Asean To Endorse 5 Year Tourism Strategic Plan Soon

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) tourism senior officials met here on Saturday to debate and finalise the Asean Tourism Strategic Plan for 2011-2015, reports China's Xinhua news agency.The strategy aims to promote Asean as a tourism destination and to boost the development of tourism in a vision to build Asean as a world class tourism destination, Tith Chantha, director general of Cambodian Ministry of Tourism, told reporters before the meeting on Saturday.

"It is an important document that Asean senior officials have initiated and drafted together for years to boost Asean tourism sector,"he said."Now the strategic plan is finalized and will be submitted to the Asean tourism ministers for endorsement during the summit on Monday next week," he added.Under the framework of the strategy, particular attention will be focused on the standard development of Asean tourism human resources and there will be free migrations of workers and experts who work in tourism industry among Asean countries, he said.

Cambodian Tourism Minister Thong Khon said on Saturday after opening the meeting that the strategy will focus mainly on boosting intra-Asean broader promotions, developing intra-Asean tourism products, and attracting investments.It will be implemented from 2011 onwards after the endorsement."In this context, we should also focus on maximizing the existing relationships we have with China, Japan, South Korea, India and Russia in the formulation for our tourism strategy,"he said.The 30th Asean Tourism Forum kicks off from Jan 15 to 21.

During the event, there will be the summits of Asean tourism ministers, Asean tourism ministers+3 (China, Japan and South Korea) and Asean tourism ministers+ India and Russia.There will also be a tourism expo, which more than 2,000 exhibitors from tourism companies, travel agents, airlines in Asean and buyers from around the world are invited to take part in.Asean consists of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Source = bernama