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.