trips”, usually with family in tow.

The approach is the same as treating a medical condition, Dr Kakar said. “When the medication is dispensed, the results will be seen later down. It’s not like presenting a gift at a wedding which creates happiness immediately.”

He said the key to retaining association membership was to be consistent, develop a relationship, keep things simple and make all communications personal.

For example, he said, some members said they were fed up with signing annual membership renewal cheques. “So we started longer-term memberships. That made things simpler, and members were happy to renew.”

On many sensitive issues, he said that letters announcing the changes were signed by the board and not by him personally to indicate that this was not a personal decision, but had the directors’ approval.

All these changes are spreading, he said, resorting to another medical term. “It could well become a pandemic.” The association will stay the course. His term will expire this year after which he will become president-elect.

Fulfilling one of the key pledges made by the Secretary-General Dr Taleb Rifai upon his election to the post two years ago, the UNWTO posted its entire set of meeting documents on line for full public view.

The public now has unrestricted access to full, unedited information on the world’s apex tourism body, including its detailed finances, membership status, projects, activities, staffing and much more.

Taleb Rifai

The documents show in clear detail the entire structure of the UNWTO, who sits on its various bodies and committees, its financial situation, and what is being done to make it more efficient and focused.

One of the most critical documents on the list is “A reform process for a more relevant UNWTO”, a detailed 32-page document that sets out how the organisation is reinventing itself to meet membership needs in the context of a rapidly changing global and industry scenario.

This warts-and-all white paper is a readymade blueprint for other international travel industry organisations facing a similar exercise. Making this publicly available alone will save them millions of dollars in consultancy fees as they go down a similar path.

Attended mostly by tourism ministers from around the world, the UN WTO general assembly is largely a housekeeping exercise, intended to approve finances and budgets, elect officers to and hear reports from the various boards and committees, comment on future plans, etc.

The secretary-general also reports on the progress made on implementing the plans approved at the last general assembly in Kazakhstan in 2009. From a legal and administrative standpoint, all this can be quite a cumbersome exercise, just like in any publicly-funded institution.

But making the documents public allows whoever is interested to better understand the process, get involved in it and get access to free reports, such as the UNWTO’s long-term forecast, Tourism Towards 2030. All the election processes and rules are also clearly demarcated and transparent.

One key document is a report on the UNWTO’s financial situation. This is usually a well-scrutinised document, especially as many government members are demanding value for money, more transparency and more return on investment as part of what has become an ongoing review of their membership in international associations and organisations.

Another key document reporting on payment of dues shows that 23 countries still owe the UNWTO 7.85 million Euro. Various plans have been formulated to get them to pay up within a fixed but phased out period of time.

Paradoxically, one cost-cutting exercise involves cutting back on staff travel.

Says the report: “Efforts are being made to reduce the number and the cost of trips by Secretariat staff to the strict minimum, and to abide by the established rules regarding travel in business class for trips of 9 hours or more.

“The Secretary-General, on his part, will no longer use first class travel and his special travel allowance has been reduced by 50%.

“However, in order to effectively implement this policy, it is also necessary for Member States to reduce their requirements regarding official visits by UNWTO staff to their countries, keeping such requests for when it is absolutely necessary.

“Increased use of video conferencing is being increasingly used to communicate with other UN agencies and this practice will also be encouraged in the communications with governments.”

Perhaps the most critical document is a White Paper on the reform of the UNWTO. This sets out a clear agenda of the issues to be tackled and a roadmap for implementation.

Says the paper, “There is a consensus that the UNWTO requires some fundamental changes in the way it operates, including the thematic areas in which it works, its structure, its management and also in the way it interacts with the member states, external entities and non-governmental stakeholders in the tourism sector.

Furthermore, there is a “generalised opinion that member states should recover the sense of ownership in the organisation, by means of greater participation in the definition of priority areas and fulfilling a more active role in all its organs and technical committees.”

The White Paper essentially says that because the UNWTO cannot do everything by itself, it can do a lot more by forging stronger partnerships with other organisations, especially within the UN system.

