ASEAN member countries unite to promote tourism

ASEAN member countries unite to promote tourism

BANGKOK (Agencies): Six Southeast Asian nations will formally create the ASEAN Tourism Center (ATC) next week to promote the region as a single, "borderless" holiday destination, a Thai official said yesterday.

The agreement establishing the center is to be signed here Sunday during the Jan. 7-13 meeting of the ASEAN Tourism Forum, which was created in 1981, said the official with the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT).

ASEAN -- the Association of Southeast Asian Nations -- groups Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.

The national tourism bodies of the six nations already have agreed to set up the center. Once the memorandum of understanding is signed, the national tourism chiefs will convene as the ATC's board of directors and select a manager to run the center, the Thai official was quoted by AFP as saying.

The board also will decide where to locate the center, he said. Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur are the leading candidates.

While the six nations will continue to compete for tourist dollars, the center will promote the ASEAN region as a whole and will work with other countries to boost tourism throughout Asia.

Meanwhile, the Madrid-based World Tourism Organization said yesterday that some 528 million people worldwide took holidays abroad in 1994, three percent more than the previous year.

"People were traveling more, taking more short trips as a result of economic recovery in the major generating markets," the organization's Secretary General Antonio Enriquez Savignac said as quoted by Reuters.

Foreign tourists spent US$321 billion while on holiday, five percent more than the previous year, the group estimated.

Germans traveled most, making more than 65 million trips abroad, followed by North Americans who made 47 million.

The destinations which registered the highest growth in tourism were Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand, South America and the Caribbean.