China Daily Asia Weekly:Anchored to a vision

More than 1 billion people worldwide traveled across borders in 2013 and five times that many traveled domestically, making tourism and related industries perhaps the single largest contributor to global GDP and employment.
What’s more, Asia, led by China, is and will remain the single largest contributor to global tourism growth and in just a few years will be the world’s biggest source of tourists, according to a large and influential group of public and private industry stakeholders that gathered in Macao from Oct 27-29 for the Global Tourism Economy Forum.
The forum, Maritime Silk Road — From Macau We Begin, attracted hundreds of industry executives, industry associations and a host of government figures with responsibility for tourism, from countries as varied as Croatia and Iran. All of them want to attract a greater slice of the growing global and regional tourism pie.
“If the trends of the past three years are a good indicator, and I think they are, this will continue into the near future as well,” said Marcio Favilla, executive director for operational programs and institutional relations at the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO).
A report by the UNWTO released during the forum suggests that one in 11 jobs globally is linked to tourism and that the industry is directly or indirectly responsible for as much as 9 percent of global GDP.
For the rapid growth to be sustainable, however, more investment and greater commitment are needed from the public and private sectors to make it easier for people to travel.
This includes easier visa issuance, and more reliable hard and soft infrastructure and technological support, particularly in the form of more and cheaper Internet connectivity.
A new initiative coming from China should help. Since last year, President Xi Jinping has been pushing for the revival of a Maritime Silk Road (MSR), a route of countries connected by sea that would complement a similar land base connection from China to Europe across Central Asia.
For centuries, the historic maritime route enabled the trading of Chinese silk, ceramics, tea and spices, but it works well for the tourism industry, particularly if the countries involved facilitate links.
Countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) could be early beneficiaries. In fact, Xi first put forward the idea during a speech in Indonesia in September 2013. China has been adding countries to the project since then.
In terms of tourism, an obvious beneficiary would be seaborne travel.
“When it comes to the Maritime Silk Road, what I think is interesting is that we see a very strong business in Europe from the cruise business,” said David Baxby, CEO of Global Blue, a Swiss-based shopping company that specializes in the processing of tax-free spending by overseas visitors.
Baxby was speaking during the forum as a member of a panel sponsored by China Daily.
A second benefit of raising the profile of the MSR would be a boost in the already rapidly growing Chinese outbound market. Improving the routes and facilitating access could entice more Chinese tourists to travel abroad.
“(The MSR) is going to connect a lot of the emerging markets. It will propel tourism in a huge way. It will connect markets that are off the beaten path and may not be known in a huge way,” said Abid Butt, CEO of Banyan Tree Hotels & Resorts, an international luxury group. “This initiative would only help us get more traction in emerging markets.”
“People do want to enrich themselves through unique experiences and cultural experiences,” he said, noting that tourism “is a catalyst in removing barriers around the world and we need to take advantage of that”.
The rapidly growing participation of emerging market tourists is forcing the global tourism industry to adapt. Nowhere in the world is outbound tourism growing as fast as in Asia Pacific, led by China.
The UNWTO says China’s 98 million outbound tourists in 2013 spent $129 billion around the world. Asia Pacific recorded the fastest growth in tourism of any region in the world, at 6 percent.
Even after four years of robust growth, only two Asia-Pacific destinations are among the top 10 in terms of international arrivals: China and Thailand. France remains the most popular destination for tourists to visit, followed by the United States and Spain.
Asian destinations are doing better in terms of receipts from tourism, with the Chinese mainland, Macao, Thailand and Hong Kong all in the top 10 by this measure. For both industry and governments, however, this is not enough.
To attract more travelers and get them to spend more, better infrastructure and more comprehensive services are needed.
“We need collaboration between the government and the private sector — an investment-friendly policy,” said Edmond Ip, vice-chairman of the Artyzen Hospitality Group, a hotel management company that is part of Hong Kong-based Shun Tak Holdings.
Ip, a well-known industry figure, says three things are needed in Asia Pacific to ensure constant and sustainable levels of growth.
The first is a new focus on tourism infrastructure, including simplifying visa processes as much as possible and speeding up immigration controls at airports, reliable public transport and a safe environment for business.
The second is to develop more attractions such as theme parks, museums and nature reserves to attract more people to the region.
The third is more large-scale tourism events. Singapore and Dubai are success stories that could be emulated, he said.
While the growth of the Asia-Pacific tourism industry remains impressive, it is still driven in large part by ongoing economic growth in the region and the emergence of a consumer class with the disposable income to travel further and more often.
A key focus for many at the forum was to ensure sustainable growth — sustainable in terms of both business and the environment.
And while tourist destinations in the region require better infrastructure to attract more international tourists from Europe, North America, Latin America and Africa, destinations abroad may also need to step up the services they provide to Asian tourists.
Global Blue is moving forward on this front. Last year it introduced Alipay, China’s largest e-payment provider, in Europe to facilitate transactions for Chinese travelers. The growth, said Baxby, has been impressive.
More such services are needed, said Wang Ping, chairman of the China Chamber of Tourism (CCT). She said the number of Chinese tourists is certainly on the rise but so is the number that comes back to China unhappy with their experiences, due to lack of services in Mandarin or poor communication with hosts.
And the growth of Chinese outbound tourism is creating another concern for the CCT. On average, Chinese tourists spend abroad three times as much as inbound tourists spend in China.
“This means we are not preparing enough for foreign tourists coming into China. That is why foreign tourists are not spending enough when they come,” Wang said. “We need to pay attention to the problem of trade deficit.”
“I hope for the MSR we can have new facilities and hotels,” Wang said, adding, “I hope everyone can work together to build the MSR and have a very close alliance”.
If trends continue, more than 100 million tourists will make a trip out of China this year and will be part of more than 1 billion international travelers globally.
In the next decade, tourism and related industries could create some 70 million jobs — two-thirds of them in Asia — and “be a force for good in international relations”, said Michael Frenzel, chairman of the World Travel and Tourism Council.
Agreement on this point at the forum was widespread, but so was the understanding that the global tourism industry and its hundreds of thousands of stakeholders, from hostel operators to government leaders, need to pay more attention to sustainable growth — not just sustainable in terms of the environment, but also in terms of economics.
One way to do this is to build a “complete visitor economy”, said Scott Supernaw, chairman of the Pacific Asia Travel Association, a Bangkok-based association serving tourist offices, airlines, hotels and other travel-related companies throughout the region.
This would bring just about everyone that has contact with tourists — “from the butcher to the baker and the candlestick maker” — into the tourism economy, help drive its growth and ensure sustainability.
This would also help relieve another chronic concern for the tourism sector, a shortage of people.
“Today, we are focused on the complete visitor economy,” Supernaw said. “Tourism is responsible for more economic growth, more employment and more general well-being than any other industry.”
By doing this, the industry could address multiple problems at once and continue driving global growth.
As Supernaw put it: “You solve the people problem and (then) you can more easily solve the environmental problem.”

http://www.chinadailyasia.com/asiaweekly/2014-10/31/content_15185101.html