Mekong tourism

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Private Sector Key to Mekong Tourism Development

Monday, April 03, 2006

 

Strong growth in tourism in the Greater Mekong Sub-region will be

boosted by a raft of policies and projects endorsed by six

Mekong-region governments.

 

The governments of Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and

the Yunnan and Guangxi provinces of China, addressed the Mekong Tourism

Investment Summit in Luang Prabang, March 28-30. They reported that

their proposed 29 tourism policy, investment and infrastructure

initiatives would make investment easier. The initiatives would also

channel growth towards socially responsible projects in an area where

60 million people still earn less than US$1 a day.

 

The Asian Development Bank is expected to fund some of the projects.

"The ADB's over-arching objective is to achieve sustainable tourism

development and channel the benefits more widely to reduce poverty,

empower women and minimize adverse impacts," said Alfredo Perdiguero,

ADB's project economist for tourism in the Mekong region.

 

As part of the broad easing of travel restrictions, Thailand and

Cambodia are preparing a joint tourism visa that Thai officials said

would be ready by August.

 

Bangkok Airways' CEO, Dr Prasert Prasarttong-Osoth called for the

timeline for a common Mekong sub-region visa to be reduced from 10

years to five. "We would also like to see an open-skies policy for the

Mekong sub-region finalized within a year or two. Then trade and

investment would come easier," he said.

 

The chief of Bangkok Airways, Thailand's largest private-sector

airline, requested hotel companies to put more rooms into heritage

destinations such as Danang and Hue in Vietnam and Lao PDR's Luang

Prabang, which also needed a new airport, he said.

 

To coordinate Mekong sub-region tourism development, the six

governments are financing the Mekong Tourism Office which opened in

Bangkok in February to drive the sub-region's tourism agenda. The

Greater Mekong Sub-region Tourism Sector Strategy 2006-2015 has

identified US$61.8 worth of investment requirements, much of it in 13

cross-border zones or corridors in the sub-region.

 

Delegates also called for the streamlining and increased transparency

of investment policies into one-stop centres, or for procedures to be

migrated fully online. Thailand's tourism investment and incentive

procedures were identified as a possible model for the other five

destinations to emulate.

 

Recommendations from the Summit will be discussed by Mekong sub-region

tourism ministers at the PATA Annual Conference in Pattaya, Thailand on

April 24.

 

International visitor arrivals to the Mekong sub-region have grown at

an average of 7.2% per year since 1995.