A new online portal on tourism safety for South-east Asia

The ASEAN Tourism Security and Safety Resource Centre will be launched next year to provide information on matters concerning disaster management, safety and security.

The online portal, to debut during the ASEAN Tourism Forum held in Naypyidaw in January, will be managed by the ASEAN Secretariat in Jakarta and will contain standard operating procedures and resources on safety and security such as managing bomb threats, pandemics and natural disasters.

Alexander Kesper, team leader ASEAN – EU Emergency Management Programme, said the materials were a collection of knowledge from ASEAN NTOs and the private sector.

“The information will be available for free on the website to tourism industry players and is meant to be a living project (to be continuously improved upon)."

Explaining that the new ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) brings opportunities as well as risks, Kesper said that when natural disasters occur in one country, it will have an impact on arrivals to other member countries, as South-east Asia is seen as a single region rather than individual countries. Kesper was speaking yesterday at the one-day PATA Hub City Forum in Kuala Lumpur, which discussed the impact of AEC on regional tourism.

AEC2015 will transform the region into a single market and production base and, by 2016, open labour flows of skilled tourism professionals within South-east Asia under the ASEAN Mutual Recognition Arrangement (MRA) on Tourism Professionals initiative. ASEAN authorities, however, are still working on concerns regarding the MRA.

Ong Hong Peng, secretary-general of the Ministry of Tourism and Culture of Malaysia, said a framework has to be put in place before the MRA is introduced.

The MRA comprises 32 job titles under six divisions (housekeeping, front office, food production, F&B services, travel consultants and tour operators) but ASEAN NTOs are still discussing “what levels will be open”, said Ong.

Mohamed Nazri Abdul Aziz, minister of tourism and culture, Malaysia, said in his keynote address: “Measures to enhance the capacity and capability of tourism industry players are being implemented to address the risk of brain drain.”

Meanwhile, the regional secretariat for the implementation of MRA will be established in Indonesia next year.

-TTG Asia.