key: cord-022234-jjaqlyo5
authors: Beirman, David
title: A Comparative Assessment of Three Southeast Asian Tourism Recovery Campaigns: Singapore Roars: Post SARS 2003, Bali Post-the October 12, 2002 Bombing, and WOW Philippines 2003
date: 2009-11-16
journal: Tourism, Security and Safety
DOI: 10.1016/b978-0-7506-7898-8.50021-7
sha: 
doc_id: 22234
cord_uid: jjaqlyo5

nan

The advent of mass international tourism since the 1970s stimulated rapid growth for inbound and stopover tourism in Southeast Asia (SE Asia). Tourism represents one of the most lucrative economic segments for most SE Asian countries. The tourism industry is a major source of foreign currency earnings, creating millions of service industry jobs throughout the region. Increased per capita earnings within Eastern and SE Asia combined with the reduction of tourism prices in real terms within Asia are key factors in accelerating SE Asia's development as one of the world's fastest growing regional tourism destinations. SE Asia's tourism industry was spared the most severe initial repercussions of September 11, the 2001 attack against the United States and the launch of the USled global "War on Terror" against Islamic political movements. During the 6 months following September 11, 2001, international tourism experienced a decline predicated on safety threats to long-haul air travel. SE Asian tourism remained relatively buoyant throughout most of 2002 partially due to the perceived isolation of SE Asia from the Afghan and Middle East trouble spots. Equally relevant is the fact that most travel to SE Asia originates from within or near the region (Koldowski, 2003) .

The bombing of the crowded Sari Nightclub in Denpassar, Bali, on the evening of October 12, 2002, resulted in the murder of 200 tourists and wounded 300 from 24 countries (Henderson, 2003) . The world's deadliest terrorist attack in recent history specifically targeting tourists placed SE Asia at the epicenter of the War on Terror. The convicted perpetrators were members of the radical Islamic group Jemal Islamyia with affiliated cells throughout Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, and the Philippines. The Sari Club bombing had a devastating impact on tourism to Bali and throughout Indonesia, causing collateral damage to the security perception of many neighboring SE Asian countries. Although Islamic organizations have been active in SE Asia for many years, the Bali attack exacerbated fear of Islamic violence in SE Asia. The governments of many tourist generating countries including Japan, United States, United Kingdom, and Australia issued cautionary travel advisories which encompassed Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines. The combination of negative media coverage and negative government travel advisories was perceived as a major threat to the viability of the tourism industries in the region.

Southeast Asian tourism was forced to respond to a further challenge in March 2003 when reports surfaced about the outbreak of a condition known as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, which became known worldwide as SARS. This illness has similar symptoms to pneumonia and was initially diagnosed in Southern China but by March and April cases appeared in Hong Kong, Singapore, Vietnam, and Canada (Singapore Tourist Board statistics, 2003) . According to the World Health Organization, between March and July 2003 there were over 7,000 confirmed cases of SARS. The deaths of 774 people were attributed to SARS.

The outbreak of SARS was regarded as a potentially serious public health risk. However, the actual extent of the problem was relatively minor in comparison with ongoing global epidemics including AIDS, malaria, cholera, and typhoid, which cause the death of millions annually. The blanket international media coverage of SARS, the mysterious nature of the disease, and the absence of a known cure combined to ignite panic in the countries affected and among international travelers.

Media footage of people in the streets and airports of Hong Kong and Singapore wearing surgical masks created a sense of fear among travelers who sought to avoid even transiting in cities known or even thought to have contacted the disease. Although tourism to Singapore and Hong Kong was most heavily affected by the SARS scare, the tourism industries of most SE Asian countries were collateral victims of SARS. Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines had minimal exposure to SARS but tourism to all these destinations was negatively affected.

Fear of terrorism arising from the Bali bombing and the outbreak of SARS in SE Asia, much of it magnified by media coverage in the West, was exacerbated by a series of negative travel advisories issued by the governments of many economically significant tourism source markets including the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and Japan. The advisories suggested that citizens defer travel to several countries in SE Asia, notably Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, and, for brief periods, Hong Kong, Thailand, Vietnam, and Singapore (Henderson, 2003) .

Although there were varying impacts on tourism within each SE Asian country, the regional extent of the threat to tourism industry spurred SE Asian nations to respond regionally. On November 4, 2002 , the heads of state of ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) met in the Cambodian capital Phnom Phenh to pledge their support for an ASEAN tourism recovery marketing campaign (Association of South East Asian Nations, 2002). An ASEAN tourism marketing organization has theoretically been in existence since 1988; however, regional tourism marketing was rarely practiced. The crisis engendered by the Bali bombing motivated the region's political leadership to swiftly reactivate ASEAN tourism marketing cooperation.

At the private sector level, the Bangkok-headquartered Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA), the main travel industry body representing the Pacific Rim, placed the restoration of SE Asian tourism as its top priority project from the time of the Bali bombing and was supported by national tourist offices and peak travel industry bodies of all SE Asian nations and the International Air Transport Association (IATA). In 2003 PATA launched its innovative recovery campaign, Project Phoenix, designed to stimulate tourism recovery throughout SE Asia. In essence, Project Phoenix involved cooperation between specific media organizations, airlines, national tourist offices, tour operators, and hotel chains. The campaign involved SE Asian regional and destination specific marketing promotions and a range of incentive travel offers to jump-start consumer recovery post-SARS. This chapter will examine the regional recovery campaigns and issues while focusing on three specific recovery campaigns representing the major challenges encountered by the tourism industry in SE Asia during the final quarter of 2002, the first half of 2003, and the varying successes of recovery strategies employed.

The first specific recovery campaign discussed is Bali's attempt to restore inbound tourism following the Sari Club bombing of October 12, 2002. The restoration campaign was unusual in that it was dominated by the private sector.

The Balinese provincial tourism authorities were professional in their approach but there was considerable evidence that Indonesian government actions did more to hinder, rather than to help, the recovery processes. Bali enjoyed an unusually high degree of support from foreign tour operators and from PATA in its market recovery program.