Making a clear reference to the need for “additional, innovative funding sources,” the White Paper also recognises that most of the activities must be targeted at the least developed countries in order to help them maximise the economic returns and job creation potential of tourism.

Another key document is for modernising the UNWTO website to make it an important tool for delivering membership services, keeping the public abreast with its various activities, interacting with users, providing promotional opportunities for the various national tourism organisations, discussion forums and sharing statistical data.

This year all the working documents were sent in electronic format and the delegations were left to print out whatever they wanted. There was no paper distribution by the secretariat itself.

TIME is the equivalent of the Thailand Travel Mart. Now in its 17th year, the event is organised by the Indonesian Tourism Promotion Board (ITPB), a private-sector body, and supported by the Ministry of Culture & Tourism, Provincial Government of Lampung and the national associations for hotels, tour operators and conventions.

The Jakarta-based company Titan Convex is the event organiser.

This is the first time that Lampung is hosting TIME as part of the ITPB’s to showcase different upcountry destinations.

The Chairwoman and Steering Committee of TIME 2011, Meity Robot, said, “The shifting of TIME to Lampung will be for both 2011 and next year. This year’s TIME will focus on supporting the national tourism campaign, “Wonderful Indonesia” and raise the country’s image as one of global travel destinations.”

She said the exposure will also help speed up the development and improvement of infrastructure, tourism facilities and tourism attractions in the region.

The province of Lampung lies west of Jakarta, across the Sunda strait, about 40 minutes flight away. It is the gateway for visiting Krakatau, and home to two of Indonesia’s largest natural reserves. TIME 2011 will coincide with the holding of Festival Krakatau, an annual culture fest that ends with a tour of the active volcano itself.

Last year’s TIME was held in Lombok, and attracted a total of 118 Buyers from 22 countries, with top five countries being Korea, China, India, Singapore, and Indonesia. TIME 2010 also attracted a total of 104 Sellers from 80 companies from various provinces of Indonesia, dominated by West Nusa Tenggara, Jakarta, Bali, North Sumatera, and Central Java.

According to Ms Robot, “The number of buyers attending TIME for seven consecutive years have been relatively steady.” She said that was a good sign, especially because the global financial and economic conditions have affected other smaller trade shows worldwide.

The Indonesian government early this year announced an optimistic target of attracting 7.7 million foreign tourists in 2011, up about 10% from 7,000,571 arrivals in 2010. The country attracted 4.3 million foreign tourists during the January to July period, up 7.53% from 4.04 million in the same period a year earlier.

The number of foreign tourist arrivals in July 2011 was 745,500, up 10.54% over 674,400 in June, and up 13.21% over 658,500 in July 2010.

Ngurah Rai airport in Bali remained the main entry gate for foreign tourists, with a total of 279,200 in July 2011, up 10.75% over 252,100 in July 2010. Arrivals at Ngurah Rai between January to July 2011, reached 1.57 million.

The second highest number of arrivals was recorded at Soekarno-Hatta airport, to 1.11 million. This puts Indonesia in the unique position of a country whose primary beach resort gets more visitors than even the capital.

It is primarily to decongest Bali and better distribute visitor arrivals around the equally beautiful areas across Indonesia that TIME is being rotated around various destinations nationwide.

Average star-rated hotel occupancy rate in 20 Indonesian provinces in July 2011 reached 58.37%, up 4.11% from that in July 2010, and up 2.36% over June 2011.

The Indonesian government is also working to make its traditional cloth Batik equally as popular as Thai silk.

A World Batik Summit 2011 has just ended in the Jakarta Convention Centre (JCC) and brought together more than 1,000 buyers, producers, sellers, media and fashion designers.

Another provincial destination, Pangkalpinag, Babel, has hosted an international marine tourism seminar to attract divers, yachts and other seafaring enthusiasts.

The city of Manado in North Sulawesi province is also getting international exposure. It hosted the ASEAN economic ministers meeting this year and is due to hold the 2012 ASEAN Tourism Forum under the theme, “ASEAN Tourism for Global Community of Nations”.

The report by Frontier Economics, entitled “Connecting for Growth”, claims that Britain “risks being cut off from global growth” and becoming “a less competitive place to do business”. It cites Manila, Jakarta, Ho Chi Minh City, Guangzhou, Shenyang and Pune as examples of cities from where it is either underserved or not served at all as compared to Paris and Frankfurt.

