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Tourism industry must overcome image crisis

"What is important is we eliminate stigmatization [of Asia]."

Philippine Tourism Secretary Richard Gordon

The threat of SARS may be waning in the Asia-Pacific but the tourism industry is still smarting from its impact and must buckle down to repair the damage to its image, experts said.

Travel industry officials have begun work on "Project Phoenix," a cooperative campaign to convince the public it is now safe to return to Asia after the World Health Organization (WHO) lifted travel advisories against all areas but Beijing.

At a meeting last week of the World Tourism Organization in the Philippine capital, tourism and travel authorities also acknowledged the huge challenge ahead.

Asian tourism was already hurt by the 2001 terror attacks in the US and the bombings on Indonesia's resort island of Bali in October last year, not to mention a global economic slow-down and the US-led war in Iraq.

The outbreak of SARS, which has killed nearly 800 and infected more than 8,000 across the region and in Canada, has done more, however, to damage the industry than anyone could have imagined.

"All of us have been caught off guard. We had figured the war in Iraq into our contingency plans and forecasts but SARS surprised us all," said Peter de Jong, president of the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA).

Philippine Tourism Secretary Richard Gordon, who hosted the meeting, urged the industry to "circle the wagons."

"What is important is we eliminate stigmatization," of Asia as a tourist destination, he said.

Many tourism officials complained that the threat of the pneumonia-like respiratory virus was overblown by the media, international agencies and even other governments, affecting even countries untouched by the disease.

Vang Rattanavoing, chairman of the Laos National Tourism Authority, complained that there was "some sort of psychological warfare against the region."

Tourist arrivals to Laos were down 30 percent because of SARS, even though only one suspected case was recorded there, he said.

Harsh Varma, the World Tourism Organization's regional representative, complained that one Boston newspaper carried the headline "Avoid all travel to Asia," due to SARS.

A European paper published a list of countries with confirmed SARS cases, suspected cases and countries "likely" to be infected even before a single SARS case was found, Varma said.

Andrew Drysdale, regional vice president of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said a jetliner from Japan was barred from landing in a Middle Eastern country simply because it had made a brief stopover in Singapore, one of the countries worst-hit by SARS.

Drysdale said that passenger traffic fell sharply despite assurances by the WHO that no new cases of SARS had been reported from air travel after rigorous screening guidelines were implemented by airlines.

Deborah Luhrman, a consultant of the World Tourism Organization said press coverage might be unfair and harmful but "the media is not going to change and it's not going to go away."

SARS and terrorism had "injected fear and negativity into tourism [and] put an end to innocent and carefree travel."

It was up to the industry to turn the page on the bad publicity, putting on an honest and brave face and responding quickly to any other emerging health crises, she said.

Luhrman noted Hong Kong's assiduous updating of its website in terms of progress in treating the disease and safeguards taken to minimize the spread of SARS, something she said China and Singapore failed to do.

De Jong said that a survey of Asian airlines predicted air travel for the region will not return to pre-SARS levels until September, and warned that even when visitor arrivals return to normal, profits may not. He said this was owing to the steep discounts being offered to keep tourism industries in business.

World Tourism Organization secretary-general Francesco Friangelli remained optimistic, noting that "in the history of world tourism, we have never had a depression or a lasting recession."

"Recovery remains a certainty," he told the Manila meeting. "Based on our observations of past crises, the SARS epidemic will only delay recovery but maybe not by more than a few months."
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