STRONG BOOST FOR MEKONG TOURISM AT KUNMING MEETING

Senior tourism officials of the Greater Mekong Subregion addressed a broad range of important marketing and destination management-related issues at the Sixth Mekong Tourism Forum held in the southern Chinese city of Kunming between March 31–April 1.

The officials from Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and Yunnan Province of China approved the upgrading of the official GMS website Visit-Mekong.com to take bookings, and acknowledged a number of initiatives to train tourism resource managers and support village-based tourism.

Mr Paisan Wangsai, Director of the Agency for co-ordinating Mekong Tourism Activities (AMTA), said, “It is important to have a good balance of marketing, facilitation and management issues in addressing the future directions of GMS tourism growth.”

The Mekong Tourism Forum is organised by the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) in co-operation with the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) as well as the national tourism organisations of the six countries. It was first held in Pattaya, Thailand, in 1996.

A tourism working group (TWG) comprising of the six NTO representatives and donor/supporting institutions meets alongside to handle the numerous financial, administrative and policy aspects of the development programmes and projects.

One of the most significant parts of the sixth forum was an appraisal by the Manila-based ADB about its future plans to focus on tourism as a major force in alleviating poverty in the entire Asian region.

The bank has already funded about US$20 billion worth of regional infrastructure and transportation projects, and is now shifting its focus to more grassroot areas like ecotourism, community development and forging of stronger public-private sector partnerships to ensure local ownership of projects, and hence their long-term sustainability.

The conference heard a keynote speech from Thailand’s Deputy Prime Minister H.E. Mr Pongpol Adireksarn who referred to both the ancient and modern elements of the Mekong region.

“The mystical Mekong has a strong influence on everyone and everything within its reach,” he said. “This is probably a result of the ancient Buddhist heritage of the region supplemented by a belief and legend handed from generation to generation by the peoples that live along the mighty river’s banks.”

At the same time, the Deputy Prime Minister noted the forces of change and globalisation that are changing the face of the GMS region. The economic development is leading to multi-billion-dollar construction of roads, highways, bridges and airports, all of which will facilitate movement of peoples to and within the region.

In his comments, Mr Paisan paid tribute to the co-operative spirit among the GMS tourism officials which he said had been instrumental in helping the region achieve visitor arrivals of 14.1 million in 2000.

“However, major challenges lie ahead of us including how to attract quality and high yield tourists to the region, the improvement of tourism-related infrastructure and how to attract investors to invest in tourism and services in the GMS.”

The meeting offered delegates a chance to become acquainted with the latest tourism developments in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province. The northern flank of the GMS region has undergone a major transformation for the better since it hosted the highly-successful Kunming International Horticultural Expo in 1999.

Chinese tourism officials have expressed full commitment to making further improvements in the quality of their products and services to attract their fair share of the visitors.

The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) also supported the event by flying in a group of hosted travel agents and tour operators from Japan, the USA and France to meet with regional sellers at a small trade-mart organised along with the forum.

The next Mekong Tourism Forum is to be held in Myanmar in either April or May 2002.