© Institute of International Relations and Area Studies, Ritsumeikan University
Notes / Conference Report
The New Organization for the Promotion of
Regional Development and Inter-City Cooperation:
The case of Tourism Promotion Organization for the Asia Pacific (TPO)
HAYASHI Kentaro**
BONO Narihiro**
Abstract
This paper was revised for Ritsumeikan Journal of International Affairs. The original paper was written for the keynote
speech of the first assembly of TPO September 2003. This paper
composed of two papers; the revised keynote speech and the paper,
‘Visions o TPO’ released at the assembly.
The first chapter shows the issues in tourism industry of the
Asia Pacific. The second chapter describes the framework of TPO
and strategy. The third chapter introduces implications of inter-city
cooperation in Japan, especially focusing on Maizuru and Kyoto.
The final chapter suggests the future prospects for inter-city cooperation and the development of TPO.
Keywords:
inter-city cooperation, tourism industry, local initiative, TPO,
multilateral relationship
RITSUMEIKAN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS Vol.2, pp.181-193 (2004).
* Professor, College of Social Science, Ritsumeikan University
** Research Assistant, College of Policy Science, Ritsumeikan University
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INTRODUCTION
After the end of the Cold War, regional cooperation (regional integration)
is one of main phenomenon in international relations. At the same time, nonstate actors come to play the important role in regional cooperation. Tourism
Promotion Organization for the Asia Pacific (TPO) was newly developed to
promote regional cooperation in tourism of the Asia Pacific. In 2003 the first
assembly was held at Busan, Republic of Korea. This paper describes the
current status and the future prospects for the relationship between tourism
and inter-city cooperation and introduces the potentials of TPO.
Ⅰ. ISSUES IN TOURISM INDUSTRY OF THE ASIA PACIFIC REGION
1. The Implication of Tourism
Tourism industry is one of important industries in the society. That is a
reason why tourism is a ‘Cultivator’ of human development. The term,
‘Tourism’ is derived from the word, ‘Turn’ which means ‘back to’ and ‘move
around’. In other words, Tourism means the movement from the daily life
space to the extraordinary. Its movement gives ‘gala’ (pleasure and precious
time and space) to people. Such experiences also give ‘awareness’ and
‘amazement’ to what we find newly. Then people get perception of the different culture beyond what they have already known. As a consequence, stimulating to learn, we can get richer spiritual life. Tourism cultivates human
being. Tourism plays a crucial role in the promotion and support of cultural
exchange.
2. The Current Status of Inter-city Cooperation in Japan and the Asia Pacific
The Asia Pacific region, especially Northeast Asia, is said to be still in
the Cold War. In other words, there is distrustful atmosphere among states
in the region. Under such a condition, tourism industry might be one of
potential actors in order to promote mutual recognition (cultural exchange)
and economic development inner region.
However, it is not easy that tourism as well as inter-city cooperation in
the Asia Pacific region is mature. Here we show the case of inter-city cooperation and tourism in Japan.
It is 1,304 local cities in 58 countries that local governments in Japan
have sister cities with. It is 1.4 times as much as those of China and 4 times
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as those of Korea. Local communities in Japan have much experience, which
is mainly cultural exchange, educational exchange events. National government and local governments of Japan have invested more than 100 billion
yen per year. The amount of investment for sister cities activity in the early
1990s cost three times as much as that of previous periods. Local governments gradually have initiatives for internationalization of local communities, so called ‘Diplomacy’ by local and for local. The budget for international
cooperation is about 700-800 million yen mainly towards East Asian countries; 41% for China, 5% for Mongolia and 5% for Russia. However, it
accounts for only less than 1% of total ODA in Japan. Therefore, we hope
the localization of ODA with basis on international inter-city cooperation. It
is a characteristic in the recent international intercity cooperation that it
intends improvement of human resources in each area, such as environmental issue, health and medical service, education and agricultural technology
and skill. In addition, the recent cooperation intends not one-side cooperation, but mutual cooperation, so called ‘Win-Win Relationship’. The most of
such cooperation are relatively small project. It focuses on cooperation of
soft power, which means possession of outcome in common and the promotion of increase of mutual recognition among local residents about culture
and history more than supply of hard wares and technology through international inter-city cooperation.