The Singapore Roars marketing campaign was a highly professional, government initiated, and generously funded restoration marketing campaign designed to stimulate a rapid recovery of tourism to Singapore following the end of the SARS scare in July 2003. An unusual feature of the Singapore Roars campaign was that it was conducted in selected source markets in conjunction with similar campaigns promoted by Thailand and Malaysia. Although it emphasized Singapore, the Singapore Roars campaign was not conducted in isolation. Singapore, as a highly centralized city-state, marshaled a high level of coordination in its marketing campaign. Singapore's tourism marketing is characterized by close cooperation at the leadership level between the public and private sectors of the nation's tourism industry.

The Philippines tourism industry has had a long history of navigating its way through a variety of crisis events since the mid-1980s. Islamic terrorism has posed a background problem in the Philippines since the early 1990s, although occasional attacks against foreign tourists have raised the media profile of this problem. The Philippines was a collateral victim of the fear of terrorism and SARS. The Bali attack focused global attention on the endemic issue of Islamic terrorism in the Philippines. Despite rare attacks in Manila and several well-publicized incidents of abduction and killing of tourists, Islamic terrorism is primarily confined to southern Mindanao. Although there were no SARS cases reported in the Philippines, tourism suffered to a limited extent from the SARS scare.

From 2002, the Philippines Department of Tourism, under the leadership of its energetic secretary Richard Gordon, decided to conduct a highly visible and positive marketing campaign which directly challenged the negative stereotypes prevalent about the Philippines. The WOW Philippines campaign was carefully targeted and designed to re-image destination Philippines and to spread the benefits of tourism as widely as possible across the 7,000 island archipelago nation. While not designed as a campaign to recover from specific events such as was the case with Bali, local terrorist incidents, or SARS, the WOW Philippines campaign is designed with the longer-term goal of changing consumer and industry perceptions of the Philippines and stimulating real growth for the country's tourism industry. Gordon, elected chairman of PATA in 2003, also sought to incorporate the Philippines recovery marketing campaign within a broader SE Asian tourism recovery campaign. An unusual aspect targeted the 8 million Filipino nationals living overseas to act as tourism marketing ambassadors of the Philippines in their respective countries of residence. They were encouraged to make return visits and incentives were offered as motivation to nationals of their country of residence to visit the Philippines.

Regional marketing of SE Asia, especially to long-and medium-haul source markets including North America, Europe, Australasia, and Japan was an important feature of tourism marketing during the 1980s. However, as the economies of SE Asian countries modernized and diversified, the major tourism destinations and stopover points in SE Asia increasingly sought to differentiate their marketing identities, resulting in a tendency toward competition and limited cooperation. Intense competition ensued among Hong Kong, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, and Singapore as airline hub and spoke points that influenced their relative positions for stopover traffic. Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia (especially Bali), the Philippines, and Vietnam all regarded tourism as strategic fulcrums for national economic expansion.

Consequently, their government-dominated tourism marketing bodies sought inbound tourism at the expense of neighboring nations. The highly competitive nature of tourism during the 1990s was simply not conducive to regional tourism cooperation as each destination assiduously sought to maximize its own share of a growing international market. The ASEAN tourism marketing body, a product of late 1980s government policies, technically remained in existence, but in every practical sense was moribund by 2000.

During the 1990s the tourism industry's private sector had a very different set of priorities. Airlines, multinational hotel chains, cruise and tour operators servicing multiple destinations, and global financial institutions were far more amenable to regional destination marketing than the private sector during the 1990s. The major regional travel industry association PATA was, until the 1990s, primarily oriented towards America. The relocation of its headquarters from San Francisco to Bangkok in 1998 represented the realization of its organizational evolution from an America-centric association in its early years to an Asia-centric organization by the mid-1990s. PATA took over the role of regional SE Asian tourism marketing abandoned by ASEAN during the 1990s (Chuck and Lurie, 2001) . Although IATA's global headquarters remained in Switzerland, it maintained a high-profile presence in Asia (interview: Concil, 2003) . By 1997, SE Asian tourism growth was increasingly sourced from within Asia. During the 1990s Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan (the so-called Tiger Economies) had become significant SE Asia source markets. The Asian economic collapse resulted in a 2-year hiatus to this growth. The emergence of India and the People's Republic of China as rapidly growing tourism generating markets promised long-term tourism growth for SE Asian tourism destinations. The quantum growth of mass Chinese outbound tourism exacerbated competitive pressures largely due to the PRC government policy of limiting approved destinations for Chinese nationals. The criteria for a country to become an approved destination for Chinese citizens included operational and political elements. Murray Bailey's report on the Chinese outbound market commissioned by PATA in 2001 provides a detailed guide to the growth forecasts and the specific qualifications for approved destination status (Bailey, 2001) .

The prevailing dissonance between the private and the government sector's approach to regional tourism marketing in SE Asia during the 1990s and the early years of the twenty-first century was radically affected by the Sari Club bombing of October 12 , 2002, and the SARS scare of March-June 2003. The two events put a sudden end to the divergence between the two approaches and resulted in a rapid new convergence.

Regional focus on the actual and potential threat of terrorism directed at tourists highlighted by the Bali bombing presented a common threat to the regional tourism industry requiring a coordinated response. The perceived threat of terrorism was compounded by a sudden upsurge in media-driven speculation concerning the potential threat to tourist security. Global media networks including CNN, BBC, Deutsch Welle, and Australian ABC covered this issue extensively. Simultaneously the governments of many economically significant source markets including the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, and Japan issued travel advisories recommending their citizens defer travel to several SE Asian countries. From the perspective of these governments, most of which had citizens who were victims of the Bali attack, enhanced caution was not only deemed justified but their own societies demanded it. SE Asian countries, including Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand, publicly criticized these negative travel advisories and treated them as a diplomatic affront. Although government travel advisories have been issued since the September 11, 2001, attack their global media profile and public visibility has been substantially enhanced. Outspoken former Malaysian Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohammed, Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri, and Philippine Tourism Secretary Richard Gordon (who would be elected as PATA Chairman in mid-2003) were scathing in their condemnation of negative Western and Japanese government travel advisories. The Australian government was the most frequent target of criticism partially due to Australia's position as a country that assiduously courted inclusion within Asia while being perceived as a hostile mouthpiece of the United States (Wilks, 2003) .

