19 October 2009

ITB Asia Sideline Event

SINGAPORE - The financial and economic crisis of the past year has had a significant impact on the Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) in the overall economies of the Asia Pacific region.

This has led to a major outpouring of assistance to ensure their survival.

However, a survey of developments over the past year concludes that SMEs specifically in the travel and tourism sector of the national economies are neither getting their fair share of the assistance, nor are they mounting a strong case to get the assistance they deserve.

This is both the result of weak leadership and poor institutional frameworks, both of which will need to be rectified in an era when crises are becoming the norm rather than the exception.

Commissioned by ITB Asia, Travel Impact Newswire executive editor, Imtiaz Muqbil kept a close watch on developments all through the past year and has compiled a list of initiatives, projects and schemes undertaken by public, private and multilateral sector institutions and organisations to help the SMEs in this time of need.

This study, patterned along the lines of the Ã¢â¬ÅâœRoadmap to RecoveryÃ¢â¬~ report developed by the UN World Tourism Organisation, includes a listing of 50 such items across all sectors of national economies, not just travel & tourism.

To be released at the ITB Asia 2009, the report shows unequivocally that very few of the assistance measures were availed of by the travel & tourism SMEs.

It cites the example of the structural changes to be made in the Pacific Asia Travel Association as a clear example of how the survival of the SMEs is becoming critical to the survival of other, bigger travel & tourism institutions.

A follow-up to an earlier report on SMEs in the Asia Pacific travel and tourism industry compiled in 2008 and released at the ITB Asia 2008, its central conclusion is that travel and tourism SMEs are running out of time and will face even more pressing survival issues with every new crisis.

As such, they urgently need to find ways to work more closely amongst themselves, identify their specific requirements for assistance, press their case more strongly, create more networking opportunities and underscore their importance to both national economies and ecological sustainability.

To hear results of the survey visit ITB Asia, Room 104, 23 October, 1400 to 1500. Speaker: Imitaz Muqbil.