3. Issues of Tourism in Japan
There are also some problems in tourism industry in Japan. The first
point is the imbalanced tourism. The number of outbound from Japan was
16.52 million in 2002, on the other hand, inbound to Japan was 5.24 million
in the same year. With regard to expenditure, it cost about 4 trillion and 4
hundred billion in outbound, on the other hand, that of inbound cost about 1
trillion and 5 hundred million. Japan National Tourist Organization
(JNTO), which will be privatized in future, has worked for the expansion of
inbound, but the numbers of out-bound still takes three times as large as
that of inbound in actual. One of the main factors in terms of imbalanced
relations is the boom of foreign travel among the Japanese with increase of
income. Tourism industries in Japan usually provided the service depending
on the packaged travel. They have not so much regard the creation of new
market, which aims at social and human development, such as the study
tour. The Networks of Japanese travel agencies in foreign countries have
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basically provided service with Japanese who reside in foreign countries or
Japanese travellers. They also have not developed much services for
inbound to Japan. But, the same tendency might be already shown in Korea
and will apply to China in the near future.
On the other hand, it counts 3.41 million in terms of inbound to Japan.
65% of inbound is from Asia; 1.27 million from Korea, 8.8 hundred thousand
from Taiwan, 4.5 hundred thousand from China and 2.9 hundred thousand
from Hong Kong. On the contrary, 17% of all is from North America, 13%
from Europe and 4% from Oceania. This tendency will continue in the
future. For example, Word Cup in Korea and Japan accelerated its tendency
and Japan Korea fiesta 2005 will also accelerate it, which will be held as
40th anniversary for diplomatic relations between Japan and Korea. In addition, it is quite easy rationally to predict the deepening of relationship
among China, Japan and Korea in the future. Tokyo is on of the best sight
in Japan for foreigners. The most of them go to large leisure facilities, such
as Tokyo Disney Land and shopping for electrical appliances, such as
Akihabara. It is apt to decrease to visit and study historical heritages, such
as Kyoto and Nara. In terms of nature of tourism, we hope that foreigners
are more interested in and recognise characteristics of Japan, such as history, culture and nature. However foreigners tend to be interested in hard
amusements mentioned above.
4. Issues in Tourism from the Analysis of TPO
Tourism Promotion Organization for the Asia Pacific (TPO) has awareness of the similar issues. TPO analyzed the current status of tourism in the
Asia Pacific in four points: Strength, Weakness, Opportunity and Threat
(SWOT).
Firstly, the analysis referred to the strength in the Asia-Pacific cities. This
area is huge international market in population density area. There are abundant and diverse resources for tourism. In addition, the most of the cities has
already had well-prepared urban infrastructure. On the other hand, there
some weak points as well. There is uneven economic development among
member countries. Therefore, there is not always much investment to
tourism facilities. Tourism business in this region is vulnerable. Its market is
also incompetent. At the same time, there are some threats. In this area, the
centralized power structure still plays in the main role to some extent.
TPO was established in order to solve these problems in tourism indus-
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try. The next section describes the comprehensive framework and strategy
of TPO.
Ⅱ. ABOUT TOURISM PROMOTION ORGANIZATION FOR THE ASIA
PACIFIC (TPO)
1. Framework of TPO
TPO consists of three sections, such as General Assembly, Executive
Committee and Secretariat. General Assembly consists of all members
including representatives of city governments and business sectors. It functions decision-making body and is convened in one of member cities. The
first assembly was hold at Busan in 2003 and the second will be hold at
Fukuoka 2005. Executive Committee decides on matters regarding the function, operation and administration of TPO within resolution of the General
Assembly and is convened when necessary. The committee, who nationally
represent the member cities, can set up subordinate committees with a view
to accomplishing organization objectives. Secretariat is the center of communication and exchange among members. It carries out the diverse day to
day work to support activities of Organization. Its duties are as varied as
the matters dealt with by the TPO. These range from administering organizational projects to arranging meetings and events of TPO including the
General Assembly and the Executive Committee meetings.
