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IB
Fri, 12 Mar 2010
SUVA, Fiji ---- The Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA)-organised TIDES (Tourism Investment for the Development of Enterprise and Sustainability) conference in Samoa, sought to build on two previous Pacific events it was involved in organising since 2005.
TIDES was sponsored by Pro€Invest, an EU-ACP (Africa-Caribbean-Pacific) programme that provides technical and financial support to private sector organisations in their mission of sustainable investment promotion.
Several other Pacific country tourism organisations as well as European entities assisted PATA in organising the event.
Learning from the baby steps taken at the two previous Pro€Invest events in Fiji and Vanuatu, the first ever TIDES event helped put three of these main issues into sharp focus meaningfully: investment, access and marketing.
Investment bankers, aviation and hospitality industry experts, environmental economists, academics and marketing specialists from Europe and the Asia Pacific region discussed these issues threadbare at the two-day intensive.
Host country Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Tourism Misa Telefoni Retzlaff said the conference had nailed the two main issues that held back the tourism industry across the region. “Investment and air access are of the greatest importance and the conference has underscored the need for all concerned to make the environment conducive to garnering investment, which will indeed spur better air connectivity and meaningful growth across the region,” he told ISLANDS BUSINESS.
PATA President Greg Duffell agreed, saying investment, access and branding were key to growing the industry and the islands governments had a constructive role to play. Though the three were closely linked and went hand in hand, a great deal of work needed to be done on each of those individual fields.
“PATA will work closely with the island governments and organisations like south-pacific.travel to bring them on a single platform with a view to turning the region into a viable, vibrant and sustainable destination,” he said.
Perhaps the most significant outcome at the event was a proposed US$50-US$100 million investment vehicle for the region. Conceived by Sydney-based Perrottet Partners at the conclusion of the first part of a study commissioned by PATA and funded by the EU’s Centre for Development of Enterprise (CDE), the vehicle—still at a conceptual stage—will manage investment in portfolios of several asset classes across the islands.
Such a fund would encourage investment in existing tourism properties and infrastructure that show promise and are looking to scale up as well as enable investor funds to be spread across multiple country destinations while being overseen and managed by an experienced and professional team.
Perrottet Partners’ John Perrottet said both the investment community in the Asia Pacific region and hospitality and tourism sector entrepreneurs and businesses have shown keen interest in the proposed investment vehicle, since no such mechanism exists at present. Further studies and fine-tuning of how the fund would work could well have the vehicle in operation over the next twelve months, Perrottet said.
Sydney-based European Investment Bank’s Pacific Region Head Jean-Phillipe de Jong told ISLANDS BUSINESS that this was an idea that had strong possibilities. The bank, which has already participated in the two fairly successful Kula Funds, was quite hopeful such an investment vehicle could bring in the much needed investment into the tourism sector to help realise its untapped potential.
“Greater investment in infrastructure and expertise in new concepts like ecotourism and showcasing the Pacific islands culture, both of which we have in great abundance, will surely help the industry grow in the region and create big employment opportunities,” Samoa’s Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi told ISLANDS BUSINESS.
PATA’s Sydney based Regional Director Chris Flynn said Capacity Purchase Agreements (CPA) between operators, innovatively tweaked around the realities of the uniquely long and thin nature of Pacific island air routes could offer solutions to the region’s long standing problems.
More studies were necessary but solutions could be worked out around the region’s Pacific Islands Air Services Agreement (PIASA), he said. The advent of smaller capacity jets was also a welcome development he added.
Veteran UK-based tourism professional and CEO of Desticorp, Anna Pollock, set the tone of the conference with a keynote address that brilliantly encapsulated the sea change taking place in tourism, shaped by the revolution in communications and transportation technologies and the changing attitudes of tourists around the world.
Pollock said it was necessary to emphasise on the human, social and culturally unique aspects of holiday destinations more than projecting them as a range of products packaged and sold in the manner of mass market commodities. That line of thought was explored in a number of later presentations that deliberated on the possibility of collectively branding the South Pacific experience and then going to establish the uniqueness of each island destination in the region.
Presenters from Europe apprised the participants of new trends in marketing and aviation and changing attitudes of tourists to ecological concerns. Germany’s Klaus Lagerfeld warned about the dangers of laying too much emphasis on carbon miles.
He eloquently painted a scenario of far greater ecological damage to a pristine far-flung tourist destination that solely depended on tourism as a result of people refraining from travelling there because of concerns over carbon miles.
Taking the example of a well-known destination in Indonesia, he said if people were to stop travelling there from Europe because of a large carbon footprint, the locals would be forced to resort to commercialise their natural resources such as deforestation, which will be even more harmful to the environment.
Islands tourism officials and entrepreneurs were also exposed to instructive sessions on how simple and intelligent enhancements in online presence could boost both the profile and sales of tourism establishments, services and destinations, as also the benefits of a homogenised and centralised database for the tourism industry.
Simple techniques on how to drive a tourist establishment to the top of the search engine lists with simple SEO (search engine optimisation) techniques were explained. A day-long workshop preceded the two-day conference and was attended by local and regional tourism professionals and officials.
PATA’s Duffel and Flynn said their team was satisfied with the outcome of this first TIDES conference. PATA has decided to turn it into an annual event—a proposal that was wholeheartedly welcomed by both participants and institutional sponsors, Mr Duffell said.
“It will take constant, sustained effort to succeed in what we have all set out to collectively achieve and we will continue the effort,” Mr Duffell said.
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