Sunday, April 29, 2007

global Chains Take Over Vietnam Tourism


GLOBAL CHAINS TAKE OVER VIETNAM TOURISM
UPON the news of Vietnam’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) hotel investors have flocked to the country with plans for large-scale beachside resorts, hoping to turn the golden sands of the burgeoning holiday destination into a gold mine. Amid the wave of interest, industry experts caution that Vietnam will have to choose between mass tourism and a more sustainable approach that looks beyond profits and preserves the country’s cultural and ecological heritage.
Recent weeks have seen a flurry of announcements for new luxury beach resorts which leading developers are hoping to build in Vietnam over coming years. Dubai-based Kingdom Hotel Investments (KHI) said it plans to build a US$65-million Raffles resort by 2011 on China Beach, the famed rest & recreation site of American troops during the war. The Raffles Da Nang complex would feature about 150 hotel suites and 15 private villas for sale on 154,000 square metres of beachfront land, said KHI.
Singaporean Banyan Tree group has pledged US$200 million to build an international standard tourism and services complex in central Vietnam. The 200-hectare complex in Thua Thien-Hue province's Chan May-Lang Co special economic zone (SEZ) will include six resorts and hotels with 2,400 rooms, according to a memorandum of understanding the firm signed recently with the local government.
In the far south, Vietnam’s largest island, Phu Quoc, is drawing unprecedented interest as the government is planning to turn the sleepy, coral-fringed get-away into what is called an ‘eco-aqua-tourism’ destination. Under ambitious plans, Hanoi hopes Phu Quoc, an island now best known for its fish sauce production, will draw up to three million tourists a year by 2020, rivalling Phuket and Bali.
High-end developers from the US, Switzerland and Canada have applied to invest billions of dollars in luxury tourism complexes on the island near the Cambodian border. One project by the US-based Rockingham Asset Management boasts a 2,000 room resort with a 36-hole golf course, villas for rent, entertainment and health care facilities, and even a motor racetrack, according to Thanh Nien News.
Switzerland’s Trustee Suisse that specializes in international tax and estate planning is planning a US$2.6 billion development on Phu Quoc. In addition to the resort area comprising of hotels and holiday villas, the 200-hectare complex, to be named ‘Asian Pearl’, will also include a financial centre and residential units.
Until recently, Vietnam attracted mainly ‘off-the-beaten-track’ tourists, pioneer travellers who braved visa hassles and cheap hotels when the socialist country emerged in the 1990s from post-war poverty and political isolation. Since then rapid economic development and global integration have raised Vietnam’s profile.
“From a PR point of view, the WTO entry sends a message that Vietnam is open and welcomes investment,” said Rick Mayo-Smith, founding partner of Ho Chi Minh-based Indochina Capital, a company that invests in hotels and manages US$300 million in property funds. Vietnam wants to boost tourist numbers to six million by 2010, up from 3.6 million arrivals in 2006. Tourism is now the second largest foreign exchange earner for the country after oil and gas. However, there are increasing worries that the government’s keen interest in tourism development will bring unwanted cultural and environmental impacts, as experienced in mass tourism destinations such as Thailand.

