Bangkok--13 Dec--Thammasat University
Background and Objectives
Under globalization, the concept of the liberalization of goods and services is rapidly expanding. The movement of capital and labor between countries is increasing, as well as the economic co-operation among nations at both national and regional levels. These phenomena have changed the trade and investment environments in many regions thereby accelerating trade and service competition.
“Tourism and travel related services” is one of the areas to be liberalized under the Free Trade Agreement within the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC). Under this agreement there will be the potential for more opportunities for people within the region to invest in tourism businesses with the possibility of a free flow of labor between ASEAN countries. These changes will have possible negative or positive impacts on many enterprises and employees in not only Thailand’s travel industry but in upstream and downstream businesses as well.
In order to ensure that liberalization under the AEC creates opportunities to increase Thailand's competitiveness within the region, the Department of Tourism and the College of Innovation Thammasat University (CITU) are organized an interactive workshop on “Tourism Competitiveness within the AEC: Future Directions for Thailand’s Tourism Industry” on September 15, 2013 at the Dusit Thani Hotel.
The program
Over people attended the event from all stakeholders. In fact more than 100 registrants were turned away due to lack of space became the intense interest in the opportunities and challenges that will be faced establishment of AEC 2015.
The day began with Director General of the Department of Tourism, Ministry of Tourism and Sports Thailand to deliver his opening remarks. The keynote speech was given by Prof. Dr. Harold Goodwin from the International Center for Responsible Tourism as well as Metropolitan University. Dr. Goodwin is an international expert in tourism development provided some key insights into what is being done globally. What is most interesting is that increasingly the private sector is seen in the business case for responsible development. There are now many examples of individual hotels and restaurants as well is large hotel groups that have adopted and are stringently implementing social, cultural and environmental responsible tourism policies and procedures. While Dr. Goodwin is in Thailand he will be signing an MOU with the College of Innovation whereby the College will become the South East Asian hub for the International Center for Responsible Tourism.
Walter Jamieson and John Koldowski from the College of Innovation provided a discussion of the issues and opportunities facing the industry based on a thorough process of consultation with stakeholders in all regions carried out by the College of Innovation team. The team was also involved in talking to key opinion leaders as well as doing research in the area of free trade. Koldowski and Jamieson identified a number of overall key areas that needed to be expanded and improved upon within a context of innovation and creativity in order to achieve the full potential of the free trade agreement. They concentrated on
- Industry capacity building
- SME Capacity Building
- Improved destination management
- Knowledge management systems
- Better tourism behavior expectation information
- Creative tourism experience development
- Innovative distribution
- Better metrics for measuring success or failure
Based on the overview of the morning's discussion the key people within Thailand's industry were asked to identify innovative and creative approaches to increasing the competitiveness of the Thai tourism industry. It is recognized that these were simply indicative of a number of other industries but were meant to provide examples where creativity and innovation are actually taking place. They covered such areas as Innovation and Creativity in Thailand's Culinary Landscape, Innovation in Sustainable Event Management Systems, Innovation in Creating New Visitor Experience, and the Blogosphere as a Branding Tool.
The overall conclusions were that without innovation and high level of creativity and innovative financing that it was going to be difficult in some areas for the country to be had. On the other hand unique hospitality of the Thai nation, which is already very mature and well established tourism industry provided the opportunity of coming up with new and different experiences for the tourists with a reinvigorated sense of hospitality. Quite clearly product development and provision of new experiences must be done within the perspective of the Thai cultural and natural environment. This obviously is the advantage that Thailand hold over its neighbors as well as the larger regional environment.
The Department of Tourism and the College of Innovation Thammasat University see this seminar as part of an ongoing series providing a rich environment for discussion about new and different ways of doing business. One of the initiatives that the Department of Tourism is working on to respond to the AEC 2015 is to establish the Tourism Knowledge Management Center. The Center is responsible for conducting research and establishing data base as related to the services liberalization. All information and documentations are released for public knowledge through www.tourismkm-asean.org.