LAOS PUTS OUT WELCOME MAT
Country diversifies offerings in hopes of becoming more than an add-on for visitors to Southeast Asia.
Tourism attractions more diversified
It is Saturday afternoon in tourist high season, and Vientiane is very quiet. Most shops are closed for the weekend. A couple of Asian tour groups ascend the Patuxai, the Lao capital’s answer to the Arc de Triomphe. On every floor, stalls are packed with five-year-old photocopies of the Lonely Planet guide to Laos, fake antiques and communist flags, while vendors relax in deckchairs.
Down the road at the government tourism office, things are a little more animated. Staff are preparing promotional material for the Asean Tourism Forum 2018 (ATF) in Chiang Mai, where Laos had a booth in late January.
“We will receive the festival agenda in a few days, come back on Monday!” shouts the woman in charge, before handing out a free map, pen and fan to foreign visitors.
With the slogan “Simply Beautiful”, Laos officially kicked off its Visit Laos 2018 campaign in November. The country is aiming for 5 million international travellers this year. Tourism accounts for 9% of gross domestic product and is one of the government’s 11 priority development sectors. But in 2017, total arrivals declined by 10%, for the second consecutive year. The all-time high of 4.7 million international arrivals was set in 2015.
Only the number of Chinese visitors rose from 2016 to 2017. Visitors from Europe and the United States fell by a third, and there also was a considerable decline in the number of high-end tourists from South Korea and Japan.
Visit Laos 2018 aims to reverse the trend. The country is sending teams to the ATF and to ITB in Berlin, the world’s biggest tourism trade show, and to events in Paris, London, Japan, Korea, China and Singapore. Official websites for different provinces and a festival calendar have also been launched.
“Hmong New Year in Ponsawan, boat racing festival in Vientiane, Loy Krathong in Luang Prabang, Lao New Year throughout the country, those are good ways for tourists to engage with the local community,” said Stefan Scheerer, general manager for Khiri Travel Laos, a destination management company focused on Southeast Asia.
“There is huge potential for development here in the next three to five years. We currently sell 1,500 packages a year for Laos while we shift 5,000 in Myanmar.”
The tourism industries of Laos and Myanmar share similar challenges: Domestic flights are expensive, road links are limited and quality accommodation is in short supply. Overall travel costs are higher than in Thailand or Vietnam, as almost everything is imported from those countries. Education opportunities in the tourism sector remain scarce.
With the help of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), Laos has published a Destination Management Plan (2016-18), proposing task forces in areas such as marketing and promotion, hospitality skills, guide training, and responsible tourism.
“In some provinces, the task forces have set up Facebook pages and WhatsApp accounts where people can contribute,” said one consultant. “This country doesn’t ‘do’ face-to-face confrontation and there is no room for civil society, so an online discussion on the country’s tourism could be a good start.”
Meanwhile, the private sector runs its own initiatives. Hotel owners offer extensive discounts, and the Japan International Cooperation Agency is involved in waste management. The celebrated Luang Prabang Film Festival, Vang Vieng Music Festival, and International Jazz Day Vientiane are putting the country on the contemporary culture map.
Mickael Perier, who runs Le Trio Coffee in Vientiane, is the organiser of the Vientiane jazz festival scheduled for April. “I want to create the Marciac or Angouleme of Southeast Asia,” he said, referring to famous jazz festivals in France. “This year, I’m trying to become part of Visit Laos 2018. But it’s difficult to know who to talk to.”
This lack of communication crops up again and again. A long-term investor in Laos said: “Tourism creates local jobs that the government doesn’t have to provide, but the absence of a dedicated Ministry of Tourism has been a problem for a long time. Government officials are suspicious of foreign advisers but they are desperately in need of technical assistance. Only the ADB is involved in tourism in a meaningful way, but it is mostly focused on infrastructure and has a limited in-country presence.”
Better connectivity is part of a regional plan funded by the ADB, with new routes that aim to increase tourist traffic in the lesser-known towns of Laos, Thailand and Vietnam are in the pipeline.
Laos has long been considered an add-on destination. Some 70% of international visitors to Laos also pass through other countries, such as Thailand (60%), Vietnam (53%), and Cambodia and China on their travels. “Laos doesn’t have beaches so the key is a multi-country tour and to make sure Laos is part of the trip. We have to sell a natural and quiet destination, the Sleeping Orchid, to make a difference,” said Scheerer.
To make crossing into Laos more convenient, visa exemptions for citizens from Scandinavian countries have been announced for 2018, adding to bilateral visa exemption agreements with the other nine Asean member states, along with Mongolia and Russia. Laos has also extended unilateral visa exemptions to nationals from Japan, South Korea, Luxembourg and Switzerland. Visa exemptions or not, the Asian market is the future of tourism in Laos.