A relatively unrecognized development that arose from the Bali bombing involved the international travel insurance industry. With few exceptions, prior to the Bali bombing it was almost axiomatic that commercial travel insurance coverage for passengers was linked to the wording of government travel advisories. Most insurance providers automatically excluded coverage for loss or injury from such acts as "politically motivated violence, civil disobedience, war or terrorism." The insurance industry's term for this exclusion was "the general exemption." After September 11 there was growing consumer and stakeholder pressure placed on insurers to provide coverage for unforeseen events (exemplified by the September 11 attack) and some insurers relaxed their adherence to the general exemption to provide coverage on a case-by-case basis. The high number of fatalities in the Bali bombing placed the spotlight on insurance companies. There was intense media pressure applied on travel insurers to assist victims of the bombing. Since the Bali attack several major travel insurers gradually abandoned the general exemption and either provided coverage on an individual basis or factored in terrorism as optional premium coverage. Concurrently there has been an erosion of the linkage between government travel advisories and insurance coverage. Until the September 11, 2001, attack it was a common (though not universal) practice for insurers to deny regular travel insurance coverage for travelers visiting destinations for which governments had issued an advisory to defer travel. The increased incidence of governments issuing negative travel advisories since the advent of the "war on terrorism" has led insurers to treat them less seriously as a commercially valid assessment of tourist risk and determine their coverage based on independent statistical risk assessments.

The combination of negative media coverage from the West and the need to respond to what was widely perceived in SE Asia as diplomatic attacks (in the form of travel advisories) from the West spurred the governments of SE Asia to present a united front to defend regional tourism. On November 4, 2002, just over three weeks after the Bali incident, a summit of ASEAN heads of states gathered in Cambodia to sign a tourism marketing accord pledging a coordinated ASEAN approach to tourism marketing, effectively marking the rebirth of ASEAN tourism. ASEAN tourism cooperation following the Bali attack would also be reinforced and amplified during the 2003 SARS crisis.

By sheer coincidence, the executive of PATA was in Bali on the night of the bombing (October 12, 2002) for the wedding of PATA Vice President Peter Semone. The reception was due to be held at the Sari Club but the explosion occurred while they were en route to the club. The presence of the senior executives of PATA at the scene of the bombing meant that PATA was able to directly assist with the recovery and crisis communication process. PATA played a significant role in mobilizing private tourism industry support for the victims of the bombing and for the Balinese tourism industry. PATA also pledged its cooperation with the Indonesian tourism industry to assist with marketing recovery and adopted a supportive approach to regional tourism recovery in SE Asia (interview: Semone, 2004) .

In early 2003 PATA sponsored a task force of tourism recovery experts to assist and report to the Indonesian government and the Balinese tourism authorities. In April 2003, during a period in which SARS was already exerting a significant impact on tourism in SE Asia, the annual PATA conference was held in Bali. Although venues for PATA's annual conferences are determined at least 3 years in advance, the 2003 conference was a most propitious opportunity for the Asia/Pacific travel industry to express solidarity with their Indonesian and Balinese colleagues. PATA prepared a crisis-management manual for the use of its members and affiliates (Winning Edge, 2003) . In July 2003 following the SARS scare, PATA launched their major tourism market recovery campaign, Project Phoenix, which included several major elements. It involved the Tourism Ministries of most SE Asian countries, media organizations (notably CNN), airlines, hoteliers, and major tour operators. The campaign's message was intended to reassure travelers that SE Asia was clear of SARS and welcoming visitors. The positive messages were reinforced by a series of pull marketing incentive programs designed to lure tourists. Project Phoenix included broad regional promotion of SE Asia combined with destination-specific promotion. Effectively, Project Phoenix was a private sector initiative involving a high level of public sector support from the tourism ministries of the major SE Asian tourism destinations.

During the SARS scare, IATA relocated its Asia Pacific Crisis communications headquarters from Tokyo to Singapore where it coordinated and communicated the preventative activities of airlines servicing and transiting the region in response to the SARS crisis.

PATA, in conjunction with the World Tourism Organization and the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation, jointly commissioned an extensive report entitled Tourism Risk Management for the Asia Pacific Region written by Professor Jeff Wilks and supported by several other tourism scholars. Wilks heads the Centre for Tourism and Risk Management at the University of Queensland. Professor Wilks' report adopted a broad and well-structured approach to the major risk management and security issues affecting tourism in SE Asia.

During the second half of 2003 it was clear that the convergence between the priorities of SE Asian governments and the tourism private sector was manifested by an increasingly cooperative approach to the restoration marketing of tourism in the region. From July 2003 the overwhelming regional priority for SE Asian tourism was the rapid implementation of demand recovery for the inbound tourism market. This regional priority would be complemented by the market recovery campaigns of the individual countries within SE Asia.

Singapore has earned an outstanding reputation for success in SE Asian tourism since the 1980s. The opening of Changi International Airport 22 km north of the center of Singapore in 1982 greatly enhanced Singapore's capacity to handle a massive growth in airline capacity. Singapore's inbound tourism numbers in 2000 with 7.69 million arrivals represent an all-time record. By comparison, Singapore's inbound tourism level was only 6 million arrivals in 1992. However, it must be noted that tourism in Singapore is dominated by short stays and a high proportion of stopover tourism. The average length of stay in 2001 according to the Singapore Tourism Board was only 3.19 days. Although not counted in tourism statistics, transit passengers remaining at the airport or passing through Singapore en route to other destinations may contribute financially to Singapore, but not to its hotel revenues (Singapore Tourist Board Statistics, 2004).

