Interviews

Interviews with the most important professionals and leaders of the travel and marketing online sectors.

Peter de Jong, President and CEO of PATA (Pacific Asia Travel Association)

Published on 24/04/2008

What is PATA? What are its goals and mission statement?

Founded in 1951, the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) is the leading authority, advocate and catalyst for the responsible development of Asia Pacific’s travel and tourism industry.

PATA provides leadership and advocacy to the collective efforts of nearly 100 government, state and city tourism bodies, more than 55 airlines and cruise lines, and hundreds of travel industry companies. In addition, thousands of travel professionals belong to a global network of PATA chapters.

How many associates does PATA have?

PATA has more than a thousand members in the world, a staff of 35 professionals spread over our headquarters in Bangkok and regional offices in Frankfurt, Sydney, San Francisco, Beijing and Dubai.

What are PATA’s objectives for 2008 - 2009?

• Connect more and better with the Gulf Region (UAE).
• Help the development of China inbound market at a provincial and municipal level.
• Bring the industry together (transport, accommodation, destination, tour operation) around major challenges, such as ‘climate change’ and the pervasive ‘human resource crunch’ (our ‘hardware’ is going up much faster than we can produce the ‘software’ to run it.)

What are the biggest projects that PATA is working on?

The PATA CEO CHALLENGE, from the 29 to the 30 of April, in Bangkok, Thailand. The purpose is to achieve practical climate change initiatives, such as carbon emissions and energy reduction. You can learn more about the PATA CEO CHALLENGE in www.ceochallenge.org.

Also, the PATA TRAVEL MART to be held this September 2008 in Hyderabad, India and in Hangzhou, China in September 2009.

How does PATA see the Internet as a sales, communication, publicity and interaction channel with customers?

The Internet is an important new tool. We have started ‘blogging’ recently, on our new event, the PATA CEO CHALLENGE.

We intend to convert much of our state-of-the-art research to digital format so that it can be perused and purchased online. We also use the internet intensively to communicate with our members.

What strategies has PATA implemented to have better online presence?

We are building a comprehensive ‘IT plan’ this year, to take us to the next level.

In such a dynamic industry, what are the biggest potential threats facing the sector and what are the best opportunities developing?

• The threats: Sudden crises beyond our industry’s control (epidemics, natural disasters, oil price hikes, terrorism, etc.), for which we provide risk assessment, risk management, recovery communications assistance, etc.
• The Opportunities: Quantitative leap in millions of travellers (many first-time travellers) from India, China, south east Asian nations, Korea, Japan. Challenge is to maintain quality of the experience and the destination.

What are the biggest strengths and weaknesses of the travel industry?

• The strengths: The promotion of a leisurely way to personally explore and learn to respect different cultures or nations. Also, to connect the global business community, which requires (air) travel.
• The weaknesses: The industry is vulnerable to sudden global events which can damage and reduce travel activities instantly.

What are the most important influences that you see in the travel sector?

Here are just a few:

• The emergence of low cost carriers (LCC's) and mega planes (Airbus).
• The emergence of the Asia-Pacific region as the future destination and source market for leisure and business travel (convergence of economics and demographics) eclipsing current (western) leaders.
• The precipitous drop of value and confidence in the US dollar that perhaps won't be able to maintain its status as the global currency in the future.
• And perhaps the number one: The empowerment of the consumer as the decision-maker in our industry, thanks to the evolving technologies, social communities networks and the Generation Y emergence as new leaders.

What are the most innovating products and marketing campaigns that you have seen in the last year?

Most innovative products:

• Online social networks that report on our industry, destinations and products: More, faster and authoritatively than any travel company or government tourist board can.
• Emergence of second-tier airports and thus the development of new destinations. For example, non-major gateways being served by Low Cost Carriers become tourism hubs.
• Medical and wellness travel and tourism.
• Culture and Architecture tourism, like Bilbao.
• The Gaming industry, turning Macau in a matter of 5 years into a larger destination (in terms of absolute revenue!) than Las Vegas managed in many decades.

Most innovative campaigns:

• The ‘Incredible India’ and ‘Malaysia, Truly Asia’ campaigns enormously boosted inbound numbers measurably.
• New promising campaign: ‘Korea Sparkling’.

What advice would you give to newly emerging travel companies in Spain to attract a more international client base?

Join PATA as a member, it offers you the key to the best network of partners through our more than 45 destinations, more than 1000 companies and organisations to meet, the region’s best travel trade show, the PATA TRAVEL MART, world’s best research on emerging Asian markets, etc. Check the PATA website and contact our Frankfurt office for more information.

Our gratitude to Peter de Jong for his time and support with this excellent interview.