The membership of TPO consists of two memberships, such as City
member and Industry member. TPO gives city membership those who are
Government of the member cities of the Asia-Pacific City Summit and of
other city governments and local authorities in the Asia-Pacific region wishing to become a member. On the other hand, industry membership contains
tourism related to business entities including tourism association, hotels,
shipping companies, airlines, travel agencies in the Asia-pacific region wishing to become a member.
2. Visions of TPO
This section describes the provisional strategy of TPO to solve the
issues mentioned in the first chapter.
There are some opportunities to overcome weak points mentioned in the
first chapter. One of them is the advancement of communication technology
(IT). This point can play a crucial role in inter-city cooperation. Inter-city coop-
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eration might be superior to the centralized power with regard to the maintenance of tourism industry. Tourism market in the Asia Pacific region is rapidly
growing recently1). Inter-city cooperation can and must promote and support
this tendency. Tourism industry will be able to recover and develop regional
economy. Thus, tourism industry has much potential in the Asia Pacific. TPO
is the promoter. The organization consists of the power of inter-city network.
With the above concepts, TPO manifests strategies and visions for
tourism promotion organization. Strategies are divided into three with each
implementation.
The first strategy is ‘Center of Tourism Marketing’. This strategy consists of three implementations; TPO Travel Fair, Joint Tourism Business
and E-Marketing opportunities on TPO homepage2). The second strategy is
‘Center of Tourism Information’, consisting of Publishing the TPO tourism
information, the accumulation of member cities’ tourism information at the
TPO homepage and Publishing the TPO news letter. The third strategy is
‘Center of Tourism Worker’s network’, consisting of two implementations.
One is to organize regular and non-regular meetings, general assembly and
executive committee meetings. The other is to develop various visiting and
exchange programs.
Table 1. The strategies and implementations of TPO
Strategy
Implementation
E-Marketing opportunities on web-site
Center of Tourism
Marketing
TPO Travel Fair
Center of Tourism
Information
The accumulation of
Publishing the TPO member cities’ tourism Publishing the TPO
information on web- news letter
tourism information
site
Center of Tourism
Worker’s network
Regular meeting, general assembly and execuNon-regular meeting,
tive committee meetings
Joint Tourism Business
visiting and exchange
programs
From TPO working paper at 1st Assembly at Busan September 2003
1) TPO estimates 1.2 billion tourists will arrive by 2013 all over the world. About 20% of
tourists will arrive in the Asia Pacific. On the other hand, the number of tourist in the Asia
Pacific will count up 253 million as outbound tourist. Annual growth will be 6.5 percent.
2) http://www.aptpo.org/
Travel Fair has already held at exhibition area in BEXCO at Busan between 3rd of SEP and
6th of SEP 2003 as well as the first assembly. It was similar to an international trade fair.
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These strategies are based on distinctive visions. In ten years, TPO is
achieving two visions; the enlargement and empowerment. There are 43
member cities in 12 countries in 2003. In ten years, there will be totally
100 city-members. In addition, there will be 1,000 industry-members. If
TPO achieves two objectives, it can organize 100 million dollars’ joint projects.
Table 2. The member cities of TPO (2003)
Countries
Member cities
Australia
Brisbane
China
Dailian, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Hon Kong, Qingdao,
Sanya, Shanghai, Shenyang, Urumqi, Weihai, Xian
Indonesia
Jakarta
Japan
Fukuoka, Kagoshima, Kitakyushu, Kumamoto, Miyazaki,
Nagasaki, Naha, Oita, Osaka, Saga, Sasebo, Shimonoseki
Korea
Andong, Busan, Daegu, Daejeon, Gwanju, Gyeongju,
Jeonju, Ulsan
Malaysia
Gorgetown, Ipoh, Kotakinabalu
New Zealand Auckland
Philippines
Manila
Russia
Vladivostock
Thailand
Bangkok
U.S.A
Honolulu
Vietnam
Ho Chi Minh
From TPO directly
As an enlargement vision, TPO is expanding intelligence through publishing and web-site. In ten years, TPO web-site will have date base function for regional tourism resources and business. TPO will be the research
center for tourism policy to study on tourism policies and statistics. Finally,
TPO play more powerful role than centralized power. TPO will be a network
of policy manager of city governments, and show the strong leadership and
practical power for tourism policy. TPO will be a sort of hub organization for
efficient cooperation between governments and business sectors.