Singapore's reputation as a tourist attraction is based on its shopping facilities, a concentrated range of tourist attractions, the high quality of its cuisine, hotels, and its image as being safe, clean, law abiding, free of health concerns, and tourist-friendly, are among the key attractions for visitors. According to Joan Henderson, tourism to Singapore in 2001 contributed US$5.3 billion or approximately 10% of Singapore's GDP. Consequently, tourism's contribution to Singapore's economy and employment creation is significant by world standards. Singapore's tourism experienced a minor downturn of 2.2% in 2001 compared with 2000, primarily due to the global downturn in long haul flights following September 11, 2001, which affected inbound tourism during the final quarter of 2001. Most of Singapore's major markets remained stable during that year with the only notable downturn from Japan, the United States, and Taiwan. Singapore was largely perceived as relatively immune from the threat of Islamic terrorism and geographically removed from the epicenter of America's "war on terrorism" being fought in Afghanistan during 2001 and early 2002 (Henderson, 2003) .

During 2002 inbound tourism to Singapore continued to decline, although this was concentrated within the period immediately following the Bali bombing in October 12, 2002. Singapore became a classical collateral victim of the Bali terrorist incident. As discussed earlier in this chapter, the Bali attack focused world attention on the potential threat of Islamic terrorism in SE Asia. This was not a new phenomenon; but the scale of the Bali attack, the fact that the majority of victims were tourists from Western countries, and the intense media coverage of the incident had regional implications. In Singapore, days after Bali, the US, British, and Australian intelligence services claimed to identify a Jemayal Islamiya/Al Qaeda plot to attack several Western diplomatic legations in Singapore. Several suspects were arrested by Singapore police and documents and videotapes were produced to support these allegations. The foreign ministries of several of Singapore's main source markets including Australia, United Kingdom, United States, and Japan issued travel advisories to defer nonessential travel to Singapore. Although this level of warning remained in force relatively briefly, the advisories aroused outrage throughout Singapore, especially in its tourism industry. Singapore was not the only SE Asian country subjected to negative travel advisories following the Bali bombing. However, the very concept of a highly regulated and ordered society such as Singapore being defined as a tourism security risk was considered by the political and business elite of Singapore as a diplomatic insult and a loss of face.

The first confirmed case of SARS in Singapore was identified in mid-March 2003. According to the Singapore Ministry of Tourism, a Chinese doctor visiting Hong Kong in late February unwittingly infected several hotel guests, including a number of Singaporeans who carried the disease home to Singapore. At its zenith, by late May, a total of 238 people in Singapore were diagnosed with the virus, of whom 33 died. A further 930 people were placed under preventive quarantine. As Joan Henderson correctly observes, the crisis surrounding SARS was one of fear rather than of substance. This is not to suggest the very real concern generated by SARS, especially among those unfortunate enough to have contracted the condition. In global epidemiological terms, the SARS outbreak in Singapore was relatively minor compared to the 1980s Hong Kong Flu. The overwhelming media coverage of SARS accompanied by the widespread dissemination of World Health Organization warnings in the media and government travel advisories created a global impression that Singapore was a latter day leper colony. The psychological fear of a looming pandemic quickly descended on neighboring countries. Travelers were instilled with dread about visiting or transiting Singapore or even flying in aircraft that might travel in the general direction of Singapore (Henderson, 2003a) .

IATA temporarily relocated its Asia Pacific Crisis Communications headquarters from Tokyo to Singapore in order to focus its attention on reassuring airline passengers of the negligible risk of contracting SARS on airlines and in transit lounges in Singapore or other SE Asian transit points. Tony Concil, IATA's Asia Pacific Manager of Crisis Communications, sent daily media releases about the SARS situation as it impacted on airlines and airports. Concil recalled the many occasions he fielded journalists' questions and issued media releases detailing the precautions airlines had taken to minimize the risk of the spread of SARS among airline passengers (interview: Concil, 2003) .

During the height of the SARS crisis in the period of March-June 2003, Singapore's government committed SID$230 million to support the travel and tourism industry during a period in which tourist arrivals to the island state fell by 70% over the corresponding months of 2002. A portion of these funds was devoted to maintaining employment levels in a wide range of tourism enterprises including hotels, attractions, tour operators, and the government-owned airlines. A push marketing campaign was initiated to inform and reassure the travel industry and consumers in key markets that Singapore had adopted a range of measures to minimize the threat of SARS. Many hotels and attractions were identified as complying with a series of measures which declared them "SARS safe." This was conducted under the slogan COOL Singapore Campaign (Henderson, 2003a) .

By June 2003 Singapore was declared SARS free by the WHO, enabling the Singapore Tourism Board to instigate its major post-SARS marketing recovery campaign. Singapore Roars referred to the national Merlion symbol and the explicit connection with tourists "roaring" back to Singapore. The Singapore Tourism Board was granted a SID$50 million budget increment devoted to marketing Singapore toward a post-SARS recovery. The primary message communicated, of Singapore being SARS-free, incorporated a range of inducements and discounts designed to encourage travel agents to sell and promote Singapore to their clients. Travelers visiting Singapore were made aware of an extensive range of discounted and value-added deals on tours, hotel accommodation, access to attractions, etc. Promotions targeted at the travel industry in specific source markets incorporated the Singapore Roars campaign as part of a cooperative marketing exercise with campaigns to visit Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong, and the Philippines. This strategy was part of a broader ASEAN and PATA approach to tourism recovery. The Singapore Roars campaign marked the first occasion for Singapore's tourism industry in which a destination-specific recovery campaign was conducted in conjunction with a broader regional tourism recovery campaign. The significant downturn of tourism to most of SE Asia irrespective of the prevalence or even presence of SARS was a common factor prompting a cooperative approach. Operational and budgetary benefits derived from sharing the costs between government and private sector stakeholders communicating a common regional message to the trade and consumers in key source markets were persuasive reasons to cooperate.

