ASEAN. Southeast Asia. Feel the heat, man

The new tourism campaign by ASEAN, built around a website using Wego meta search technology, is promising more than warmth; it's turned up the heat in the media. Yeoh Siew Hoon watches from the sidelines.

The new tourism campaign, launched by ASEAN countries at the ASEAN Tourism Forum this week, will be remembered not only for the warmth that it promises travellers but also for the heat it's run into from two of the region's prominent travel journalists.

Even before the launch, Thailand-based journalists, Imtiaz Muqbil and Don Ross, in a joint article, had questioned the rationale behind ditching the term "ASEAN" for "Southeast Asia" in the new campaign built around the slogan, "Southeast Asia: feel the warmth".

In a lengthy dispatch, they called the campaign "fundamentally flawed in concept" and said it was "based on a raft of questionable consultancy advice and poor research".

"It has the potential to confuse consumers and the market and dilute the power of the ASEAN brand. Nor does it meet any of the wider objectives of the ASEAN leaders to build an ASEAN identity, one of the primary goals of the ASEAN socio-cultural integration process" ... and added that, "ASEAN tourism industry leaders will have much to answer for if this entire exercise falls flat."

Essentially, they argued that given the success of the Visit ASEAN campaign in 2002, it made sense that the region stick to using the ASEAN brand.

At the media launch in Brunei, hosts of the 2010 ATF, they followed up with their questions.

A follow-up article by Imtiaz Muqbil said "the ministers dodged questions about whether they would now create a website that would give equal weight to a campaign promoting ASEAN, the actual name of the association, especially as many of them have bought into the ACE Project's claim that "ASEAN" reflects a political entity rather than an invitation to visit the region.

"They also ducked a question seeking assurance that their national tourism organisations would provide fair and equal treatment in terms of marketing support to all operators of travel websites in ASEAN, including those which will be seen to be competing with the new www.southeastasia.org website in future."

The ACE (ASEAN Competitiveness Enhancement) Project was designed and funded by the United States Agency for International Development. It jointly created the new campaign with ASEANTA (ASEAN Tourism Association) in collaboration, it says, with the 10 ASEAN member countries of Southeast Asia.

The new campaign is essentially being built around a website, SoutheastAsia.org, which will act as the primary marketing tool. It will target tourists in medium and long haul markets such as the UK, Australia, India, North America and Hong Kong.

The decision to ditch ASEAN in favour of "Southeast Asia" was made based on the thinking that the latter has greater recognition in international source markets than ASEAN. The decision to build the campaign around a website, which will use travel search technology provided by Wego, is the belief that consumers are moving towards meta-search tools and user generated content in planning and booking their holidays.

Asked if using the Southeast Asia brand at this stage could confuse the consumer especially when it is launched and sponsored by an ASEAN entity, ACE Project Director, RJ Gurley (left in picture above), told WIT, "No, we are confident this campaign will not confuse the consumer. Travelers do not confuse the European Union with Europe. Tourists are invited to Visit Europe, not the European Union.

"It is important to note that we are not creating a new destination brand. Southeast Asia is already one of the best known, most valuable regional destination brands in the world. There are over a dozen popular tourist guide books which market Southeast Asia as the tourism destination brand. For example, the Lonely Planet has been marketing Southeast Asia on a Shoestring for 35 years.

"The target market for the "feel the warmth" campaign is the intermediate and longhaul markets of Australia, India, North America and the UK, France, and Germany. The vast majority of people in these markets were never aware that there ever was a Visit ASEAN campaign. So those consumers will not be confused by Southeast Asia being marketed as a world class tourist destination.

"To the extent that there was a target market for the Visit ASEAN campaign, it was intra-ASEAN travel. Certainly those within the ASEAN region who are familiar with ASEAN know the difference between ASEAN and Southeast Asia."

Gurley added, "Every marketing campaign has a sponsor. Consumers do not confuse Amazing Thailand with the Tourism Authority of Thailand or the Indian Ministry of Tourism with the Incredible India campaign.

