ACD tourism forum calls for unity

BANGKOK - The severity of the SARS crisis was aggravated by a lack of regional coordination and a breakdown in the region's ability to demonstrate its readiness to deal with the virus, delegates at the Asian Co-operation Dialogue (ACD) Tourism Business Forum said Friday.

Public and private representatives from 11 countries met at the ACD's first tourism forum held in Phuket to discuss the SARS crisis and to study joint initiatives aimed at uniting the region's tourism sectors.

While regional terrorism was high on the agenda, SARS remained the forum's primary concern with delegates in agreement that measures taken by their governments to beat SARS had not been effectively publicised to the world.

In promoting the region delegates agreed that security and safely issues needed to be promoted, not only to ally fears about SARS but also to rebuild travellers' confidence that the region was not a focus for terrorist activities.

The number of foreign tourists to Thailand dropped 46 percent to 320,000 in April compared with last year, while arrivals so far this month showed a decline of 55 percent. Total arrivals from January 1 to April 30 showed a year-on-year decline of around 11 percent, to 2.3 million according to Tourism Authority to Thailand (TAT) figures.

Chairman of the ACD Tourism Business Forum, Vichit Na Ranong who is also chairman of the Tourism Council of Thailand, told TravelWeekly the ACD's first tourism forum had been very positive.

"This is the first business forum for tourism under the ACD. Everybody is very new so we are all still adjusting the direction together. Some people are still not very clear on how it will fit in with other existing tourism activities, but by the end of the meeting things were looking very comfortable and we look forward to the next Tourism Business Forum," said Vichit.

In a joint statement delegates of the forum agreed on four main areas that Asia needed to focus: intra-regional promotion initiatives, safety and security, the development of human resources, and the development of small and medium-sized tourism enterprises (SMEs). Cambodia will host the second ACD Tourism Business Forum next year. A date has yet to be set.

Participating in the Forum were Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Burma, Singapore, China, Japan, South Korea, India, Bangladesh, and Thailand. Altogether ACD had 18 members.