The Singapore Roars campaign involved concerted media coverage in major source markets, some of it subsidized by CNN as part of a broader SE Asian regional Project Phoenix campaign coordinated along with PATA. A consortium of 270 private tour operators, hoteliers, attractions, shopping outlets, and airlines contributed marketing funds and offered a range of special deals to expand incentive arrangements designed to reactivate tourism demand for Singapore. By November 2003, it was clear statistically that the recovery process was achieving success. November 2003 arrival figures for Singapore were 7.3% up on the preceding year. However, it must be recalled that November 2002 figures were historically low due primarily to the impact of the Bali incident on SE Asian regional tourism. The impact of SARS was pronounced on the annualized figures for Singapore's inbound tourism, which suffered a 19.04% drop in 2003 compared to 2002 or 6.127 million tourists in 2003 compared to 7.293 million in 2002 (Singapore Tourist Board Statistics, 2003 . The relative speed and success of Singapore's recovery exemplify the best elements of a professionally managed restoration marketing campaign. Singapore Roars was coordinated and centralized by the Singapore Tourism Board involving a high level of cooperation with national carrier Singapore Airlines, the private sector of Singapore's tourism industry, especially hoteliers, major attractions, and inbound tour operators. Singapore's advantage in this achievement is largely due to the fact that it is a highly regulated and compact city-state and there is universal recognition in Singapore that tourism is a strategically and economically significant industry.

The eastern Indonesian island of Bali is traditionally promoted as a destination with little reference to the fact that it remains politically an integral part of Indonesia. In the period of the late 1990s and the beginning of the twenty-first century, the Indonesian nation, which gained independence in 1949 under the slogan "Unity in Diversity," has experienced an upsurge of political instability accompanied by outbreaks of ethnic, religious, and nationalist separatist movements. The most significant campaign resulted in the creation of an independent East Timor in 2002 following a bloody 25-year guerrilla war. However, from Aceh in the northwest extremity of Sumatra to Irian Jaya in Western New Guinea (Indonesia's eastern extremity), separatist movements are now an integral part of Indonesia's complex political landscape in a country with a population of 210 million people and 12,000 islands, the sprawling archipelago dominating the region between the Malay Peninsula and Australia.

Until October 2002, Bali, especially from a tourism perspective, was a superficially idyllic anomaly in Indonesia. Bali's population and culture are predominantly Hindu, whereas 90% of Indonesia's people are Muslim. Bali's distinctive culture, as the last surviving remnant of India's former cultural hegemony over the Indonesian archipelago, is unique in Indonesia. Over the past 20 years Bali has become a popular "paradise" resort island for tourists from all over the world. Beautiful scenery, a pervasive spiritualism among the traditional Balinese, excellent surfing beaches, friendly people, and relatively relaxed attitudes to cultural pluralism are the elements that have resulted in Bali's popularity as one of the most visited single tourist and resort destinations in SE Asia. Bali is the most popular destination for foreign tourists in Indonesia.

Bali's tourism infrastructure has attracted a vast amount of foreign investment and contributed to its comprehensive and diverse tourism infrastructure, with resorts ranging from the ultimate in luxury to the basic. The influx of tourists has brought a mixture of economic benefits and social and economic problems. Bali's economy is heavily dependent on tourism but many Balinese are exploited by the tourism-based economy. Many of the resorts and hotels are owned by multinational companies and Australian or Western entrepreneurs. The dark side of Bali's tourism success has resulted in the growth of a subculture of corruption, drug dealing, and a high rate of petty crime. The combination of unregulated capitalism and the daily influx of ten jumbo loads of foreign tourists, some of whom are totally ignorant and insensitive to traditional Bali's social mores, has undermined Bali's traditional society (interview: King, 2003) .

A minority of Western tourists, especially from nearby Australia, treated Bali as an exotic tropical "pub" and a relatively inexpensive resort island paradise to let off steam after a football season or to celebrate personal or communal events. The alcohol-and drug-induced hedonism of this section of the Western market has caused offense to the traditional local Hindu Balinese. For the growing numbers of Indonesians who have embraced Islamist fundamentalism, these tourists symbolize Western decadence inimical to their beliefs. Since the mid-1990s, some Islamic groups in Java have attacked nightclubs and liquor outlets as part of a wider demand to impose (Islamist) Sharia law in Indonesia. Until 2002, Bali had been spared this form of violence primarily because most Balinese are non-Islamist and such acts would harm the lucrative tourism industry.

Inbound tourism to Indonesia statistically peaked in 2001 with a total of 5,163,620 arrivals. The main source markets in 2001 were Singapore, 1.477 million tourists; Japan, 611,000; Malaysia, 485,000; Australia, 397,000; Taiwan, 391,000; South Korea, 212,000; United Kingdom, 189,000; United States, 177,000; and Germany, 159,000. Malaysian and Singaporean numbers were heavily inflated by their proximity to Indonesia and the fact that many of these visits were essentially cross-border short trips. NE Asia and Japan, Europe, Australasia, and North America were the primary sources of high-yield tourism for Indonesia and Bali specifically. Bali's capital, Denpassar, was the port of entry for 27.71% of foreign visitors to Indonesia and the principal port of entry for inbound tourists (Badan Pusat Statistik, BPS-Statistics Indonesia, 2004) .

The October 12, 2002, Bali bombing had a profound impact on Balinese tourism but it would impact tourism broadly throughout Indonesia and SE Asia.

On that evening the crowded Sari Club and nearby Paddy's Bar were destroyed by powerful truck bombs. The convicted perpetrators, members of Jemaal Islamiya, a radical Islamic group allegedly linked to Al Qaeda with a substantial presence in Indonesia, readily admitted responsibility for the attack. The bombing was the deadliest attack directed against tourists in the world for many years. Of the 200 deaths, 88 were Australian, 24 British, and 10 Indonesian, and the victims included citizens from 21 other countries (Wilks, 2003) .

The impact of the Bali bombing on tourism to the island was instantaneous. Tourism demand fell and forward booking dried up. The bombing exposed a number of serious infrastructure problems, the most obvious of which was the lack of medical and hospital facilities to cope with a disaster on this unprecedented scale. The lack of mortuary facilities was a factor that contributed to the major difficulties in identifying many of the deceased. The bombing also exposed the serious security shortcomings of the entire tourism infrastructure in Bali. The Indonesian government does not make provisions for adequate medical facilities to cope with the general needs of locals or tourists. The Balinese were unprepared and ill-equipped for an act of terrorism so alien to their way of life.

