| Abstract: |
This paper discusses the promotion of person-to person (PTP) tourism in the
member-countries of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), focusing on
the ten countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). PTP
can be defined as the cross-border movement of people from one country to
another on a repeated basis for (a) educational, training, or related capacity
building; (b) research and development (R&D) cooperation; (c) police,
constabulary, military, security, or anti-crime assignments; (d) responding to
health epidemics or outbreaks; (e) medical tourism; (f) responding to disaster
or calamity; (g) management of environmental parks and natural resource
assets; (h) local border traffic; and (i) other valid reasons that APEC
countries will deem important. The paper situates PTP tourism in the context
of intra-ASEAN and APEC tourism, discusses the rationale for increasing PTP
tourism, and the current obstacles of doing this. It reviews recent
international practices in promoting PTP tourism through entry and exit
facilitation, identifying general as well as specific programs and policies in
a number of innovating countries. The paper ends with recommendations to
facilitate PTP tourism in ASEAN and APEC.
|