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…
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.
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