The report says that a lack of direct flights to emerging markets may already be costing the UK £1.2bn a year as trade goes to better-connected competitors. This figure could rise to £1.6bn by 2021 – equivalent to one-third of the UK’s current balance of trade deficit. The net present value of this missed opportunity to the UK economy over the next 10 years totals £14bn at a conservative estimate.

heathrow airport

The report establishes a direct relationship between frequent direct air connections and improved volumes of trade and investment. It finds that UK businesses trade 20 times as much with emerging market countries that have a direct daily flight to the UK as they do with those countries that do not.

However, the report warns that only a major transfer hub is able to serve such destinations, and because the UK’s hub airport at Heathrow is full, Britain is missing out on opportunities for trade and falling behind European competitors.

The report finds that Paris and Frankfurt already boast 1,000 more annual flights to the three largest cities in China than Heathrow. It also finds that there are 21 emerging market destinations with daily flights from other European hubs that are not served from Heathrow, including Manila, Guangzhou, and Jakarta.

The report says that due capacity constraints, long haul routes have squeezed out short haul ones at Heathrow: Heathrow currently serves just 46 short haul routes, compared to over 70 served by Frankfurt and Paris. Furthermore, airlines at Heathrow are losing transfer passengers to carriers based at other hub airports. The UK economy would be boosted if these passengers could be served via the UK instead.

It conservatively predicts that Heathrow could increase its share of European transfer passengers from 16% to 21% if it was able to fulfil its potential. 45 destinations could be viably added to the route network at Heathrow, including 15 routes to Emerging Markets.

“There are many Emerging Market destinations that airlines at Heathrow cannot serve because of insufficient airport capacity. There are 25 Emerging Market destinations with daily flights from other European hubs, and 13 more with at least a weekly connection that are not well served, or not served at all from Heathrow,” the report says.

Colin Matthews, British Airports Authority Chief Executive, was quoted as saying in a media release: “The Government has asked the question: is a hub airport important to the UK? This research answers that question with an emphatic ‘yes’.

“The centre of gravity in the world economy is shifting and Britain should be forging new links with emerging markets. Instead we are edging towards a future as an island cut-off from some of the world’s most important markets.

“The opportunity for the UK to establish itself as the leader in Europe in its connections to India, China and other important markets still exists. But if Britain is not to lose out to international competitors, we need an aviation policy from Government that recognises the role of a hub airport in supporting growth – and we need it quickly.”

Stephen Phillips, Chief Executive, China-Britain Business Council, was quoted as saying: “The growth in trade with emerging markets is of the utmost importance for the UK. China is our largest trading partner outside of the EU and USA, and exports of UK goods to China increased 41% in 2010. For companies to win and conduct effective business in China it is often essential for them to visit the country regularly.

“The China-Britain Business Council has identified a wide array of exciting business opportunities in fast-growing regional cities across the length and breadth of China, not just in Beijing and Shanghai where there are currently direct flights.

“At CBBC we feel it is essential that UK companies take advantage of this potential. If British firms don’t, others will. More flights to China, and opening up direct flights from the UK to China’s regional cities, would assist British companies in seizing the huge opportunities available.”

Neil Chesters, one of the authors of the Frontier Economics report, was quoted as saying: “This report shows not only the importance of protecting and promoting a hub airport, but also  that by doing so it will directly support the Government’s ambitions to nurture an export-led recovery and put the UK back on the path to sustained economic growth.”

The Israeli occupation of Palestine has forced millions of people all over the world, especially Christian pilgrims seeking to visit Bethlehem and Muslims seeking to pray at the Al-Aqsa mosque, the third holiest shrine in Islam, to seek a visa from a country they may not want to visit in order to visit a country they most certainly want to visit.

By any standards of international relations, this should be unacceptable. Due to the wave of global support emerging for an independent Palestine, the people of all the countries backing the Palestinian bid are now well placed to demand that their governments take all necessary diplomatic steps to remove this bizarre requirement.

