Three days to wait now for the Thai Supreme Court’s decision on former prime minister’s Bt76 billion asset seizure case. The government has beefed up security around the capital, while the “red-shirt” protesters, who support Mr Thaksin, have threatened to stage rallies if the Supreme Court’s ruling should go against him.

Meanwhile, fugitive Thaksin Shinawatra recent claim that he is “not concerned” about having his 76 billion baht seized by the government sounds all too hollow. If so, why all the fuss, one could ask?

Anyway, yesterday there a seminar on Thailand’s future where Thaksin participated via a video conference call, in which he claimed that Thailand has been without justice for the past five years. Definitions of “justice” sometimes run counter to perceptions here but he said that he had received complaints from foreign investors about “the dubious business practices in Thailand”. Now, that is rich.

He went on to warn that foreign investments could easily evaporate should Thailand’s political situation remain unstable. The former prime minister was in no mood for conciliation and blamed all of the problems of Thailand on “the person with influence” who initiated the coup, reiterating that there was no “wrongdoing”, saying the money had been earned prior to him entering politics. Not quite.

According to The Nation newspaper, the final quarter of 2009 saw the Thai economy “rebound from a year-long recession”, with growth in the fourth quarter surging 5.8 per cent from a year earlier. JP Morgan suggested Thailand will “see a 6.5 per cent growth rate” this year, with a rebound in exports and government spending helped the economic turnaround. That is, if Mr Thaksin really does shrug his shoulders if the sequestration order proceeds against him.

Surprisingly, tourist revenues in December “jumped sharply to help turn the Thai economy around”. But this upturn now heavily depends on the fallout as from Friday, as domestic political uncertainty is back in the frame. And although the Supreme Court, which is due to rule on Friday on the Bt76 billion asset seizure case, with the government having beefed up security around the capital, there are still fears that the red-shirt protesters, who support Thaksin, have threatened to stage rallies if the Supreme Court’s ruling should go against him.

On the front page of the Bangkok Post today, the accusations got even steamier, with the New Politics Party spokeman, the former “yellow-shirts”, clamining that there were rumours that “five of the nine judges” had been offered “one billion baht each” to turn the ruling in Thaksin’s favour.

At this point, despite the welcome news of recovery, the Thai economy is still being held hostage by the political uncertainty. Less than three days to go before the court’s verdict, most Thais are holding their breath about the possible outcome. No matter what the ruling is, the political uncertainty will continue to drag on, probably until March. With this uncertainty, the business environment is likely to be subdued and the high growth rate expectations might turn out to be overly optimistic.

Amongst all this, Sports Minister Chumpol Silpa-archa said that “1.579 million visitors arrived in Thailand in January, a 24.35% increase over the same month last year.” I would ask him to take a look at the Ko Chang Island stats that suggest March is significantly down on lat year.

Travel agents and tourists have been asking the TAT how the verdict will affect the country’s stability and infrastructure, with England, France, Italy, Belgium, Germany and Australia having issued travel advisories, telling their citizens to be careful while visiting Thailand and to avoid areas with demonstrations in non-tourist areas.

Citing the world’s economy recovery, this year would be a “golden year of Thailand’s tourism sector”, if there in no unrest, because more foreign arrivals are expected. With the red-shirts seem to to running out of steam, and perhaps money, the Thai public is thoroughly fed up with their political manipulations.

It’s hard to tell the outcome of either the assets seizure case and their reaction to it, but for those who want to skip the capital and enjoy a peaceful holiday in the sun with slack regard for Thailand’s political shenanigans, Ko Chang is still the beautiful, peaceful island it always was.

Source: Bangkok Post

Asean tourism ministers have admitted failure in their efforts to promote Asean as a single destination and develop the Asean tourism brand. As a result, they have embarked on a new campaign built on the fact that “Southeast Asia” has greater recognition in international source markets than “Asean”.

The region’s tourism promoters hope that www.southeastasia.org will draw more visitors.

The campaign will target tourists in medium- and long-haul markets such as the UK, Australia, India, North America and Hong Kong. It is part of a $4-million Asean Competitiveness Enhancement (ACE) project funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) from 2008-13.

In January 2009, the ACE project consultants signed an agreement with the Asean Tourism Association (AseanTA), which groups the region’s private-sector travel industry associations, to develop a new, more effective marketing strategy that promotes Southeast Asia as a single destination.

The new campaign unveiled last week at the Asean Tourism Forum in Brunei elevates the name “Southeast Asia” to co-branded status with “Asean”.

It’s a sharp turnaround from the first Asean Tourism Agreement signed by heads of state in November 2002, which committed them to “promoting Asean as a brand in the international market”.

That agreement also committed the leaders to supporting the (now defunct) Visit Asean Campaign, with thematic tour packages and attractions to encourage visitors to focus on specific areas of interest.

