To ensure sustainable tourism growth, ASEAN member countries shared tourism strategies that include developing emerging regional cities and carving out market niches, during the recent ASEAN Tourism Forum (ATF) held in Chiang Mai from January 24 to 26.
Last year, the region celebrated its 50th anniversary with a ‘Visit ASEAN@50’ campaign, which saw a record year of 126 million international arrivals against a target of 121 million.
Host country Thailand unveiled a new campaign for 2018, ‘Open to the New Shades’, which lines up potential tourism products ranging from gastronomy to nature and arts and craft. To drive international and domestic visitors to second-tier cities, the country also embarked on an ‘Amazing Thailand Go Local’ campaign and introduced tax breaks in 55 tourist provinces for expenditure on hotels and tours.
The Philippines has set a target of 7.5 million tourist arrivals this year, and lined up 10 major activities including ‘bring home a friend’ (a referral incentive programme encouraging Filipinos to invite foreign friends to visit), a dive fiesta, regional cross-selling missions as well as a media familiarisation trip. Tourism efforts will also be shifted toward lesser-known areas such as Iloilo city, Sagada, Banaue, the Ilocus region, Legazpi as well as Siargao.
While Malaysia has struggled to perform as well, the country is banking on a raft of new tourism developments to boost arrivals. To meet targets of 33.1 million tourists and RM134 billion (US$34.3 billion) receipts for 2018, it will focus on travel segments such as family as well as diving, cruise, health and education.
In Singapore, a new tourism campaign ‘Passion Made Possible’ was launched locally and in 14 global markets last August and soon, Germany and Australia. Targeted strategies to ramp up arrivals from individual source markets such as Malaysia, Australia and Hong Kong were also shared.
As Vietnam gears up to host the 38th ATF and the ASEAN Travel Expo (TRAVEX) next January, it will soon unveil a highway connecting Hanoi directly to Halong Bay, a new international airport, as well as four- and five-star accommodations and amusement parks in the northern province of Quang Ninh – an area highlighted under the Visit Vietnam 2018 campaign.
For ASEAN as a whole, while the key issue of instituting a single visa for the ‘ASEAN Plus Three’ region remained, ministers said at a press conference that there are just “a few more steps” and that they were “very positive about it”.