Many of Bali's major tourism source countries immediately imposed upgraded travel advisories. Australia, the United States, United Kingdom, and Japan advised their citizens to defer travel. Garuda Airlines and Qantas facilitated the evacuation from Bali of many travelers, especially Australians. The Australian government offered medical assistance to the Indonesian government and sent medical and rescue teams, providing Australian medical facilities and personnel to all victims of the attack.

As discussed in the introduction, the executive members of the PATA were in Bali on the night of the Sari Club bombing to celebrate the wedding of PATA Vice President Peter Semone. The PATA executives were to play a significant role in galvanizing regional travel industry support for Bali's beleaguered tourism industry. They immediately assisted local tourist authorities in establishing a crisis communications unit. PATA recruited a team of crisis management experts to assist the Balinese and Indonesians in planning a recovery strategy for the tourism industry.

The Indonesian government contracted Australian tourism crisis management specialist John King, CEO of Tourism and Leisure and the Chairman of Tourism Tasmania, to assist them in developing a marketing recovery strategy. King's significant involvement in Tourism Tasmania's highly successful campaign to restore tourism to Tasmania after the 1996 Port Arthur massacre of tourists eminently qualified him to assist in Bali catastrophe. Mr. King observed that the Indonesian government demonstrated minimal commitment to implementing the advice provided by him, his colleagues, or any other foreign experts.

The private sector of the tourism industry within Bali and regionally was characterized by a strong sense of unity of purpose. Conscious of the need to reassure tourists, hoteliers, tour operators, and local attractions upgraded security. Tour operators and airlines combined to introduce a range of incentive-based marketing campaigns and familiarization tours for media and travel industry leaders from source markets. PATA maintained its long-term plan to hold its annual conference in Bali in April 2003. Australian tourism industry organizations, including the Australian Institute of Travel and Tourism and the Council of Australian Tour Operators, chose to hold major conferences in Bali as gestures of support for the Balinese tourism industry. The Balinese regional tourism authority produced a Tourism Security and Safety: From Theory to Practice highly professional promotional film that illustrated the distinction between negative perception and the actual experience of travelers in 2003. The film featured tourists from the main source markets telling viewers how much they were enjoying their visit and showing there was no cause for concern. The underlying theme was to communicate a message that tourism to Bali was safe.

Major obstacles to a fully integrated tourism recovery in Bali included the maintenance of negative travel advisories, negative media publicity mostly emanating from international media, and the Indonesian government's decision to conduct the trial of the Bali bombers in Bali. According to Australian, British, American, and Japanese travel industry professionals invited by the Indonesian government to assist in the recovery, the greatest barrier to implementing a recovery was the ineptitude and incompetence of the Indonesian government and the Indonesian Ministry of Tourism. The Indonesian government ignored professional advice and implemented policies counterproductive to an effective tourism recovery campaign. The Indonesian government compounded its problems from the very beginning of the Bali crisis by its failure to show due concern for the welfare of the victims and launching into attacks verging on the paranoia against governments that had issued negative travel advisories after the bombing. Indonesian government attacks against the Australian government were especially vituperative. Considering that Australians accounted for almost half the victims of the Sari Club attack, the Indonesian response to the advisories demonstrated insensitivity at best, and at worst a petulant abandonment of diplomacy. The attitude toward Australia, in particular, was colored by wider strains in bilateral relations including Timor's struggle for independence from Indonesia in 1999 and Australia's prominent military and diplomatic involvement as a guarantor of this process.

The Indonesian government was a vocal supporter of reconstituting the ASEAN tourism marketing organization. During the November 2003 summit of ASEAN leaders in Phnom Phenh, Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri joined many of her fellow ASEAN leaders in criticizing Western government negative travel advisories. The Bali attack had led to the imposition of security-based negative travel advisories applying to several SE Asian countries. Indonesia was strongly supported in this forum by all SE Asian leaders, especially Malaysian Prime Minister Dr. Mohathir Mohammed.

The Indonesian government officially committed US$9 million toward Bali's tourism recovery but there was little evidence of spending on any identifiable program. Tourism, Security and Finance Ministry officials undertook "fact finding marketing missions" to source markets; two were conducted in Australia. The Indonesian delegates involved in the second visit in November 2003 were unaware of the first one, which had taken place in May 2003. One policy initiative widely condemned by local and overseas tourism industry stakeholders was the Indonesian government's decision to impose a series of visa fees. Whatever the merits of the policy, the timing of its release several weeks after the Bali bombing was condemned by private sector stakeholders who viewed it as a major disincentive to tourism recovery.

The decision to try the alleged bombers in Bali was controversial. There were legitimate legal reasons to conduct the trial at or near the scene of the crime. However, from a tourism recovery perspective, the trial served as a painful and protracted reinforcement of the Bali bombing. Understandably, the trial focused far more global media coverage on Bali than the issue of restoring tourism.

Private industry marketing campaigns led to a gradual recovery of tourism to Bali from April 2003. PATA's conference during that month focused on positive tourism attention on Bali. Bali also figured in the broad scheme of PATA's Project Phoenix. Additionally, a range of cut-price holiday deals was successful in enticing many tourists to return to Bali. The Balinese tourism authorities successfully cooperated with the private sector of the tourism industry. The anniversary of the Bali bombing was conducted in a manner intended to end to the formal mourning period (if not for the survivors and the families of victims) to this terrible event at least to non-Balinese victims. The Balinese tourism industry took almost a year to recover. Australian and Japanese markets have been slower to recover than SE Asia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

The Philippines tourism industry has a long history of overcoming a range of events that have restricted its potential to become a major tourism destination in SE Asia. Political instability, AIDS, localized terrorism, especially in the large southern island of Mindanao, natural disasters ranging from seasonal typhoons to the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo, and the 1997 Asian economic crisis all contributed to acting as a brake on tourism growth. Considering all these problems, the overall trend for tourism in the Philippines during the 1990s was positive. By 2000, inbound tourism numbers to the Philippines passed 2 million, double the 1990 level (Beirman, 2003) .

