KUALA LUMPUR, 18 November 2002 — Tourism, especially in an age of supersonic and jumbo jet air travel, has long acquired the status of a mega-industry, especially for those countries endowed with natural beauty, biodiversity, and cultural heritage.
As an industry, the marketing men are continuously trying to add value (albeit primarily to their shareholders) by reinventing tourism camouflaged as the latest craze or fad — danger tourism (white water rafting, bungee jumping off a remote gorge, or swimming unaided with great white sharks off Robben Island in Cape Town or the Great Barrier Reef in Australia); eco-tourism, religious tourism, cultural tourism and rural tourism.
As a service industry it employs millions of people generating billions of dollars of remittances, alongside other sources of national revenues especially for emerging countries — primary commodities, expatriate remittances, assembly and manufacturing. So much so that some countries have become dependent on tourism revenues toward their budgets.
Malaysia, for instance, earned 24.2 billion ringgit (over $6 billion) in 2001 from tourism. This despite the impact of 9/11 on the last quarter of the year. In fact, tourism is the second largest earner in the Malaysian economy after manufacturing (285.3 billion ringgit), but well ahead of crude oil and LNG (liquefied natural gas) at 11.3 billion ringgit each respectively. The 8th Malaysia Plan projects tourism receipts of 22.5 billion ringgit for 2002, rising to just under 30 billion ringgit by end 2005.
Countries such as Egypt, Turkey, Morocco, Tunisia, and Indonesia are even more dependent on tourism both as a revenue and hard currency earner and in job creation.
And yet despite the fact that Muslim countries are among the most generously endowed in terms of natural landscape, biodiversity, heritage and monuments, cuisine, arts and handicrafts, they have spectacularly failed to capitalize on this important and legitimate asset and economic activity, compared to their other rivals.
Muslim tourists, especially from higher income countries, are most likely to visit tourism destinations in North America, Europe, China and East Asia, rather than destinations in Muslim countries.
Perhaps we should not be surprised, for this pattern is repeated time and again in other economic sectors. Intra-Islamic trade, for instance, constitutes a mere 9 percent of the total trade of the 54 member countries of the Islamic Development Bank (IDB). Not that the latter is to blame. It is the sheer inertia and lack of political will on part of most of the member countries. The Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) also recently held a conference of tourism ministers of member countries in Riyadh.
Malaysia’s latest offer of hosting and financing a transnational tourism center to develop and promote intra-Islamic tourism is worth considering seriously. The aim, stresses Datuk Abdullah Jonid, director general of the Malaysian Tourism Promotion Board, is to establish “the machinery that could stimulate a greater working relationship between Muslim countries in the tourism industry.” Datuk Jonid rues the fact that currently there is no such mechanism, “only talking shops”.
Following 9/11 and the recent tragic bombings in Bali, the hour of need for tourism in Muslim countries could not be more dire. At a stroke, Bali and Indonesia’s tourism industry was virtually decimated. It may take years for the Indonesian tourism economy to recover. But such events impact beyond mere borders. Datuk Jonid, for instance rues the “negative press” the ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) have been getting following the Bali tragedy. This despite the fact that countries such as Malaysia, Singapore, Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos are relatively stable and do not have the same security problems as Indonesia.
Tourism as a sector, is just as subject to the vagaries of economic downturn, protectionism, political instability, health scares, lack of infrastructure, and terrorism. Even before 9/11, the US and European economies were on recession alert, which already started to impact on air travel, leisure, and tourism. This was further affected by the rigidity and the lack of transparency in the global airline industry, racked by “protectionist” strategic alliances, “fifth freedom” arrangements, blatant state subsidies (often in defiance of WTO rules), monopolized take-off and landing slots, and so on.
In the UK, the foot and mouth outbreak wreaked havoc on rural tourism, which in turn impacted on the general number of arrivals in the UK.
In the emerging countries in particular, tourism has also fostered a dependency, which unwittingly has held many a developing economy hostage. The reason for this dependency is that these countries target the so-called high-income spenders from the industrialized countries. And when things go wrong or destinations become out of fashion, then the receiving countries have got to cope with the after-effects. Tourists, like fund managers, can be fair-weather friends.
The reality of course is that there are as many high net worth tourists from emerging countries including India, Russia, Malaysia, South Africa, the Gulf states, Singapore, Brazil and so on. For instance, according to the Malaysians, Saudi tourists visiting Malaysia have the highest average per capita expenditure at 3,278.2 ringgit with an average length of stay of 10.2 days. Their median age is about 37 years old, of which 83.2 percent are male and the remainder female. The overwhelming number of Gulf visitors come as independent tourists as opposed to package tours.
In any case mass tourism from the industrialized countries is generally possible if it involves short-haul flights to destinations. That is why the Mediterranean destinations attract mass tourists from northern Europe and the Caribbean resorts from North America.
However, as the extremists attacks on a tourist bus in Luxor in Egypt and Kurdish guerrilla attacks on Turkish resorts and cities; and the fallout from the Gulf War, have shown in the past, even mass tourism can dissipate at the slightest sign of trouble. Ironically, Spain has not suffered as badly as say Egypt and Turkey, when terrorist incidents have struck, even though the Basque terrorist group ETA has had a much more sustained campaign against Spanish political, economic, and tourism targets in recent years.
Tourists are an asset, because they generate consumption and therefore expenditure and revenues. Muslim tourists are no exception. Given the humiliating treatment of many Muslims entering the US, Canada, and some European countries post 9/11, tourism promotion boards in Muslim and other emerging countries ought to be rubbing their hands in glee and capitalizing on this market opportunity. Sooner or later the sector will correct itself and the Western paranoia will recede. By that time it may be too late to leverage this niche opportunity.