Tourism
Political Backing To Go After the Money
Tourism's regional role boosted
The South Pacific Tourism Organisation (SPTO) has won the political clout it needs for more success in winning money from aid donors, according to chief executive Lisiate ŒAkolo. But SPTO, set up by Pacific Islands governments in the mid 1980s, is in doubt about future support from the Papua New Guinea Tourism Promotion Authority.
Four influential regional institutions have given SPTO endorsements it needs in lobbying internationally for funds to spur the growth of tourism as a key Pacific Islands economic priority. China and South Korea have been invited to become full SPTO members and New Zealand has been approached.
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And the European Union, which terminated its budget support for the SPTO last May, has been asked to fund such appointments as a fulltime fundraiser and a webmaster.
Akolo told Pacific Magazine that SPTO was moving towards becoming more financially independent.
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Pacific Islands governments established the SPTO as the region¹s official tourism development agency. It has the primary job of creating an international image for the Pacific Islands region as a tourist destination. But it is also engaged in training, statistics, market research and other roles.
For 15 years most of its funding came from the European Union. This operating budget support ended last May. But the European Union undertook to continue funding for specific projects. Last April tourism ministers from the 13 countries represented by SPTO agreed to amendments to its constitution to allow other countries and organisations to become full members. The motive for this is to widen the SPTO's opportunities for recruiting fee-paying supporters.
"So far we have invited South Korea and China," Akolo said. "We have unofficially floated the idea with New Zealand. The two issues are that New Zealand Tourism is a private statutory body. We want New Zealand as a country. They are interested. "We asked non-regional countries to be associate members in the past. But most were not keen on it because there would be no voting rights. That is why we changed the constitution. "We will work on New Zealand to see their reaction before going to Canberra."
Akolo said that this year four high level conferences had endorsed or reaffirmed tourism, and SPTO's role in promoting the industry as deserving separate official status as being one of the region's key industries.
It had been categorised before as being just a trade and industry sector. This had caused difficulty in persuading donors to channel funds specifically to tourism development projects.
"Blessing" had come from the Forum Economic Ministers Meeting (FEMM); Pacific Group of the African, Caribbean, Pacific (ACP) National/Regional Authorising Officers meeting; SPTO Council of Ministers meeting; and Pacific Islands Conference of Leaders.
"They have been quite vocal in their statements and we have received enough recognition and endorsement to work at the present time," he said. Akolo, who became SPTO¹s chief executive last year, has in recent months travelled extensively to strength relations with the 13 national tourist offices which are SPTO members.
Tahiti's attitude was: "Whatever you do we are very supportive of it and want to stick around. They have no intention to move away."
New Caledonia's national office closed at the beginning of the year to be replaced by separate offices for the North, South and Loyalty Islands provincial governments.
"We have not been updated. The last time we spoke to them was just before they split up," Akolo said. "We are looking more to working with Loyalty Islands and Northern Province because they are less developed."
SPTO had learnt earlier this year that late last year the Papua New Guinea Tourism Promotion Authority had decided to withdraw from SPTO. But membership of SPTO was really at government, not tourist office level. Since the authority's decision all but one of the members of its board had been replaced. A recently appointed chief executive had also gone. Tourism Promotion Authority¹s relationship with SPTO awaited clarification.
"Whatever the people in Port Moresby feel, New Britain and the other outer islands would like us to conduct training for them and arrange attachments," said Akolo.
Akolo said that in asking the Papua New Guinea office to reconsider its decision he had pointed out several issues. "SPTO is a regional organisation and its interests are to promote regional interests. It is not the duty of national tourist organisations or tourist offices to promote individual countries against what SPTO is doing. "A lot of countries raise the questions of what do they get from SPTO as a nation rather than as a region collectively. They tend to forget that we are promoting the region rather than individual countries themselves. "At the same time SPTO should recognise the needs of these individual countries, and as pointed out by PNG the kind of promotion and marketing SPTO has done with European Union money has been mainly for big tourist operators and hotels. "This is something I am working very hard to correct. We have been accused of neglecting the interests of smaller countries and companies."
Akolo said the end of European Union budget was a "blessing in disguise" because it had forced the SPTO to look for other sources of funding. He was in contact with several prospective new donors. Taiwan has just made SPTO a grant of US$40,000.
SPTO plans to develop some lines of commercial business for itself. "We are working on that idea to do bookings (for travel, tours and hotels) through our website - www.spto.org. Everybody, including donors, have been saying SPTO should be financially self sustainable. We have not done anything serious about that, to be honest.
"We have asked the European Union to provide someone to evaluate what we have done in the past and set up a workshop at which stakeholders and donors tell us what we should be doing, and what we have been doing is right or wrong."
The SPTO had received a draft regional strategic plan and wanted a business plan. He hoped that SPTO's members would accept the strategic plan before the end of this year.