"By identifying ASEAN as a supporter of the "Southeast Asia: feel the warmth" campaign and including the ASEAN logo and web-link on the www.SoutheastAsia.org website, we are leveraging the well-known Southeast Asia brand to introduce ASEAN to those outside of the region that are not familiar with ASEAN, the social/cultural security, and economic community. We are confident that more people will learn about ASEAN through this campaign than during the 10-year Visit ASEAN campaign."

Wego is responsible for providing the meta-search technology and Travel Planner tool (coming soon) for the website. CEO Martin Symes (pictured top) said, "For us this is another partnership such as the ones we have with various large portals, NTO's, airports and others around the region where we provide travel search applications and/or websites to support their business. We see providing these solutions as a key part of our core business."

Another Singapore firm, Qais, developed the site and will build traveler awareness of SoutheastAsia.org through a sustained e-marketing campaign. Symes said the site was designed with SEO in mind.

According to Gurley, a total of US$90,000 has been invested in developing the website, travel planner, and incorporating the Wego meta-search technology. "We also have a full-time knowledge management and communications specialist and a marketing/content manager on staff that dedicate a large portion of their time to the website development and content management.

"We plan to commit an additional US$500,000 to an online marketing campaign for www.SoutheastAsia.org during the first year. We also intend to participate in the major international and regional trade shows, where we will market the website."

One of the key ideas of the website is to help "small and medium-sized tourism enterprises showcase their tourism services to a wider audience", said Felix J. Cruz (right in picture), Chairman of the ASEAN Tourism Association (ASEANTA) and Vice President for Marketing at Philippine Airlines at the launch.

Building content as well as driving traffic thus will be key challenges.

Explaining the business model, Symes said, "Primarily the travel supplier pays either a cost-per-click for referrals received from the site or a subscription fee for having its content included; just as on Wego.com today. We will display live prices for those players who have online booking engines and static prices for those who do not."

As for developing content, Symes said the immediate initiative would be a post-launch email blast to ASEAN-based suppliers. "Ideally we will work with ASEANTA member country travel trade associations in these efforts. The mechanisms are in place for all suppliers, whatever their size, to be included."

Asked for deliverables, Gurley said, "The objectives of the campaign are to get more travelers from outside the region to visit more than one country in the region, to stay longer, and to spend more money here.

"The major objective of the ACE Project as regards this activity is a successful transfer of a financially sustainable marketing campaign, the website, and the tourism marketing center over to ASEANTA by the end of the ACE project in 2013. This will be a phased transition or turnkey operation over the next three years."

Commenting on the ASEAN vs Southeast Asia controversy, an expert working in the online travel space said, "Of course Southeast Asia is a better brand for longhaul markets. I would bet only a tiny fraction of the target market groups in North America, Europe and Australasia would be able to articulate accurately what ASEAN is.

"Which is preferable..."Visit EU" or "Visit Europe". Look at the UK - it's "Visit Britain", not "Visit the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland". The point is that concessions are often made for marketing expediency. And it's not like it's being called "nearorient.com" or something ridiculous like that....it is the Association of South East Asian Nations for heaven's sake.

"This is a B2C initiative (not a B2B one like Visit ASEAN was). Given minimal marketing budgets, if this is going to work, it needs to develop good SEO rankings and people planning trips to Southeast Asia will type in keywords related to exactly that, not to ASEAN. As someone who many years ago would have been a key target demographic for this website, I believe this is absolutely the right move."

Right move or not, what matters now is that this new and latest initiative to group the region under one common umbrella, notably in the consumer space, does not get bogged down in ASEAN politicking and bureaucracy and that it gets the full support of the private sector.

Building a new brand in the crowded and competitive online travel space will be challenging enough, and ACE and its partners must live up to their promise to deliver. Otherwise, well, there will be at least two people waiting to say, "I told you so".