Tourism will go a long way towards helping the economic survival of a future Palestine. As Israeli-occupied Palestine has no natural resources or manufacturing or industrial base, tourism will mean an almost instantaneous source of valuable foreign exchange revenues that would far exceed the aid handouts on which the Palestinian economy is almost totally dependent.

Indeed, tourism is featured prominently in the future economic priorities listed in a report entitled “Building the State of Palestine: A Success Story” released by the Palestinian National Authority before the bid for the statehood.

In an introduction to the report, Palestinian Prime Minister Salim Fayyad says, “Our effort has been to make statehood inevitable. Our state will be built by building it. We are now ready.” He adds, “The only barrier to full independence remains Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territory.”

Thousands of people are already visiting the occupied territories for pilgrimage, activism or just to support the Palestinian people by pumping some money into their economy. But visitor flows are only a minute fraction of what they could be if the Israeli visa requirement is removed and visitors are no longer obstructed by the multiple checks at the dozens of Israeli military checkpoints.

The report notes that in 2010, approximately 577,000 guests stayed at hotels throughout the Palestinian territory, staying on average slightly more than 2 days. This was up respectively 28% and 23% over 2009. Moreover, 37% of tourists arrived from EU member states, 16% from other European countries, and 13% from the USA and Canada.

In Q1 of 2011, there were some 132,000 hotel guests. 36% came from EU member states, 14% from other European countries and 15% from the USA and Canada. Hotel occupancy increased by 6% in comparison to Q1 of 2010, but dropped by 22% in comparison to Q4 of 2010.

Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem

The report notes that as of March 2011, a total of 97 hotels were in operation in Palestine. These held 5,159 rooms with a capacity of 10,818 beds. By comparison, in 2010, there were 95 hotels, with 4,898 rooms and 10,520 beds.

Ready to tap the future potential, the report notes that preliminary designs for an international airport in the Al Buqei’a area of East Jerusalem have been finalised, including a passenger terminal, a cargo terminal, two airstrips, an aircraft parking area, boarding facilities, a helicopter landing pad, etc.

Work is underway to finalise an environmental impact assessment (EIA) and an integrated pollution prevention and control (IPPC) study for this vital gateway. However, the report notes, going ahead with construction requires “permission” from Israel, and that has not forthcoming.

Nevertheless, the report says, the Government is continuing with its marketing and development plans.

“The Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities (MoTA) has sponsored and organised many festivals and events in collaboration with civil society organisations, specialised associations and bodies. The MoTA also took part in international tourism fairs in France, Italy, Scotland, Ukraine, Brazil, Britain, Canada, Spain, and Germany.

“A number of training courses have been offered to tourist guides in the West Bank, inspection visits have been conducted of travel offices and hotels, and multilingual information materials have been produced to introduce major Palestinian tourist sites.”

The report adds, “To preserve Palestinian national identity and cultural heritage in the face of the Israeli occupation, the Government is protecting and maintaining cultural heritage sites.

“The Palestinian Cultural Heritage Database is now operational and MoTA staff is in the process of listing, examining, photographing and entering data about national archaeological artefacts, including those discovered during organised, rescue-oriented excavations and those that had been seized.”

In cooperation with UNESCO, the MoTA is drafting a national strategy for museums and working with various donors to rehabilitate and renovate several museums, including the Ar Rawiya and Al Balad Museums in Bethlehem, archaeology museums in Ramallah and Tulkarem, and the Dura Museum.”

Says Prime Minister Fayyad in the report, “Our ultimate objective, a free and independent Palestinian state in the territories occupied in 1967, with East Jerusalem as its capital, has not yet been realized. But we have created an environment, recognized by the international community, in which we, Palestinians, are now prepared for such statehood.”

Entitled “A Call to Courage: Reclaiming Our Liberties 10 Years After 9/11”, the report makes clear that numerous US laws and constitutional rights have been violated in the name of fighting terrorism and hurt the country’s erstwhile image as a much-admired beacon of global freedom.

Very specifically, the report calls on US “political leaders to end profiling of Muslim, South Asian, and Arab American citizens and immigrants, and to speak out against efforts to demonise them.”

