Region's tour operators to focus on Asia

Asip A. Hasani, The Jakarta Post, Yogyakarta

Travel firms in Southeast Asia are to focus their marketing efforts on attracting tourists from the Asia Pacific region as the number of travelers from Europe and the U.S. has declined following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

At the same time, the tour operators will also step up their campaign to assure Western governments that the region is safe for travelers.

"Of course, the business is not as good as it was previously after most of the governments of the European countries, as well as the United States, Australia, and Japan, issued travel bans in respect of many ASEAN countries," chief executive officer of One Asia Travel, Alfred C. Tonkiss, told The Jakarta Post on the sidelines of Travel Exchange (Travex) at the 2002 Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) Tourism Forum (ATF) here on Sunday.

One Asia Travel is one of the biggest travel groups specializing in East and Southeast Asian countries.

Travex, officially opened on Sunday by Yogyakarta Governor Hamengku Buwono X, is being attended by 804 vendors of tourism products from 9 countries, and 380 buyers from 47 countries.

The Sept. 11 attacks by terrorists using hijacked aircraft, coupled with the global economic slump, has hit world tourism hard.

The image of the region as a safe place for travelers has been tarnished, particularly following the recent crackdown on alleged terrorist groups linked to Osama bin Laden, accused by the U.S. government as being the mastermind behind the September attacks.

Threats directed by certain militant groups in Indonesia against U.S. citizens and Britons following the U.S.-led attacks on Afghanistan last year have also prompted Western governments to issue travel bans on Indonesia.

Tourism is one of the major sources of revenue for governments in the region.

Tonkiss criticized the governments of the United States and the European countries for issuing travel bans on countries such as Indonesia without having conducted thorough examinations.

"Yogyakarta is (actually) not such a big problem (to travel to), neither is Sumatra. And Bali is no problem at all. But at the moment, they don't want their people to travel to any part of the country, including Bali. This is bad for us," he said.

Tonkiss, however, expressed optimism that the prospects for the tourism industry in Southeast Asia would brighten over the next six years.

He said that 80 percent of the tourists in the region would come from within the Asian countries, with the remainder coming mostly from Europe.

Separately, the operations manager of the Yogyakarta-based Sri Rama Tours, Yok Pin, told the Post that the September terrorist attacks in New York had caused a steep decline in tourist arrivals in Yogyakarta, especially among those who traveled in groups. He said, however, that the number of individual travelers had scarcely been affected.

But he said that improving relations with China were a positive factor for the tourism industry in Yogyakarta.

The sales manager of the Kuala Lumpur-based travel firm Reliance Sightseeing, Jennifer Pong, said that the company had shifted its promotional focus to the Asian countries, especially China and India, following the issuance of travel bans on most parts of Malaysia by the European countries, the United States, and Japan.

The director of Thailand-based travel firm Asian Premier Holidays, Ron O'Connell, told the Post that his company was currently focusing on China and the Middle Eastern countries.