ASEAN countries will join forces to build a common marketing strategy for the whole region in the 2011-2015 period, with an aim to attract more intra-bloc tourists as well as visitors from China, South Korea, Japan, India, Russia and Australia.

Tourism officials of ASEAN countries were discussing contents of the strategy in a meeting in Hanoi relating to marketing-communication, product development, and tourism quality. The meeting, taking place from Tuesday to Friday, looks into the ASEAN Tourism Strategic Plan 2011-2015 to serve as reference for national tourism organizations in carrying out tourism programs in the region.

The plan was already approved by the region’s tourism ministers in the ASEAN Tourism Forum 2011.

Dinh Ngoc Duc, deputy head of the International Relation Department of the Vietnam National Administration of Tourism, told the Daily that the regional tourism industry sees intra-bloc arrivals as important guests.

Last year, ASEAN welcomed around 65 million tourists among themselves, with around 50% being citizens of the ten member countries of ASEAN.

“We are mapping out the marketing strategy for five years with many activities to woo the visitors. We are focusing more on e-communication,” Duc said.

He said the working group at the meeting expects the marketing strategy to be completed in July.

Among measures to develop such visitors, Duc said the tourism sector is calling on governments of ASEAN members to quickly allow a common visa for the whole region as well as facilitate transportation conditions by promoting the strong connection among air, railway, sea, and overland routes.

ASEAN tourism also sees visitors from destinations elsewhere in Asia namely China, South Korea, Japan, India, Russia and Australia as potential visitors in this period.

In the four-day meeting, tourism participants also discuss service standardization, improvement of products as well as development of the human resources. They also mention building criteria for green hotels.

For Vietnam’s tourism, ASEAN is one of the four main source markets along with China, the Northeast Asian countries of Japan and South Korea, and Europe.

The number of visitors from ASEAN, mostly Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Cambodia, has been soaring in recent years. Last year, the country received over 5.05 million foreign arrivals, of them around one million were visitors from ASEAN countries.

Source: SGT