As this columnist has often been told of such racial profiling experiences at US airports by Thai-Sikh and Thai-Hindu individuals (who would fall into the “South Asian” category), the ACLU report provides opportunities for them to take legal action as one way to challenge and seek some accountability for the scourge.

The report makes clear that US anti- and counter-terrorism policy has failed to walk the talk.

It says, “Ten years ago, we could not have imagined our country would engage in systematic policies of torture and targeted killing, extraordinary rendition and warrantless wiretaps, military commissions and indefinite detention, political surveillance and religious discrimination.

“Not only were these policies completely at odds with our values, but by engaging in them, we strained relations with our allies, handed a propaganda tool to our enemies, undermined the trust of communities whose cooperation is essential in the fight against terrorism, and diverted scarce law enforcement resources.”

“Some of these policies have been stopped. Torture and extraordinary rendition are no longer officially condoned. But most other policies — indefinite detention, targeted killing, trial by military commissions, warrantless surveillance, and racial profiling — remain core elements of our national security strategy today.”

Says the report, “To the familiar ‘driving while black’ profiling phenomenon, we added the analogous ‘flying while Muslim,’ as Muslims or those who appeared to be Muslim were targeted by border agents for questioning about their religious beliefs and political views when returning home from abroad.”

Although these strategies originated under the former Bush administration, the report says, “To an alarming extent, the Obama administration has continued to embrace profiling as official government policy.”

It notes, “Because the 9/11 attack was committed by Arab Muslims, profiling Muslims for special

investigation may have seemed seductively rational. But the Bush administration’s extensive domestic detention and interrogation programs targeting Muslim, Arab, and South Asian men showed once again just how wrong — and ineffective — profiling is.”

It adds, “Profiling in the national security context carries the same risk that it does in other contexts: law enforcement will miss threats from those who do not fit within the profile. Richard Reid, the “shoe bomber” is a British citizen of Jamaican descent; Bryant Neal Vinas, an al-Qaeda recruit who admitted conspiring to kill American soldiers, is Hispanic American; Colleen LaRose, who is charged with conspiring to kill a cartoonist, is a green-eyed blonde from Philadelphia; Umar Farouk Abdulmuttallab is an African from Nigeria. Terrorist groups can easily infer law enforcement profiling criteria and seek out recruits who do not fit racial, national- origin, or religious profiles.

“Terrorism is not a “Muslim” phenomenon,” the report stresses. “Extremist violence can come from a variety of sources: in February 2010, Andrew Joseph Stack III of Texas flew a plane into an IRS building in Austin leaving behind an anti-government rant against taxes; anti-abortion activists have killed a number of abortion providers over the years; and in 2005, the FBI declared eco-terrorists the country’s biggest domestic terrorist threat.

“It would be ludicrous for law enforcement to target all who oppose taxes or abortions or who support environmentalism because of the bad acts of a few. The recent and tragic killing of 77 people in Norway by a man described as an anti-Muslim right-wing fundamentalist Christian also serves as a strong caution for law enforcement in America.”

The report notes that U.S. government officials say one thing but practice something else.

“(Former) Attorney General (John) Ashcroft failed to learn from the profiling failures and abuses on his watch. Instead, even as he issued guidelines in 2003 that acknowledged “America’s moral obligation to prohibit racial profiling,” that “profiling is discrimination,” and that “stereotyping certain races as having a greater propensity to commit crimes is absolutely prohibited,” he specifically permitted racial, religious, and ethnic profiling in national security investigations.”

It noted that in 1988, for example, President Reagan apologised on behalf of the nation to Japanese Americans singled out for internment during World War II. In February 2001, President Bush forcefully told Congress that profiling is “wrong and we will end it in America,” the ACLU report says.

It adds, “American policymakers need to acknowledge the reality that counter-terrorism profiling of Muslims and its sister evil, the “radicalisation” theory, directly undermine America’s greatest strengths. Unfairly, targeting American Muslims will serve only to alienate them from their government and law enforcement. It also sends the message that our government views prejudice against Muslims as acceptable.”

A couple of lawsuits by Thai law firms representing those who have reason to believe they have been racially profiled should help set things right.