PATA has held bilateral meetings with regional NTOs to discuss hosting the PATA ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) Tourism Capacity Building Programme in each ASEAN country.
The objective is to bring together stakeholders from the government and private sectors to discuss, plan, implement and monitor tourism development in order to promote a cohesive mechanism for boosting ASEAN tourism growth.
PATA, as catalyst, will work with the ministries of tourism and tourism boards of interested ASEAN member countries to organise the programme, which will comprise a one-day conference/forum with content customised to meet the needs of individual countries, and optional workshops on ASEAN Crisis Communication and PATA Capacity Building.
PATA regional director-East Asia, Ivy Chee, said the conference/forum will be driven by PATA headquarters in close cooperation with the host country and industry stakeholders.
“The ultimate goal is to facilitate businesses to stay abreast of the opportunities available to promote better appreciation and understanding of ASEAN economic issues within the business community and private sector agencies.
“PATA is willing to assist ASEAN in conducting simulated drills through its crisis communication workshop to identify blind spots, thus improving the ASEAN Crisis Communication Manual, which PATA feels is theoretical as countries have never co-operated in a simulation or real-time scenario,” she noted.
While ASEAN industry members the Daily spoke to expressed optimism on tourism business outcomes with the advent of AEC, they also requested for more information and gave suggestions on ways to make it work.
Francisco LIM, general manager, Adkins Travel Agency, the Philippines, said: “Not many in the travel industry know what AEC is about. We need to be educated. We need more marketing and promotions for AEC.” – Additional reporting by Mimi Hudoyo, Paige Lee Pei Qi, Greg Lowe and Rosa Ocampo
Read more of this story in TTG-ATF 2015 Show Daily
