Asia-Pacific told to open up skies ahead of travel boom
Asia-Pacific told to open up skies ahead of travel boom
SINGAPORE (AFP): Asia-Pacific nations were urged yesterday to adopt a bold and liberal multilateral aviation regime to ride on a 21st-century tourism boom fueled by Asian wanderlust.
"Restrictionist aviation schemes have no place in the globalizing economy," said Geoffrey Lipman, president of the World Travel and Tourism Council, a coalition of industry chiefs.
"They only artificially distort and constrain the potential of the New Age travel markets," Lipman said at a conference on Asia- Pacific air transport. "Increasingly, they are unable to cope with the dynamism of the market."
Economic gains from protecting national airlines are far outweighed by losses from reduced traveler spending and less investment in hotel construction, telecommunications links and resort complexes, he said.
Lipman said the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum should pick up the gauntlet and run towards a multilateral accord, replacing the current approach that stresses bilateral reciprocity.
"It's time for all the organizations involved in aviation, in trade and in liberalization to push this envelope forward," he said.
APEC groups Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Koreza, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and the United States.
K. Raghuraman, a transportation expert at the National University of Singapore, said many developing countries feared foreign airlines would eat into local markets.
In bilateral arrangements, the skies are opened to foreign airlines only when local airlines can benefit equally.
"Such a protectionist policy ... ignores the wider benefits to the local economy resulting from the introduction of services by foreign carriers," he said in a conference paper.
Additional flight
Research has shown that an additional daily non-stop flight from Los Angeles to Manila would bring in nearly US$300 million yearly and create about 80,000 new jobs, he said.
An additional service on the Tokyo-Bangkok route would bring $92 million in revenue and create 12,500 jobs.
The European Union is phasing in the creation of a single air market among its 15-member states, while Canada and the United States, the world's single largest bilateral market, signed an open-skies treaty in February 1995.
Aviation is also included to one degree or another in arrangements such as the North American Free Trade Arrangement (NAFTA), and in the World Trade Organization.
"But the market where everyone is looking to is here in the Asia-Pacific," said Lipman, who urged APEC to make travel and tourism a strategic priority in its free-trade vision.
Asia-Pacific air traffic is forecast to grow twice as fast as the rest of the world, with Asia as the driving force of an anticipated global travel boom.
Half-a-billion affluent and travel-hungry Asians will be jetting across the world by 2000. Travel-driven output in the Asia-Pacific region is expected to reach $2 trillion by 2005, up from $800 billion now.
Lipman made a case for a full liberalization of airline entry, price and capacity to fuel economic growth that travel and tourism can stimulate though competitive fares and more services.
Governments should get out of the airlines business, eliminate state aid to domestic carriers and encourage cross-border investments in air transport, he said.
Michael Tretheway of the Vancouver International Airport Authority said bilateral treaties were expensive to administer, needed to be frequently renegotiated and implied additional burdens on governments and carriers.
"It frustrates gains from comparative advantage, and it has high administrative costs," he said.
But bilateral reciprocity was firmly entrenched in the region, he said, adding: "Unless all nations can be convinced that there are gains from free trade, change is unlikely."