More Chinese wanted for ASEAN@50 celebration

As part of the Visit ASEAN@50 2017 campaign, 50 South-east Asia travel packages will be rolled out to highlight the region’s diversity and promote multi-destination travel targeting markets including China.

Wardi bin Haji Mohammad Ali, the campaign chairperson, said: “Together, all 10 ASEAN member states selected 50 cross-border experiences that are accessible to mainstream tourists, culturally respectful and represented core themes that the NTOs are pleased to be associated with.”

The campaign is geared towards such goals as boosting arrivals into South-east Asia from 109 million in 2015 to 121 million by 2017, raising tourism receipts to US$83 billion and increasing visitors’ average length of stay from six to seven days.

China is deemed an important market as ASEAN strives towards these objectives, with ASEAN China Centre’s (ACC) director Kong Roatlomang pointing out that Chinese arrivals into South-east Asia surged 50 per cent to 17 million in 2015.

Elaborating on ACC’s efforts in promoting the region to Chinese tourists, Roatlomang said: “We have produced tourism documentaries focusing on the natural beauty and culture of all South-east Asian countries, translated tourism materials into Chinese and worked with ASEAN member states to organise capacity building programmes on the Chinese outbound market.”

The Visit ASEAN@50 campaign will be officially launched at the ASEAN Tourism Forum in Singapore next January, with TTG as the media partner.
-TTG Asia.