Asia tempts visitors with cut price offers

Asia tempts visitors with cut price offers

By Valerie Leroux

BERLIN (AFP): Asian countries are engaged in a cut-throat price war to lure as many foreign visitors as they can, bringing dollars and other hard currencies to ease their financial woes.

The cost of air tickets and hotel rooms are being slashed to the bone at the international tourism fair which ends here Wednesday, aided by the collapse of the Indonesian rupiah, the Thai baht and the Malaysian ringgit.

Bali, the Indonesian paradise island, has even put up a gigantic T-shirt on its stand bearing a slogan declaring, "Our loss is your gain" to go with the glossy brochures.

Thai Airways' magic number is 898, meaning 898 marks (US$500) for a Frankfurt-Bangkok flight and a night in a hotel, while Malaysia Airlines has slashed its fares by 30 percent.

East Asia Tours, a German travel agency specializing in the region, is offering a 10-day stay in the Thai beach resort of Phuket for 1,299 marks ($720), a reduction of 700 marks, with one child per family under 11 going free.

Other agencies are proposing one or more nights in a hotel at no charge.

"All of a sudden families who before used to go only as far as the Canary Islands can afford a trip to Asia," commented Birgit Peschke of East Asia Tours.

Asia's financial crisis has resulted in the devaluation of local currencies of between 50 and 70 percent, making the journey, the hotel accommodation, the shopping and the facilities at the destination much cheaper for Europeans and Americans.

The expected boom is still slow to materialize. "Customers are more and more likely to book at the last minute. They are reserving in March for trips at Easter (mid April)," Peschke said.

But tour operators are unanimous that European and American demand for Asian holidays will soar in 1998, unless the financial crisis results in serious unrest in the countries concerned. The threat of haze from unchecked forest fires, particularly in Indonesia, is also a concern.

The World Tourism Organization is predicting a 12.5 percent rise in traffic from Europe and 15 percent from the Americas to the Asia-Pacific region this year.

However, WTO secretary-general Francesco Frangialli said here Monday that the influx would not make up for the decline in numbers holidaying within the region, which still account for most of the turnover of local hotels and travel agencies.

Asian tourists have seen their buying power slashed with the fall in the value of their cash and austerity measures introduced by their governments, while the crisis is making their job security uncertain.

Overall, therefore, the level of tourism in the Asia-Pacific region is expected to be flat this year, while other regions could also lose out as more Europeans and Americans are attracted to Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand or South Korea.

Frangialli also warned against price-slashing too much, with the risk of a nasty shock for visitors when the region recovers. Tour operators are not discouraged, however. "In five to 10 years the Asia-Pacific region will account for half of all tourist arrivals in the world," forecast fair president Manfred Busche.

As a sign of its confidence, the Berlin fair, the biggest of its kind in the world, is to organize a regional version, International Tourism Asia, to be held in September 1999 in Hong Kong.