Visitor economy: A new concept for destinations

At the Annual Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) summit held in Bangkok, Thailand in April 2013, the slogan of ‘Visitor Economy’ was presented by the PATA and it was generally accepted by the speakers, participants and the media men who attended the summit.

Visitor economy means that tourism economy is pervasive, extending beyond GDP and job creation, to boosting exports and taxation, stimulating capital investment, infrastructure development and collective government expenditure.

In their Final Declaration the Leaders noted:

“We commit to continue to help developing countries sustain and strengthen their development through appropriate measures, including those that encourage inclusive green growth… we recognize the role of travel and tourism as a vehicle for job creation, economic growth and development, and, while recognizing the sovereign right of States to control the entry of foreign nationals, we will work toward developing travel facilitation initiatives in support of job creation, quality work, poverty reduction and global growth”.

Recognition by the G20 is a significant step forward for the industry since, despite substantial progress being made in raising awareness of the importance of travel and tourism over the past 20 years or so, many governments around the world – even in Asia Pacific – still do not appreciate the enormous contribution of the Visitor Economy.

Annual research by the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) and its research partner Oxford Economics suggests that, in 2012, the Visitor Economy across the APEC economies (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation) accounted for 8.4 percent of the region’s GDP and supported nearly 123 million jobs region-wide, or 8.5 percent of total employment–either directly in the industry or in related sectors. These jobs are vital, not only for the livelihoods of those employed, but also for their families and the wider communities in host destinations.”

In the annual summit, Taleb Refai, Secretary General of UNWTO (United Nation World Tourism Organization) said that tourism is affected by continued economic uncertainties, environmental challenges of various kinds and religious conflicts affecting both the rich and poor nations. Despite these difficulties tourism growth continues as in 2012 one billion tourists have crossed frontiers and spent 1057 billion US dollars, generated 9 percent of the world GDP which has impacted 30 percent of worlds export services and has created one job in every eleven job.

These factors bring prosperity to communities of the world. Despite these benefits, many governments in the world including majority government in the Asia Pacific region do not give adequate importance to the tourism sector.

Bangladesh is a case where some of the observations of the summit are applicable. Despite the fact that the country has enormous potential for attracting tourists, the government response to meet the needs in respect of infrastructure development, global promotion through concerted efforts and internal actions by the government agencies such as the Ministry of Civil Aviation & Tourism, the Bangladesh Tourism Board, the Bangladesh Parjatan Corporation, the Civil Aviation Authority of Bangladesh, the City Corporations, the Ministry of Culture, the Archaeological Department, Ministry of Communications etc. are lagging behind in planning and implementation.

As a result small steps taken by various government sectors are disjointed and not well coordinated. For instance in the budget for the year 2013-14, the Finance Minister has indicated a small allocation and a small incentive for developing recreational sports activities in the beach areas of the country. But the beach areas, namely, Cox’s Bazar and Kuakata are not attracting sufficient domestic and foreign visitors due to lack of security, severe climatic hazards and political problems.

Particularly the private investors at Cox’s Bazar and Kuakata have built hundreds of hotel and motel rooms during the last 15 years but the investors now find it difficult to meet their bank liabilities and they do not know how to go about the problem because of lack of visitors in these areas where tourism is a seasonal business and during the tourist season political activities leading to security and safety problems appear.

At a function held in a local club at Gulshan in connection with inauguration of the Bangladesh Inbound Tour Operators Association, a responsible representative of the FBCCI raised the red alert that unless government urgently takes measures to ensure peace and tranquillity in the leading beach areas of the country, the tourism sector will face a grave situation.

The Minister for Civil Aviation & Tourism Muhammad Faruk Khan said that the task is big and time is short and the government is looking into the issues. The planned growth of the tourism sector of Bangladesh can bring good dividends for the country as projected by the WTTC & UNWTO through their statistical reports on Bangladesh, provided the growth in the sector is analyzed and orchestrated at a very high level constantly. Although there exists a very high level National Tourism Council headed by the Prime Minister but whether it meets and for what actions it takes are not known as the concerned agencies do not make information public, although there is a law in the country called ‘Right to Information’.

There is a book entitled ‘Talking the Walk’ which takes a highly practical look at the realities of communicating in and about partnership in multi-sector industries. It will be worthwhile for the major players in the government and private sectors to have a look at the book authored by Ros Tennyson and Sue McManus.

The book says, “Partnering is above all a communication challenge and far from being incidental or peripheral; good communication is actually the hard, or perhaps more accurately, the heartbeat of all effective partnering”.

Source: Weekly Holiday