ASEAN tourism promotion: No money, few resources
An ASEAN Tourism Strategic Plan (ATSP) to be submitted for approval at a meeting of ASEAN tourism ministers in Cambodia next week has further exposed the region’s tourism marketing and promotional challenges – 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 cites the funding shortage as a serious impediment to its implementation over the 2011-2015 five-year period.
TTR Daily reports that the plan draws attention to the fact that 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.â€
TTR Report goes on to say that the lack of funds and resources for promoting ASEAN tourism has allowed “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 2010â€.
“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,†say TTR editors.
Ian Jarrett
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