After more than five years, Thailand will play again host to PATA Annual Conference in 2013, announced CEO Martin Craigs at a meeting with media.
BANGKOK- After over a year in office, PATA CEO Martin Craigs thought that it was time to make a review of what happened to the Pacific Asia Travel Association over the last 14 months. Advocacy, conquering back members and new initiatives have very much been into the agenda of the 61-year old association.
Advocacy is certainly the strong point of Martin Craigs who has been able to stress his points in many international conferences and also towards world leaders and politicians such as the Prime Minister of New Zealand, the former Minister of Tourism of Mexico, Burma’s most famous Lady Aung San Suu Kyi or UK Parliament members. All got the same message that tourism is of utmost importance in today’s economy and taxing it heavily is just self-destructive for countries. “It is not only the taxation itself. It is depriving countries to generate new jobs. And this is what politicians are elected for: providing the right framework to improve standards of living to the nation they serve,” tells Craigs.
Advocacy actions by PATA and its partners succeeded to raise awareness against the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. The ETS has been suspended last November. However, the crusade continues against the UK Air Passenger Duty. “We see more MPs and politicians voicing their support to us. But we need to continue to fight against this unfair taxation for a country which deliberately restricts the freedom of travel of its own citizens by imposing heavy taxation on them”, said Craigs.
Looking back at 2012 and forward to 2013, the CEO told the media that PATA would start using the phrase “Visitor Economy” in a bid to get politicians to take travel and tourism more seriously as an economic force. This underlines the education process that PATA is looking at launching in 2013. PATA Academy will then deliver masters on “Visitor Economy” to Asia’s middle management.
Martin Craigs unveiled also some of the key events for PATA in 2013. Among the events are the PATA City Hub Forums which will take place in 2013 in Sydney, New Delhi, Seoul, Cancun, Jakarta and Istanbul in the year to come. The Annual Conference will return to Thailand between April 26 and 30 in Bangkok. “We are delighted to be back to Thailand after five years”, declared PATA CEO. And finally, the PATA Travel Mart will take place in Chengdu in China PRC in September 2013. “We will continue to meet up with UNWTO and WTTC to coordinate the calendar of our events. Our industry is now fully aware of its necessity to work together and not against each other”, said Mr. Craigs.
Luc Citrinot a French national is a freelance journalist and consultant in tourism and air transport with over 20 years experience. Based in Paris and Bangkok, he works for various travel and air transport trade publications in Europe and Asia.
