Asean tourism campaign will boost Murdoch empire
February 1, 2010 by Imtiaz Mugbil and Don Ross
Filed under News
Report by Imtiaz Muqbil, executive editor, Travel Impact Newswire and Don Ross, TTR Weekly editor.
US aid funds will be spent on a project that claims to be enhancing the region’s competitiveness in tourism, but also appears set to give the meta-search portal Wego.com, financially backed by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, clear dominance in the Asean online travel market.
The site http://www.southeastasia.org is being developed as a critical component of the Asean Competitiveness Enhancement Project, under which US$4 million is to be channelled over 2008-2013 through the US Agency for International Development (USAID). The project is being managed by a US consultancy firm Nathan Associates Inc with RJ Gurley as project director.