Bandar Seri Begawan - Travel industry players in Asean will need the backing of their respective National Tourism Organisations (NT0s) in order to be listed on the region's new travel facilitation website, SoutheastAsia.org, which enjoyed its soft launching yesterday at the sidelines of the Asean Tourism Forum (ATF) 2010.
The website is the result of a collaboration between Aseanta (Asean Tourism Association) and the US Agency for International Development (USAid)- backed Asean Competitiveness Enhancement (Ace) Project.
As Asean's tourism sector is dominated by small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), one of the aims of the project is to help Mean tour operators and travel agencies who do not have an existing website to create one using a template and automatically link to SoutheastAsia.org at no cost.
Speaking to The Brunei Times yesterday, Ace Project Director Et1 Gurley said that to link to SoutheastAsia.org, tour and travel agencies who already have their own website only have to register with Wego, the Singapore-based company providing the website's meta-search facility, to be listed as one of the resources and pay a referral fee of US$1.
Those without a website have to register themselves with Sota (Standard Online Tourism Architecture), where they can download a template website for free and will be automatically registered with SoutheastAsia.org, Gurley explained.
However, as part of the website's filtering system, interested tourism companies will first need to be endorsed by their respective NTO in order to be included on the website.
The Philippines Undersecretary of Tourism Services and Regional Offices, Oscar Palabyab, yesterday inaugurated the soft launch of the web portal during the Mean Tourism Conference held in conjunction with ATF 2010 in the presence of Brunei's Deputy Minister of Industry and Primary Resources Dato Paduka Hj Hamdillah Hj Abd Wahab and local and foreign media.
Palabyab, the main patron of the initiative, said that the use of website takes advantage of the more cost-effective methods of telemarketing and electronic marketing to reach the targeted consumer profiles for Mean tourism.
"We look at SoutheastAsia.org as the necessary ingredient to make us (Asean) known to the rest of the world," he said.
The Philippines tourism undersecretary said that the campaign's slogan "Feel the Warmth" depicted the resounding characteristics of the region and among the main observations by visitors of Mean people when they visit the region. "We want the rest of the world to 'feel the warmth'," he added.
Gurley said that the campaign and website targeted three main tourist profiles. He said that based on findings from a six-month study, they were focused on drawing "adventurous culture-seekers, inexperienced travellers and young, independent travellers" through the website.
He remarked that the latter was known to visit two or more Mean countries on a single trip, which was the main goal of Asean in the regional grouping's new promotion as a single tourist destination.
The source markets identified for the campaign originate from medium- and long-haul destinations such as North America, Europe, India and Australia, leveraging on not only air travel but also through the growing cruise tourism sector.
Gurley said that now the main challenge was to populate the website, which is "20 per cent of the way there" in anticipation of its official launch scheduled for March, during the International Tourism Bourse (ITB) trade show in Berlin.
Starting next week, the website will hold contests open to journalists, travel writers and photographers to submit articles, photographs and other materials promoting Mean travel, putting up a total of US$15,000 in prizes to be won.
In a previous report, Gurley said that USAid will provide a budget of US$500,000 for their online marketing exercise. However, they hoped to make website self-sustaining, generating income from advertisements and referrals from the various agencies listed with the website. -- Courtesy of The Brunei Times
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HRH Prince Haji Al-Muhtadee Billah / Image via anakbrunei.org
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