In 2001 the forced resignation of President Joseph Estrada led to the appointment and later election of Gloria Arroyo as President of the Philippines. Arroyo appointed Richard Gordon as Secretary of Tourism. Gordon took on the position with an almost missionary zeal to advance tourism to the Philippines as a major industry. An energetic and ambitious man, Richard Gordon sought to radically alter the tourism infrastructure and the marketing of the Philippines. He also took on a high profile in supranational tourism organizations. In 2003 he was elected as Chairman of PATA and rapidly became a powerful regional voice within the World Tourism Organization.

Gordon rallied the Philippines tourism industry by calling the first TRICON (Tourism Related Industry Conference) a few months after his appointment as Tourism Secretary in 2001. The underlying strategy to revitalize Philippines tourism was to gather an alliance of all sectors of the tourism industry and the local and provincial political leadership. The second and third TRICONs in 2002 and 2003 developed the concept of a marketing campaign called WOW Philippines. The core strategy of the campaign was to diversify both the image and benefits of inbound tourism to encompass a wide geographical area of the country. The campaign sought to appeal to a variety of niche markets, including golfing, resorts, ecotourism, meetings and conventions, business and incentive tourism, adventure tourism, diving and water sports, cultural tourism, and to identify specific regions of the Philippines as representative destinations for these activities. In the capital, Manila, the Department of Tourism actively participated in restoring specific districts of the city, most notably Intramuros (the old walled Spanish quarter of Manila) and Manila Bay's waterfront.

The Philippines Department of Tourism, in close association with major tour operators, Philippine Airlines, and other carriers servicing the Philippines, offered Tourism Security and Safety: From Theory to Practice a range of cut-price and value-added incentives for tourists. It also sought to encourage the estimated 8 million Filipinos living abroad to act as tourism ambassadors. The Department of Tourism, supported by the national government and the local media, instituted educational and promotional programs designed to encourage locals to adopt a welcoming attitude toward tourists and to encourage hospitality and cleanliness in the county's towns and cities. The Philippines Department of Tourism claimed a high level of success for this program.

Following the Bali bombing in October 2002, there was renewed focus on Islamic activists in the southern Philippines by the global media and by the governments of some of the Philippines' most lucrative tourism source markets, notably Japan, the United States, Western Europe, and Australia. Tourism Secretary Richard Gordon was a vocal critic of negative media coverage and government advisories. The primary basis of his criticism was that the reputation of the entire country was under attack because of activities that took place in one particular locality. Gordon demanded that the media and government advisories specify the problem areas as opposed to calling the entire destination into disrepute. Gordon's demand for specificity in both media coverage and government travel advisories resonated with the governments and tourism officials in many other countries in SE Asia that shared similar problems after the Bali bombing. The Philippines inbound tourism industry was a collateral victim of the 2003 SARS outbreak despite the fact that the country was virtually free of the disease. Media-magnified fears of SE Asia as a potential risk area for SARS impacted SE Asian countries irrespective of the incidence or absence of SARS.

Richard Gordon's appointment to the chairmanship of PATA in 2003 gave him a powerful voice well beyond the Philippines. He used his regional power base in both PATA and ASEAN to exert pressure on the World Tourism Organization to take a global tourism industry approach to the issue of government travel advisories and received support from many countries that shared the problems the Philippines itself had encountered. In early 2004 the WTO's Secretary General, Francesco Frangialli, called on the WTO to initiate discussions through the UN for a global approach to realistic government travel advisories. The WTO obtained UN status in 2003, which enabled them to officially propose a global set of standards on travel advisories to the UN.

The WOW Philippines campaign involved a mixture of marketing campaigns, travel industry training and education, media and travel agency familiarization visits, and the incorporation of WOW Philippines within PATA's Project Phoenix. A unique feature of the campaign was the incentive scheme offered to expatriate Filipinos to make a home visit accompanied by citizens of their host nation. In effect, the more citizens Filipinos could identify as visiting because of their individual promotion, the cheaper the home visit would be. The expatriate program was designed as an attractive bonus/incentive scheme for the many Filipino citizens working abroad on low incomes with families in the Philippines. Provided they could identify a given number of tourists, the home visit for the expatriate would be free of charge. As Filipino nationals traditionally represented 5% of the inbound tourist market during the 1990s, the bonus scheme was a potentially effective program to bolster inbound tourism numbers. In the period of 2002-2003 overseas Filipino arrivals represented the second fastest growing sector (up 19.8%) of an inbound tourism market that as a whole actually dropped by 2.3% between 2002 (Philippine Department of Tourism, 2003 .

The overall concept of WOW Philippines was expected to be statistically significant during 2004 and early indications for 2004 already indicated a strong return to inbound tourism growth. The overall market for the Philippines remained steady during 2003 despite the collateral problems of SARS and the more pressing problem of terrorism-focused negative travel advisories. The total inbound tourism figures for 2003 were 1.907 million tourists compared to 1.932 million tourists for 2002, representing a drop of 1.3%, considerably less than most other SE Asian countries.

Of the Philippines major source markets, slight declines in US and Japanese tourists were offset by growth from South Korea. However, in 2003 the Philippines suffered drops in arrivals from significant SARS-affected source markets: Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore. Outbound tourism from these three countries was heavily reduced during the period of the SARS outbreak period (March-July 2003) due to entry restrictions imposed by tourism receiving countries including the Philippines.

The tourism industry in SE Asia was subjected to an unprecedented degree of volatility during late 2002 and the first half of 2003. The Bali terrorism attack in October 2003, while disastrous for Bali, exerted a powerful ripple effect which impacted most SE Asian destinations, especially those with substantial Muslim populations. The Bali bombing placed an unwelcome global spotlight on the perceived and actual threat from Islamic organizations on the overall political stability and tourism safety in some SE Asian nations.

