Funding restricts Asean tourism marketing

Asean tourism organisations are preparing to submit a report to the Cambodian government later this month, highlighting marketing and fund concerns.Organised by Thammasat University and tourism consultants, the Asean Tourism Strategic Plan (ATSP) aims to raise political awareness of issues implementing marketing between 2011 and 2015 caused by fund shortage, Bangkok Post reported.

“One of the limiting factors in achieving the full potential of the regional cooperation structure has been the lack of resources,” the plan said.“While Member States allocate large amounts of money to develop and promote their products and support that effort with sophisticated bureaucracies, the Asean national tourism organisations are vastly under-resourced.”

The plan continued, mentioning the importance of sufficient funding to help produce and execute tourism marketing.Among the marketing strategies, Asean tourism groups pitched in the ATSP the need for experimental and innovative regional products, increase in the quality of human resources, services and facilities as well as improvement in travel and Asean connectivity.

"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," the plan said."The action plans have been developed on the basis that there will have to be increased funding... the present level of funding will simply not be sufficient to accomplish what are seen as priority actions."The plan also recalls past errors in Asean tourism, encouraging ministers to learn from previous mistakes a failures.

Source = etravelblackboardasia