Spread the Warmth. EUC Policy Challenge. EU-ASEAN Tourism Policy Brief

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was established as a regional bloc to further cooperation amongst countries in Southeast Asia. One of the recent long term goals of ASEAN is to establish an ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) to create a single market and production base and build a competitive region well integrated into the global economy. In the AEC blueprint, Tourism has been identified as one of the priority sectors for integration. Our policy paper draws inspiration from the successes of tourism initiatives in Europe and seeks to learn from these initiatives how we can promote ASEAN tourism with a unique ASEAN flavor. We start off by identifying the strengths, opportunities and challenges of the region in the tourism industry. The strengths include the diversity of the region and the relatively low cost advantage. An ageing population with spending power and an increase in size and affluence of the middle class are opportunities we can leverage on. Challenges like underdeveloped infrastructure, distressed public health environment‟ security concerns, ineffective stakeholder management and industrial restructuring brought about by tourism are important considerations in the formulation of our recommendation. Our strategic goal is to boost the competitiveness of tourism in the region by implementing sustainable and quality tourism in view of the strengths, opportunities and challenges identified. Our overall strategy takes into account the fundamental ideals and principles we stand by in developing tourism in the ASEAN. With that in mind, we have concocted three innovative recommendations. They are first, to market the unique seasonality of ASEAN; second, to launch an ASEAN Connect pass; and lastly, introducing the ASEAN free riding tour series. We make a case on how the infusion of ideas on sustainable and quality tourism into our action plan will be a great leap forward in ASEAN tourism development. The progress and result of the implementation will be kept in check by a set of annual performance indicators and 5 years‟ deliverables. In short, our paper seeks to provide a well-defined and convincing development plan to boost ASEAN tourism competitiveness. Most importantly, we hope that our plan will excite the sense of adventure and raise curiosity of the ASEAN people to travel around the region, and in the process build greater awareness of the region and instill a sense of ASEAN community amongst the people in the long run