ASEAN tourism ministers and their counterparts from their three partner nations – China , Japan and the Republic of Korea – convened their 8 th meeting in Hanoi on Jan. 8.

The meeting was jointly chaired by Vietnamese Vice Minister of Culture, Sports and Tourism Tran Chien Thang and Brunei ’s Minister of Industry and Primary Resources Pehin Dato Yahya.

ASEAN tourism ministers informed the three partner nations of their preferential tourist programmes, intended to reduce the extent of the global economic slowdown’s impacts on tourism, and called for support from the partner countries. The campaign, focusing on stimulating and developing youth tourism, will offer competitively-priced package tours to new destinations and design a schedule of events aimed at young people in order to promote travel between ASEAN countries and to the three partner countries using air, road and sea routes.

The ministers from the three partner countries spoke of their tourist cooperation with ASEAN states, pointing out that China has provided free stalls for ASEAN member countries and the ASEAN Secretariat at the China International Travel Mart (CITM), facilitated the construction of an ASEAN stall and promoted ASEAN sea routes at the fair. A seminar focusing on Chinese travelers has been organised, alongside training programmes for ASEAN tourism trainees, in order to help ASEAN countries perfect their tourist products and fine-tune their plans to attract tourists from the world’s most populous nation.

Japanese officials held an ASEAN Tourism Fair in Kita-Kyushu city in August last year and have organised tourism training courses in Japan for ASEAN members and launched a tourism-related competition for students. This year, Japan plans to enhance its cooperation with ASEAN member nations, focusing primarily on the sea travel and youth tourism markets.

The RoK has launched a Korean training course and introduced Korean culture to ASEAN guides and officials between July and August 2008. An ASEAN-RoK Centre, established earlier this year, will serve to promote investment, tourism and cultural cooperation. Most notably, the centre’s tourism and culture department will provide a range of relevant services, such as the organisation of cultural events, tourism promotion programmes and the provision of information on tourism resources.

Despite the impact of the global financial crisis, the number of visitor arrivals in ASEAN+ 3 countries reached 93 million in 2008, an increase of 7.49 percent over the previous year.

China , Japan and the RoK remain the most important markets for the ASEAN tourism sector, supplying a total of more than 9.1 million tourists, accounting for more than 19 percent of the total number of foreign visitors to ASEAN countries.

On the same day, the third working day of the ASEAN Tourism Forum, a number of other tourism-related meeting also took place in Hanoi . These included meetings of ASEAN tourism ministers, the ASEAN Airlines Association, the ASEAN Hotel and Restaurant Association, the Federation of ASEAN Travel Associations, and Directors’ Board of the ASEAN Tourism Association. (VNA)