Lack of funds continues to stifle asean tourism drive

An Asean Tourism Strategic Plan (ATSP) to be submitted for approval at a meeting of the Asean tourism ministers in Cambodia later this month has reinforced the widely known root cause of the region's tourism marketing and promotional problems - a critical shortage of funds.An Asean Tourism Strategic Plan (ATSP) to be submitted for approval at a meeting of the Asean tourism ministers in Cambodia later this month has reinforced the widely known root cause of the region's tourism marketing and promotional problems - a critical shortage of funds.

Developed by the College of Innovation, Thammasat University, in consultation with the Asean national tourism organisations, Asean tourism private sector groups and other external consultants, the plan repeatedly cites the funding shortage as a serious impediment to its implementation over the 2011-2015 five-year period.

It suggests three sets of strategic directions, each of which has a series of actions and activities:

- Development of experiential and innovative regional products and creative marketing and investment strategies

- Increasing the quality of human resources, services and facilities in the region

- Enhancing and accelerating travel facilitation and Asean connectivity.

It recommends ways to realign and restructure in the way that "the Asean tourism cooperation functions in order to achieve economies of scale and to make best use of scarce resources."

However, the plan says, "one of the limiting factors in achieving the full potential of the regional cooperation structure has been the lack of resources. While Member States allocate large amounts of money to develop and promote their products and support that effort with sophisticated bureaucracies, the Asean NTOs are vastly under-resourced. The Asean Secretariat is highly efficient and devoted but simply has too few resources to support present activities let alone the directions being put forward in this plan."

The plan adds: "Tourism is too important an activity not to receive sufficient funding to help achieve the region's goals and objectives. The present allocation by each member state must be substantially increased in order for the plan to be implemented. It is not realistic to expect that the directions identified above can be accomplished with the present very low rates of funding.

"Developing this model will require that the Asean NTOs put into place the legal and regulatory framework and the institutional infrastructure that will allow Asean to effectively fund its regional tourism initiatives."It adds: "The action plans (to implement the strategic directions) have been developed on the basis that there will have to be increased funding from the NTOs in order to implement the entire plan. The present level of funding will simply not be sufficient to accomplish what are seen as priority actions."

One of the key areas is marketing. Here, too, the plan says: "The present level of funding is simply insufficient to support the activities of the NTOs as well as a professional marketing campaign."A recommendation for an accompanying PR and Promotion campaign also points in the same direction: "Given the reality of limited funding, this will be a significant challenge."While the plan makes a number of references to the need for outside funding, it notes that the Asean Tourism Task Force Meetings in October 2010, Pattaya, had agreed to proceed in 2011 with a study that would identify and assess a range of "alternative funding models" based on consultation with relevant stakeholders.

The study will consider the "the realities of the Asean NTOs" and look at the agendas and programs of potential funders/sponsors such as international aid agencies, NGOs, private sector groups (especially ASEANTA).A detailed analysis of the plan itself shows a complete absence of new or creative ideas. On the contrary, it makes the usual recommendations for more involvement by outside consultants (such as calling for an Asean Tourism Marketing Strategy study).

At the same time, the numerous references to the funding shortage are an indirect admission of the mistakes that Asean and its tourism sector have made since 1992 when the grouping marked the 25th anniversary of its founding with a high-profile Visit Asean Year.

Rather than maintaining the momentum, building the brand and more firmly establishing tourism at the forefront of efforts to build both integration and identity, Asean shut down the well-funded Kuala Lumpur-based Asean Tourism Information Centre and put tourism under the charge of the broader Asean secretariat in Jakarta, where it became just another cog in a big wheel.

The Asean tourism brand never recovered from that fatal decision. The Asean tourism image plummeted to the extent where it opened a clear window of opportunity for USAID-funded consultants to get their foot in the door by suggesting in a 2009 report that "nobody knows what Asean is" and that the Asean tourism brand be rebranded as "Southeast Asia" - a bizarre idea that actually was approved by the Asean tourism ministers in 2010.

The latest ATSP is effectively calling for the Asean tourism sector to go back to the future and learn from past successes - of course without admitting the monumental mistakes that contributed to the failures since then.

Source = bangkokpost