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

CAMBODIA


ANGKOR OVERWHELMED BY MARAUDING HORDES OF TOURISTS:-
AS Cambodia has settled into peace and opened to the world, the temples of Angkor have in recent years gone from stone to gold for the national government. This year, a deluge of tour operators is expected to cart in nearly one million foreign visitors, a six-fold increase since 2000.
Including Cambodians, the number of visitors to the archaeological park will reach a record two million this year and at least three million by 2010, according to the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which identified Angkor as a World Heritage site in 1992.
The growth has put the Cambodian government in a difficult position, forcing it to balance the potential to make money against the need for preservation, restoration, and study. Preservationists and archaeologists here fear that the frenzy to commercialize Angkor, now also a hot set location for films such as Angelina Jolie's "Tomb Raider ," is winning out over the need for preservation.
Nowhere is that clearer than at Phnom Bakheng, located atop the highest peak of Angkor, where a number of new guidebooks advise visitors not to miss the sunset from the temple's summit. Tips like that have led to a daily siege by an armada of tour buses around dusk. On a recent afternoon, about 4,000 visitors, speaking Korean, Japanese, Mandarin, English and a host of other languages, scampered to the top of the temple, stepping on pictorial stones and manhandling ancient statues.
"The problem we're facing is that the pace of visitor growth is accelerating far faster than the ability to manage such huge crowds," said Teruo Jinnai , UNESCO's top official in Cambodia. "There is no doubt that this is beginning to cause damage to the temples and that it has the potential to become much worse if nothing is done."
Six months ago, the US-based World Monuments Fund (WMF), which is doing major restoration work at Phnom Bakheng, roped off the rapidly deteriorating main stone path leading to the temple area because of a combination of trampling tourists and rain runoff. Inside Phnom Bakheng, statues and carvings in low relief have sustained new damage from tourists. Fresh graffiti have been sprayed alongside sandstone carvings of flying celestial nymphs and Garuda warriors. On one side of the temple, piles of sandbags placed last year to hold up a retaining wall have been damaged by tourists who have climbed and descended the temple's sides without waiting their turn on a number of steep stone staircases.
"In the 10th century, this was a perfect creation, a structure built with mathematical and religious harmony and where the king and a few of his monks would come to worship," John Stubbs , the WMF vice president for field projects, said as he surveyed the crowds on the temple summit. "But now, look at this," he said. "It simply was not built for these thousands of people to be here at once. Tourism is a double-edged sword. We want everyone to appreciate the importance of Angkor's temples, but not like this."
The Cambodian government has come under fire over Angkor. Only a few local and foreign businesses appear to be benefiting from the economic boom generated by the ruins, by far Cambodia's largest tourist attraction. The concession to run the admissions centre - which generates tens of millions of dollars a year that preservationists say is rarely pumped back into the site itself - was granted to a politically connected company run by a powerful Cambodian businessman. Many of the street vendors who now peddle trinkets inside the park have come from the capital, Phnom Penh, rather than nearby villages.
As a result, the rural province surrounding Angkor remains the third- poorest in Cambodia, despite the opening of a string of five-star hotels and shopping arcades in the nearby town of Siem Reap, according to a study released in 2005 by the Cambodian Development Resource Institute.
The concerned government agency APSARA claims it has not enough funds to properly manage the temples. On the other hand, the government has found the means to push forward on initiatives designed to lure even greater numbers to the park. In recent weeks, authorities launched a pilot programme with Korean tour operators for a night-time ‘sound and light’ show at Angkor Wat. A Japanese tourism company has been granted rights to hold large, moonlit banquets inside the park at US$60 per person. "Angkor has become a sort of cultural Disneyland," said Khin Po Thai, a long-time Angkor guide and preservation activist. "We are overwhelmed by the crowds we have now, but they are still trying to bring in more and more people. No one ever sees where the money goes. It certainly doesn't go back into preservation."

Monday, April 23, 2007

TOURISM KNOCKED OUT




The powerful tsunami attack hitting the coastlines of the Indian Ocean on 26 December has come as a big shock to the world. But it appears that, as so often before, incompetence, greed and bureaucratic bungling have made the natural disaster worse. And once again, the tourism industry is playing a very problematic role in this drama that is still ongoing.
Ironically, Thailand’s tourism authorities have been running a promotional campaign under the slogan “Happiness on Earth”. But the country’s tourism lobby has obviously learned little from the HIV/AIDS, SARS or bird flu crises. This time, the international community has taken note with grave concern – if not anger - that a tsunami warning in Thailand was very well possible but may have been halted in order “to protect” tourism. Experts say that ringing the alarm bells following the news about the earthquake off the coast of northern Sumatra could have saved thousands of lives, reduced injuries and reduced some of the property damages.
It is also sad that in the aftermath of the tsunami, locals in southern Thailand repeatedly complained that government agencies only send rescue teams to major beach resort areas – in Phuket, Phi Phi Islands and Khao Lak, for example –, while other local communities were desperately waiting for help. Only three days after the tsunami attack, reports began to surface in the official media about the immeasurable losses and hardships faced by locals.
On the other hand, it took the corporate tourism industry only a few hours to throw on their propaganda machines at full speed in order to lure back tourists as soon as possible. The Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) issued a statement on 27 December, saying “Most of Asia unaffected by Tsunami”, but then listed Asia’s most important coastal and marine tourist destinations that were all destroyed by the natural disaster. Other hotel and resort businesses in affected areas of South and Southeast Asia were quick to downplay or even deny the damages of their facilities. With no remorse for the thousands of dead bodies piling up on the beaches, they were keen to get out the message to the world that everything was getting back to normal so there was no need for sun-seeking holidaymakers to cancel their trip.