Free webinar from PATA: Prepare, Prevent, Pre-empt

BANGKOK - The Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) is offering a free webinar to members and non-members to join PATA’s webinar on crisis preparedness and prevention.

This year marks the 10th anniversary since the deadly December 26, 2004 tsunami that devastated many coastlines across Asia. With a third of the global population, rising prosperity and a rapidly emerging middle-class, the PATA region is widely seen as a huge opportunity for the Travel and Tourism industry.

However, the otherwise bright outlook is being regularly overshadowed by an increasing number of natural and man-made crises, which have a massive ripple-effect impact on jobs, especially amongst the low-income earners. This means that the travel & tourism industry has to start giving equal importance to both creating jobs AND saving them. Just like in the world of health & wellness, the industry needs to adapt itself to “Prepare, Prevent and Pre-empt” the next looming crisis.

Mr Imtiaz Muqbil, Executive Editor, Travel Impact Newswire, one of Asia’s longest serving travel trade journalists and winner of the 1995 PATA Journalism award for his coverage of the 2004 tsunami, has seen the industry go through some titanic ups and downs since the 1980s. In this webinar, the first of its kind to be organised by PATA, he will lead a discussion on what he calls “neither optimistic nor pessimistic, but realistic” early warnings about some of the looming crises and the over-arching need to prepare for them.

The webinar is designed to set in motion a process to mainstream a “prevention-rather-than-cure” mindset into Travel & Tourism thinking. It is appropriate that such an initiative should be launched in Asia, specifically at PATA Headquarters in Bangkok, Thailand, which was one of the countries worst hit by the December 2004 tsunami.

Please join PATA on Wednesday, December 17, 2014 at 1000-1100 hrs (GMT+7, Bangkok Time) for a webinar on “Prepare, Prevent, Pre-empt”.

The webinar will also include a panel discussion, featuring Mr Alexander Kesper, ASEAN – EU Emergency Management Programme, Team Leader & Knowledge Management Officer, The ASEAN Secretariat, Indonesia; and Mr Bert van Walbeek, Managing Director of The Winning Edge.

sourced:traveldailynews.asia