The agreement was aimed at fostering co-operation among Asean national tourism organisations (NTOs) and the industry, particularly airlines, hotels and resorts, travel agencies and tour operators, in marketing and promoting transnational tour packages, including sub-regional growth areas.

However, a study of the impact of Visit Asean, done in May 2007 by Dr Noel Scott, a senior research fellow at the School of Tourism, University of Queensland, reported a “lack of progress at the outcome level”, a euphemistic way of saying it had gone nowhere.

Funded by AusAID, the Australian aid agency, the study pinpointed “a number of underlying issues” such as:

- Alack of sufficient and guaranteed funding to enable a branding campaign to take place.

- Alack of marketing strategy and plan based on consumer and trade research and endorsed by relevant government stakeholders and the industry.

The report was ignored by tourism ministers and the Asean secretariat, which subsequently called for the marketing strategy and brand campaign to be “revisited”. That led to another strategy in June 2009, this one funded by USAID, which said it was time for a change and that “Southeast Asia” would be more appropriate as a brand.

Over the last 12 months, the new approach has been debated intensively. In spite of reservations expressed by Thailand and Malaysia, the switch to the new brand image has won favour largely for purely marketing reasons.

It has also allowed the Asean tourism industry to sweep its own failures under the carpet.

In the most glaring example of this failure, the Asean Tourism Agreement had mandated the “expanding and strengthening [of] Asean co-operation in overseas markets and major international tourism and travel-trade fairs”.

The Noel Scott study noted that setting up a common Asean area in major international travel trade shows was “one of the easiest” ideas to implement.

“A common Asean area in international travel fairs is a specific location/contiguous space where all participating Asean NTOs would co-locate their destination booths. The benefits of such co-location are that it promotes the Asean member countries as a cohesive unit among the trade buyers and sellers.”

But, apart from a single Asean common area at the China International Travel Mart 2006 in Shanghai, no such collective effort was ever made.

Moreover, none of the present generation of tourism leaders has any recollection of the highly successful Visit Asean Year staged in 1992 to mark the 25th anniversary of Asean.

Several marketing gurus and online travel experts have lauded the new campaign, which they say will gather steam with the amount of money set to be thrown at developing content and marketing the new website http://www.southeastasia.org.

But for others, it has only buttressed the claim that Asean has a long way to go in putting its money where its mouth is.

“If they could commit hara-kiri with their own tourism branding, how do they expect to succeed in forging a wider Asean identity?” asked one cynic.

Source: AFP

The Asia-Pacific region has overtaken North America as the world’s largest air travel market with 647 million passengers in 2009, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said Monday.

By contrast, 638 million people flew on commercial flights in North America last year, IATA announced at an aviation business conference on the eve of the Singapore Airshow featuring the world’s leading aviation industry players.

Within Asia, China has eclipsed Japan over the past decade as the region’s largest domestic market, with 1,400 aircraft compared with Japan’s 540 and 5.7 million weekly seats against 2.6 million in Japan.

The Singapore Airshow is taking place after a harrowing year in the global aviation industry, which lost an estimated 11 billion dollars in 2009 as a result of the financial meltdown that began in the United States.

IATA director general Giovanni Bisignani told the conference that the Asia-Pacific market would continue to grow rapidly with an estimated 217 million additional air passengers a year in the region by 2013. Related article: China’s online travel market booming

“While we see dynamism and diversity within the region, the aspect of Asia-Pacific that excites me most is its potential,” said Bisignani.

“More than a quarter of the 2.2 billion people who flew last year, or 647 million people, flew within Asia-Pacific markets.

“It has eclipsed travel within North America as the traditional leader in traffic numbers.”

IATA represents some 230 carriers that account for more than 90 percent of scheduled air traffic, but does not include many of the budget airlines credited with a boom in short and medium-haul travel in recent years.

Its members in Europe, the Asia-Pacific region, and North America recorded year-on-year declines in passenger demand of 5.0 to 5.6 percent in 2009, according to an IATA report released Friday.

But Asian airlines staged a strong recovery in December, when demand grew 8.0 percent from a year ago, nearly twice the global average, the IATA report said.

Bisignani told the conference that Asian airlines were projected to narrow their losses collectively to 700 million US dollars this year from 3.4 billion dollars in 2009, about a third of the industry’s global losses last year.

“It is tough in all regions but Asia-Pacific’s prospects are improving faster than other regions,” he said.

Despite the upbeat outlook for Asia, Bisignani warned the region to press on with liberalisation or miss its growth potential.

He cited efforts by the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) regional bloc to liberalise the air sector by 2015 as an example.

“Industry is preparing and it is important that the target date is met… Asian aviation will not reach its potential if the airlines are constrained to old ways of doing business,” he said.