Ho Kwon Ping, chairman of Laguna ResortsTourism leader maps out ideas to boost Asia's drawing power.
People from developed countries equate quaint, picturesque scenery with exoticism, while indigenous people equate it with poverty.
Asia's post-crisis quest for sustainable growth is reaching the tourism industry, which critics charge has focused on short-term profits at the expense of workers, the environment, local communities and customers. Sharp calls for reform have come from one of the industry's most successful entrepreneurs - Ho Kwon Ping, chairman of Laguna Resorts and the acclaimed Banyan Tree hotels and spas. In 1999, the Pacific Asia Travel Association named him Leader of the Year.
The Singaporean has won a reputation for practicing what he preaches. In creating the Laguna complex on the Thai island of Phuket, for example, Ho transformed a barren and polluted stretch of abandoned tin mines into a lush, gardened compound that now attracts migratory birds and other wildlife. Ho's hotels in Thailand, Bintan and the Maldives have won recognition for green practices. The International Hotel Association named Laguna Phuket winner of its Environmental Award in 1992. Ho, who also chairs Singapore Power Co, recently spoke with Asian Business on the Internet's growing role in Asian tourism and how governments can boost the industry.
AB: The economic crisis has pressured Asian countries to make more money from tourism. But do the economic benefits of tourism really outweigh the costs?
Ho: There's no pat answer. You can point to quite a number of countries, particularly developing countries, where tourism has resulted in a ravaging of the environment, exploitation of local culture, degradation of the society and so on. You can also think of cases where tourism has had a tremendous beneficial impact on the economy and has hardly been detrimental. Two great examples are the UK and France. France has the greatest number of inbound tourists of any country in the world. And the French are still very French. Tourism remains a big contributor to the economy. So I think it's how you handle tourism and its social and cultural impact that makes all the difference.
Thailand has done a pretty good job. Obviously one can point to the big glaring problems - sex tourism and so on - but despite these problems, Thailand remains a very attractive place for people to come to and - not just for sex. The rest of Thai culture remains uniquely Thai.
The challenge for a country like Thailand is to see how it can manage tourism in the 21st century. How does tourism fit into the New Economy? That's a big question a number of societies have to answer.
AB: What will be the role of the Internet in tourism?
Ho: Tourism is one of the sectors like banking where the Internet will have the greatest impact in intermediating between the consumer and the producer, more so than e-retailing. Tourism has got all the attributes that lend it to tremendous intermediation by the Internet. First, it's a totally global industry. Second, the industry is probably one of the most fragmented in the world. You've got more small players in this industry than you've got in many other industries. Unlike the automobile industry, the airline industry, and so on, where a handful of big enterprises dominate, tourism is not dominated by any major players at all.
It's also one of the industries that has the greatest economic linkages - lots of connections with other industries. Visit any travel Website and you can see all the hyperlinks they have to anything conceivable.
AB: There's now a clear trend towards niche tourism of all sorts: ecotourism, cultural tourism, new destinations, adventure travel, boutique hotels. Do you think the Internet will give small businesses in these niches an advantage against bigger players such as Laguna Resorts?
Ho: The Net will create a more level playing field. Before, the large companies had all the marketing power. You needed a lot of money to reach a large market. Today, you put yourself on the Web, you advertise yourself vigorously, and immediately you reach a global audience.
Say you are a niche tourism operator, specializing in only balloon flights in the middle of Swaziland. In the past, what would you have done with that? You would be totally dependent on one or two large wholesalers. And they would squeeze every possible penny of profit out of you. Now you put yourself on the Web, make your site attractive, and you link yourself with other kinds of things and you can make a viable business out of it.
It will change the balance of market power. Look at the hotel industry. In the past, we all know that out of the total number of hotel establishments in the world, probably only 10% are largish hotels. And probably even less than 10% in number are linked to any international chain. The rest are your small mom-and-pop type operations which were totally powerless before to have international clientele except by doing link-ups with big tour operators. Today you can be a little bed-and-breakfast in the middle of Czechoslovakia and you have people logging onto your Website and paying rack rate. The balance of market power has totally shifted in favour of the smaller operator.
AB: Will the Internet change the experience of travel?
Ho: I think FIT - free, independent travel - will boom, over tours. Tours were set up for people who basically didn't know enough about the world outside to go and do their own thing. So they had to join a tour. But now you can structure your own tour. Tour operators now have to figure out what they can bring to the client to add value. Otherwise the client will create his own tour.
AB: You've said that with the increasing homogenisation of the world, there's a growing awareness that a destination's uniqueness is what makes it valuable. But the development of tourism in a place tends to homogenise it, make it more like other places. How do you keep a destination unique and authentic?
Ho: This is certainly one of the biggest dangers of modern tourism - that you homogenise the world. It's like the fast-food industry. Homogeneity is the real goal of the fast-food industry. That's the problem with it around the world. Mass tourism has certainly got that problem. You can imagine beach resorts around the world all beginning to look alike. That's why you see people trying to find niches to go into. Ecotourism, adventure tourism, cultural tourism, and so on. That's going to be a big challenge and I'm not sure what the answer is.
In some ways I don't see the danger occurring because of the Internet. I think if not for the Internet, you would see an increasing homogenisation of the travel industry. With the Internet, it truly empowers the small enterprises, it empowers the free independent traveller, and so now instead of a homogenous industry, you've got millions of people all creating their own little special tour packages, their own little special trips, with all their idiosyncratic features to it. You've got greater potential for diversity with the Internet.
