of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations,
at the opening of the Workshop for Visit ASEAN Campaign
sponsored by the-Japan Centre
Osaka, 28 September 2001
I am most happy to take part in this workshop on the Visit ASEAN Campaign, and to do so here in Osaka, in Japan. I welcome this opportunity for three reasons. First, tourism is extremely important for the ASEAN economy, no less than for the global economy. Secondly, as you all know, Japan is fertile ground for the promotion of tourism into ASEAN. Finally, I am strongly convinced that ASEAN is unbeatable as a destination for Japanese tourists.
I need not convince this audience of the vital economic importance of tourism. According to the World Travel and Tourism Council, tourism accounts for ten percent of the global economy and eight percent of employment worldwide. Tourism makes up four percent of ASEAN’s combined GDP.
Japanese have been enthusiastic travelers, especially in the past 35 years, and increasingly so. In 1965, the year after the Tokyo Olympics, 158,000 Japanese traveled overseas. Last year, 17.8 million Japanese did. Large as this number is, it represents only slightly over 14 percent of Japan’s more than 125 million people. And many of these 17.8 million are repeat travelers. Last year, the number of Japanese visitors to ASEAN hit more than 3.7 million, the highest level ever. ASEAN thus accounted for about 20 percent of Japanese overseas travelers. That is a respectable share, but there is surely much room for a substantial increase in absolute numbers, if not in the percentage share.
Southeast Asia, as we all know, is a natural attraction for the Japanese traveler. We have a balmy climate. Our fine beaches are, for the most part, accessible all the year round. It so happens that beaches attract 40 percent of Japan’s tourists. We have year-round golf on splendid and inexpensive courses. We have luxuriant wildlife – lush and special plants, unusual animals, flora and fauna that one cannot find anywhere else in the world. Our cultures are rich, colorful, fascinating and diverse. We have some of the best hotels in the world.
And then, as the Japanese would put it, there are an, kin, and tan. What do these watchwords mean?
An means inexpensive. Indeed, we are. When we recall that it took 360 yen to buy one U. S. dollar in 1965, we realize how inexpensive Southeast Asia has become for Japanese travelers. There is some fantastic shopping to be done, aside from the low cost of everything else.
Kin means close to Japan. No place in Southeast Asia is more than seven hours from Osaka. Most places are much less than that.
Tan means short stay. The hard-working Japanese would not dream of being away from work even for a week. Packages of three nights and four days would offer an unforgettable ASEAN experience – shopping in Singapore, orang utans in Borneo, the fascinating lifestyle of Bali, the monuments of Java and Siem Reap, the temples of Thailand and Myanmar, culture, golf and beaches everywhere – all within a few hours of one another.
This is why it is time to think of ASEAN as one destination – or at least parts of ASEAN as one tour package. ASEAN’s attractions are not only richly varied; they also complement one another, as I have just pointed out. One could do the sub-regions – the growth area of Brunei, eastern Indonesia, East Malaysia and southern Philippines; the triangles of western Indonesia, southern Thailand and northwestern Malaysia; the triangle of Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore; and, of course, the Mekong Basin.
All this is at the heart of the message that we are sending out in the Visit ASEAN Campaign, which we launched last January. This campaign means to promote ASEAN as one tourism destination. We have taken out 30-second TV spots on CNN and BBC in Europe. We are planning to do the same thing in the Asia-Pacific region, including, we hope, on Japanese television. We are producing printed materials on ASEAN as a travel destination, some of them in Japanese, thanks to the ASEAN-Japan Centre. With support from the Japanese government, a Japanese company is working on a study on cruise tourism in ASEAN. We expect the study to be completed next month. We continue to hold the ASEAN Tourism Forum every year, a highly successful meeting point for buyers and sellers.
We are liberalizing travel by land, sea and air throughout ASEAN, and we are making a big push for greatly improving and integrating transportation in the region – the Singapore-Kunming Rail Link, the ASEAN highway network, the dredging of the upper reaches of the Mekong to ease travel on that great river.
We in the ASEAN Secretariat are determined to promote this thinking: Air services are an essential tool for the movement of people and goods. It must, therefore, be freed from unnecessary constraints and serve travelers with the greatest frequency, with the most convenience, and at the least cost, made efficient by competition within and across national boundaries. The flags of air carriers should matter less.
Please let us know what else we can do to make it easier and more interesting for Japanese tourists to enjoy the attractions of Southeast Asia. This is a central purpose of this workshop. I thank the ASEAN-Japan Centre, always the pillar of ASEAN-Japan cooperation, for organizing it, and I thank the ASEAN Foundation for its financial support.