The combination of negative media attention and negative government travel advisories from major source markets in the West and Japan spurred regional and national responses in SE Asia. The outbreak of SARS in the period of May-June 2003, while largely confined to SE China, Hong Kong, and Singapore, was magnified by the media and to some extent by the World Health Organization as a public health threat, grossly disproportionate to the number of people affected by the disease. On the scale of global epidemic outbreaks, SARS was a minnow compared to AIDS, malaria, cholera, typhoid, and historical manifestations of influenza. The impact of SARS in SE Asia was a severe curtailment of tourism arrivals during the identifiable danger period.

The tourism industry response in SE Asia to SARS and terrorism involved an unprecedented degree of regional government and private industry cooperation in recovery marketing programs. The previously moribund ASEAN tourism agreement was rapidly resurrected by the initiative of ASEAN heads of state. PATA, IATA, and the WTO worked closely with the global media and government tourism bodies in SE Asia to implement a regional marketing recovery program revitalizing tourism it the region. Each country in SE Asia developed and implemented destination-specific marketing and confidence-building programs to restore tourism. The Singapore Roars campaign was highly organized, centralized, and professional and achieved rapid results. The WOW Philippines campaign successfully minimized deterioration in tourism during a challenging period for the country. The Indonesian government's campaign to restore tourism was hampered by poor leadership, incompetence, a failure to heed professional advice, and a lack of Tourism Security and Safety: From Theory to Practice national direction. Conversely, the Balinese regional authorities implemented a successful marketing recovery campaign heavily supported by local and foreign private sector stakeholders. Consequently, Bali was less dependent on Indonesian government support than other regions in the country.

The events of late 2002 and the first half of 2003 demonstrated the vulnerability of the SE Asian tourism industry to events beyond direct managerial control. SARS and terrorism demonstrated the importance of contingency marketing and management practices to optimize recovery from crisis events. The tourism industry's private sector demonstrably and quickly learned from the many crisis events of the early twenty-first century. Increasingly, SE Asian governments with a powerful vested economic interest in maintaining a growing tourism sector have taken the issue of recovery marketing seriously. A minority of SE Asian countries, especially Indonesia, have a long way to go before they are in a position to recover rapidly from tourism crises without a high level of dependence on outside aid. The majority of ASEAN countries at both government and the private sector level are demonstrating a high level of professionalism in their strategic marketing approaches to the protection and recovery of their tourism industries and infrastructure from crisis events.

Crisis (as applied to this chapter) A situation requiring radical management action in response to events beyond the internal control of the organization necessitating urgent adaptation of marketing and operational practices to restore the confidence of employees, associated enterprises, and consumers in the viability of the destination. Restoration alliance The working alliance between all private and public sector segments of the tourism and hospitality industry and destination marketing authorities designed to restore the marketability and security of the tourism industry. The alliance works on both restoring the image and marketability of tourism destinations and regions concurrently to sellers and distributors of tourism product and to consumers. Source markets Markets that are the main sources from where tourists are attracted to the destination or region. This is usually determined by country of origin and measured by counting the citizenship of tourist arrivals. Government travel advisories Assessments determined by ministries of foreign governments that focus on the security and safety of destinations. These are designed to inform citizens of the issuing country of the likely threats that citizens of that country may encounter if visiting a given destination. In most instances advisories are graded in accordance with a perceived level of threat. General exemption Insurance companies frequently deny cover to insured travelers who incur loss, injury, or death resulting from politically motivated violence. In insurance parlance, denial of such coverage is labeled as "the general exemption." The general exemption is currently undergoing review as a result of consumer pressure. Regional marketing In the context of this chapter, regional marketing involves the coordinated promotion and marketing of a group of countries to a commonly targeted source market or set of source markets. PATA and ASEAN employed regional marketing of several SE Asian destinations to specific source markets including China, Japan, Australia, Europe, and the United States with the aim of encouraging tourists to visit more than one of the destinations in a single trip. It also recognized that the crisis indicators that led to the coordinated recovery campaign were common to the region, as opposed to being confined to a single destination. Push marketing Targeting the sellers, promoters, and suppliers of the tourism product in source markets including wholesalers, travel agents, airlines, hotel chains, and the media. Pull marketing Marketing to consumers either directly or in cooperation with stakeholders such as wholesalers, the media, airlines, hoteliers, and other principals that sell or have product in the targeted destination.

Explain the recent upsurge in the significance of government travel advisories as a factor impacting on tourism to SE Asia and its broader implications for global tourism

PATA's Project Phoenix represented a new approach to regional restoration marketing in SE Asia. Assess its success as a strategy and identify the key elements incor

In what ways has media coverage impacted the perception of tourism destinations since the development of global media broadcasting through networks such as CNN

Analyze and compare the effectiveness of the three campaigns examined in this chapter

To what extent to you attribute the reconstitution of ASEAN Tourism Marketing as a reactive measure to tourism crisis or a proactive approach to recovery?

How does the marketing recovery campaign in SE Asia compare to other recovery campaigns in the world, such as the US recovery campaign post-September 11, Turkish recovery after the Izmit earthquake, Britain post-foot and mouth outbreak, Sri Lanka post-civil war or others

If you were a destination marketer in SE Asia how would you have approached the management of SARS and the Bali bombing? Are there approaches you would use that would be different from those undertaken in the case studies? References Association of South East Asian Nations

The Story of the Pacific Asia Travel Association

Restoring Tourism Destinations in Crisis

Tourism Security and Safety: From Theory to Practice

Terrorism and tourism. Managing the consequences of the Bali bombings

Managing a health related crisis: SARS in Singapore

Inbound story. Strategic intelligence group

Singapore girds for SARS. Online Asia Times

Flight of the Phoenix. PATA Compass

Tourism Risk Management for the Asia Pacific Region. Bangkok: World Tourism Organization (WTO) and PATA

Crisis-It Won't Happen to Us

Director, Corporate Communications, IATA Asia Pacific

Vice President of PATA