AB: What do governments in Asia need to do on behalf of tourism that they aren't doing now?
Ho: It varies from country to country. Tourism infrastructure is one thing. It's not just physical infrastructure. Governments really have to understand tourism. And that's relatively complicated because unlike the ball-bearing industry or the electronics industry, the tourism industry permeates the whole economy. The electronics industry is pretty straightforward. You can actually create a physical place, an industrial park, set it up properly, give the proper incentives, you deliver the proper physical infrastructure and skilled people. Then you can pretty much develop an industry. In tourism though, everything that the tourist encounters from the day he arrives in the country to the day he leaves impacts on his experience in the country, and impacts on whether he will come back again or not.
If the government is going to try to be positive in assisting the tourism industry, I don't think it needs to do it just by giving incentives. It basically has to sit down and look systematically at what actually happens to a tourist from the day he arrives to the day he leaves. What are all the things he connects with, and all the potentially negative experiences he can have, starting with the airport, the traffic police, etc. How then can I as a government make that whole experience as positive as possible? Tourism promotion is just a part of it.
AB: In what ways can government improve the tourists' experience?
Ho: Protection of the environment is one. Security, hygiene and sanitation, safety. I'm referring more to developing countries, where the tourism infrastructure is particularly frail.
I think governments certainly should be more cognizant of the importance of tourism in their own economies and do things that are going to encourage tourism, rather than destroy it.
I think there's a real role for national tourism coordinating bodies and a need for governments to come up with national development plans for tourism. Right now, it's pretty much left alone. When they do have plans for tourism, they are pretty much dictated by easily visible projects, rather than recognising that improving a whole host of little things all over the place is more important than one big symbolic project.
AB: What are some examples of "big symbolic projects"?
Ho: Building a big airport or convention centre that may not be necessary. Or overdependence on the numbers game - "This year we have got 6 million tourists. Next year it should be 6.4." You fixate yourself on a few highly visible things, whether it be numbers or national projects, rather than the little things. Like listing the 100 experiences that a tourist goes through that could be negative, and then figuring out how the government could make those experiences positive. That ranges from sanitation in restaurants, to less corruption against tourists to more efficient infrastructure at airports, better police, a whole range of things which you could easily list. That would have a lot of impact, but these are not big symbolic things.
AB: It sounds like something officials in Singapore would do, doesn't it?
Ho: I didn't want to say so because it sounds self-serving, but the irony is that if you do all those things, it doesn't mean you are going to be a more attractive tourism destination. Singapore may not have had that much going for it, but by doing all these things, we have become very attentive to what we think the tourist wants. We make the experience as positive as possible within the constraints that we have.
AB: Do people in Phuket get together and say, We are going to support candidates who really have a vision of how tourism should develop here?
Ho: There's a political maturing that Thailand as a whole is going through. It's not just Phuket. I think the entire polity of Thailand is going through that with the recent Senate elections. It's not just in Thailand. It's happening in Taiwan. The whole political process of modernisation is occurring across Asia, whether it be Korea, Taiwan, Thailand or Indonesia. It's obviously going to impact on peoples' demands on the government regarding tourism. That's just one facet of it. They are demanding a lot, holding their politicians a lot more accountable than they used to, which is a good sign.
AB: Does the failure to conserve architectural heritage, historic buildings and districts, threaten the vitality of tourism in Asia?
Ho: In some ways, yes. It's a complex issue because on the one hand, there is a need on the part of people who live in these developing countries to improve their own livelihoods. There's an inherent tension between people from developed countries who equate quaint, picturesque scenery with exoticism, while indigenous people equate it with poverty.
The picturesqueness of Chinatown, Hanoi with its unspoiled street scenes, Rangoon with its exoticism - from an Asian point of view this is the legacy of poverty.
The answer is not one of keeping Asia and the developing world poor in order to have this authenticity. The answer is to find new uses for old buildings rather than tearing them down. There's a term in urban sociology called "adaptive reuse". It's done quite well in the United States and elsewhere. It's taking derelict buildings in port areas, for example, and turning them into thriving commercial buildings. It's a way to marry development needs with some sense of identity. Adaptive reuse could be applied to quite a lot of precincts in Southeast Asia.
If the new uses are not oriented for a strictly foreign tourist market, but for the local people's own needs, then the authenticity will be greater. For example, in Singapore they are giving old buildings to arts groups. There you get a thriving arts and theatre scene that attracts both locals and foreigners. It's a true and modern authenticity. Tourists increasingly tend to shun attractions that are developed purely with the tourist in mind.
AB: Looking at tourism destinations around the world, where do you see some of the best models for improving destinations in Asia?
Ho: I don't think you need to look for models in terms of copying something. What tourism needs is good governance, responsible policies on the environment, virtually everything. If you have good fundamentals, you have the fundamentals of a good tourism policy.
AB: What's your own idea of Paradise?
Ho: It's part of my business to look for paradises, so I don't really have one. For beach and sun, I like the Maldives. Discovering little inns and vineyards in Europe is a lot of fun. My wife and I go off and drive around Tuscany, Scotland, Ireland. That's really getting away. I always look for very small places. After you've been in this business, you develop an aversion to big hotels. If it's small and intimate it can be anywhere in the world, from Katmandu to Tuscany to the Maldives.