The East Asia Summit on tourism, trade and
travel was held in Bangkok, Thailand on May 30, as part of the World Economic
Forum on East Asia .
The
event took place at a time that ASEAN is said to have a lot of potential to
develop tourism and travel.
The participants
to the summit, themed “Open borders: Revitalising Asia’s Growth through Travel,
Trade and Tourism” agreed that tourism makes a huge contribution to job
generation and stimulates economic growth.
Statistics
show that the tourist sector contributes 4.6 percent of ASEAN’s GDP and it also
directly generates 9.3 million jobs in ASEAN, accounting for 3.2 percent of the
total.
According
to the 2012 ASEAN Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report, which was released
at the summit, out of 139 economies in the world, Singapore was placed 10 th ,
Malaysia , 35 th , Thailand , 41 st , Brunei , 67 th , Indonesia , 74 th and
Vietnam , 80 th .
In most
ASEAN countries, inadequate infrastructure, poor public health and weak
environmental stewardship, together with outdated visa procedures have hindered
tourism development, said the report.
One of
the main objectives of ASEAN’s Strategic Plan for Tourism during 2011-2015 is
to grant a common visa for non-ASEAN arrivals within five years, to create a
Schengen type ASEAN visa.
In
February 2012, Thailand and Cambodia started to grant a single visa for
non-ASEAN tourists and this model is expected to be extended to Laos and
Vietnam by the end of this year.
The
region is pursuing several initiatives focused on intra-ASEAN visas and the
adoption of e-visas.
Cambodia
has already implemented an e-visa system while Myanmar started to use the
procedure in March this year.
VNA
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