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."