Inthy Deuansavan, president of the travel agency Green Discovery, says the industry faces challenges as a result of this shift.
“European and Asian tourists have different expectations. We need to develop different products for different categories of tourists,” he said. “Of the 4 million arrivals, 75% come from Thailand and Vietnam, many others are Korean and Chinese and most come only once. The government is focused on numbers; they want more tourists. But it would also be good to have tourists who stay longer, or who spend more money locally.”
Nowhere is the dramatic shift in arrivals more visible than in Vang Vieng, formerly a magnet for hard-partying young Westerners drifting down the picturesque Song River in old inner tubes. After too many fatalities and bad media coverage, the government stopped the party in 2012. Since then, Vang Vieng has reinvented itself as an outdoor adventure destination and has morphed into a Little Korea.
Since the broadcast of a reality TV show shot in the area in 2014, more than 100,000 South Koreans have descended on the town every year. No wonder French hotel owner Stephane Vigie is looking for a Korean-speaking intern for his Riverside Boutique Resort.
Vigie faces daunting challenges to promote luxury sustainable tourism in bustling Vang Vieng. “This hotel represents what I like about Laos, its rich cultural diversity and nature. The buildings draw inspiration from different ethnic groups and I try to source food, furniture and decorations locally,” he said.
“But just across the river, illegal multi-storey buildings go up, techno music blares next to drinking huts in the evenings and very little is done about it. Of course, it’s not easy for local authorities to manage the very rapid changes that are taking place with their limited resources and technical expertise, and I hope things will settle down with time.”
Two hundred kilometres farther north, surrounded by mountains, lies Luang Prabang, a magical former royal capital crammed with temples and French Indochinese architecture. Unesco world heritage status has helped protect the city from inappropriate development. But almost every building is a tourist enterprise — a restaurant, hotel, guesthouse, boutique souvenir shop or spa — and foreigners pass other foreigners in a city restored by foreigners.
Luang Prabang can feel like a museum, with the locals gone and the tourists on a never-ending treadmill of short hops — the average stay is two days. While visitors sip coffee for US$2 in expertly renovated rooms that cost $100 a night, families living in the hamlets across the Mekong hunt squirrels with home-made traps and kill birds with slingshots.
That is why talk of diversification resonates among industry participants. While Vang Vieng, Luang Prabang and the 4,000 Islands region in the south lure 95% of the tourists, other provinces try to attract hardy travellers. Thakhek, near the Thai border, has become a renowned centre for rock climbing, and Sayaboury is host to an exemplary learning centre about elephants. Its founder Sebastien Guillot currently welcomes 2,500 visitors per year. “Laos is a country where one needs time. Our sanctuary is aimed at travellers who are not in a hurry.”
War tourism is another fledgling industry, something Vietnam has successfully exploited. Traces of the Lao involvement in the “American war” in Indochina — the caves of Viengxay, the Plain of Jars and the former CIA airfield of Long Cheng — all have potential to attract those interested in history.
But perhaps the biggest challenge to expanding eco- and history-based tourism rests with the explosion of infrastructure.
A few kilometres north of Luang Prabang, a giant construction site heralds the arrival of a train line that will run from Kunming in southern China all the way to Vientiane and into Thailand. The railway is supposed to be in operation in late 2021. An eight-lane highway will run parallel to the railway tracks. Along the Nam Ou River, four dam projects are carving up the idyllic landscape.
Veosy Soumpholphakdy, general manager of Sala Prabang, a beautifully restored heritage hotel in Luang Prabang, feels positive about the increased connectivity.
“Travelling in Laos is still very time-consuming and the train will add value to our destination,” he said.
He acknowledges the project will cause the resettlement of hundreds of people and the destruction of some natural areas. “Some places and some people will be sacrificed in the name of development. The provinces that currently contain special economic zones, such as the area between Luang Prabang and Luang Namtha and all the way up to the Chinese border will feel it, but most of those are already near urban centres.”
Inthy sees a way to help resolve these clashes of interest. “The hilltribes in the north have been driven off their land and some river cruises have stopped because of the dams. The Ministry of Tourism wants to promote sustainable tourism but that often conflicts with plans made by other ministries.
“The key is zoning: The ministries should work together to divide the country into distinctive zones used for different purposes and strive for better local implementation of decisions made in Vientiane.”
“The government is focused on numbers; they want more tourists. But it would also be good to have tourists who stay longer, or who spend more money locally” INTHY DEUANSAVAN Green Discovery