Naewna on June 30, 2018

5-Southern Provinces Tourism Development Project

Last week, I had an opportunity to be the advisor for Prince of Songkla University (PSU)’s Southern-bordered Provincial Cluster Tourism Capacity towards ASEAN: International Cooperation, 5-province Tourist Attractions and Routes and Integrated Tourism Management Strategic and Action Plan Analysis” under the Study for Southern-bordered Provincial Cluster Tourism Capacity Building to attract more tourists from Indonesia and South ASEAN countries. It is a very important project. Former Prime Minister Thaksin mentioned about stupid terrorists more than 10 years ago. 3 southern-bordered provinces still suffer unrest.

The government tries the best to solve this problem. Using military force is not effective. Even though violence relieves, unrest remains.

5-Southern Provinces Tourism Project is important. If people in these provinces have jobs, the peace will come back.

This is the third follow-up activity. In the first phase, it is the cooperation of 2 ASEAN countries.

The project focuses on Indonesia. In this workshop, the Malaysian representative also joined. The representatives from 2 countries: Malaysia and Indonesia are ready to cooperate with Thailand in tourism.

I had an opportunity to join the panel discussion with the other 2 countries representatives and present 2 projects to be concretely executed.

The first proposed project was Youth Camp for 5 provinces and the other 2 countries to be organized in the 5 southern provinces soon.

A good point of youth projects is to promote long-term relationship from school age to working age.

I informed the meeting that I used to be assigned by Ministry of Tourism and Sports to organize ASEAN+3 Youth Network Development under Tourism and Sport Cooperation Strategy Development and Driving Project for AEC 4 years ago. Such experience will promote the great success in the southern region project agreed by the other 2 countries to be organized soon.

The other project was to organize the exchange program for 5 southern provinces community-based tourism representatives to visit neighboring countries. I hope that, in the next meeting, 5 southern provinces community-based tourism representatives will visit Malaysian tourism communities. There will be Malaysian and Indonesian representatives visiting 5 southern provinces soon.         

Finally, 5-province tourism routes project was set up based on these 6 categories.

Category 1 Cultural Tourism/Culinary Tourism/Religious Tourism

Category 2 Marine and Coastal Tourism/ Ecotourism

Category 3 MICE/Shopping

Category 4 Sport Tourism/Adventure Tourism

Category 5 Recreation and Entertainment Tourism/Yachting

Category 6 Health Tourism/ 5 Provinces Integrated Medical Tourism

In this meeting, the representatives from 5 provinces set up 5-province tourism routes which were very valuable and useful for creating future value added to tourism. They will attract more ASEAN tourists.

The point is that besides ASEAN Studies Center of Prince of Songkla University (PSU) drafts the plan and should execute it by cooperating with the other 3 groups: community, public and private sector.

PSU can work as the academic coordinator but work with continuity.

The challenge is to drive 5 province projects without relying on any particular sources of fund.

I proposed that they should raise fund from Ministry of Tourism and Sports especially from the provinces. These cannot be guaranteed.

Finally, I opened the program on “MWA Leaders of the New Decade in 4.0 Era” for 2 classes of future Metropolitan Water Authority (MWA) leaders. Each class had 27 participants sharing experience in the first session last Thursday. MWA leaders have high quality and can well support the government’s Thailand 4.0 policy.

 

Prof. Dr. Chira Hongladarom

Please click this link to see pictures.

https://cdn.gotoknow.org/assets/media/files/001/300/454/original_nn_eng_30062018.pdf?1530783216

Source: Learning from Reality with Dr. Chira Column. Naewna.

             Saturday 30 June 2018, p.5