In order to be practical power, TPO undertakes some project (empower-
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ment). These projects cover three area; education, marketing and moneymaking. The concept of education project is to foster excellent tourism specialists. TPO will undertake the establishment of a College of Tourism and
systemize various workshop and seminars. As the marketing function, TPO
has already organized TPO travel fair as mentioned earlier. The most of
member cities held their own booth in 2003. As well as the enlargement of
member cities, the number of booth will increase by more than 1,000. In
addition, the travel fair functions not only as the destination marketing but
also product marketing (comprehensive promotion). Finally, TPO will be a
hub for money-making. In ten years, the Asia Pacific region will have 285
million tourists and 350 billion US dollars’ market. The organic cooperation,
as TPO promotes, will give us 60% of market share and 200 billion dollars’
receipt.
After the achievement of six visions, TPO will be the most influential
organization in the tourist market, a base where member cities explore new
fields of cooperation and an example of successful cross-border cooperation.
Ⅲ. EXAMPLES OF INTER-CITY COOPERATION IN JAPAN
1. The Inter-city Cooperation: the Case of Kitakyushu and Maizuru
This section introduces two examples of inter-city cooperation; Maizuru
and Kitakyushu. Kitakyushu has started sister city agreement with Dailian
since 1979. Then they have promoted inte-rcity cooperation in the solution of
environmental issues since 1981 when they had a seminar, ‘anti-pollution
policy’. After then, Kitakyushu and Dailian draw up a plan, ‘the Environmental
Management Plan for Environmental Zone in Dailian Municipality in the
People’s Republic of China’ from 1996 to 2000. In this action, the policies of
Kitakyushu applied to the Dailian’s case, which are air pollution and water
pollution. As a consequence, this plan shifted from local cooperation level to
national level. In 1997 Japanese government decided adapted ODA project to
loan 30 billion yen to China, which divided into some small projects; air pollution, water pollution, the disposal of waste, and urban planning.
Maizuru city has started sister city agreement with Dailian since 1982.
In 1993 not only the governmental based cooperation but also NPO, so
called Dailian-Maizuru Friendship Association, established. This organization is based on volunteer activities. These activities mainly work for medical and health cooperation collaborating with national hospital and target
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rural area in Dailian. Recently their activities includes educational cooperation; such as the reconstruction of school building, donation of computers
and exchange of students. In addition, they provide greenhouses and technological contribution to the mining of wells. It is quite important that they
work with national government, local government, academies and other
public organizations although it is some of characteristics that are the
exchange of students and the activity for peace, such as sending foldedpaper crane.
Thus, it is so called Community-based Development Initiatives (CDI)
that is one of the characteristics in the recent intercity cooperation. CDI
activity overcomes obstacles with relation to diplomacy in national level and
comes to localize international inter-city cooperation and ODA.
2. Local Initiative of Maizuru
Kyoto city, whose population is fourteen thousand, is famous for the
representative of Japanese traditional culture and history as known internationally. In addition, it is famous for one of the largest academic areas in
Japan. Maizuru, whose population is one hundred of thousand, is located on
the north of Kyoto prefecture. At the same time, Maizuru is located on the
coast of the Sea of Japan (Dong Hae). Maizuru port the former naval port, is
now only crucial international port around Kansai Area. Maizuru port,
which is accessible from Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe, was appointed as Foreign
Access Zone (FAZ), which has sea route to Busan, Dailian, and Nakhodka.
Local government is being lobbied and constructing the infrastructure of
new rout for a passenger ship as well. Local government in Maizuru is promoting the urban planning, which aims at the establishment of internationalized city for neighbour countries with basis on ‘the New Comprehensive
Urban Planning of Maizuru’.
In 1990s, The Academic Forum for Northeast Asia3) was organized at
Kyoto. It is composed of local governments, universities and industrial sec3) The Academic Forum for Northeast Asia was founded in 1986. It is promotes and supports
intellectual exchange, such as academies and culture in order to develop industry, economy,
academic activity, social life and culture under the broad network among industry, universities and governments. The headquarter is in Kyoto. 246 individual members and group
register. It undertakes international symposium, professional conference, the aid for
researches of Northeast Asia, seminar for citizens and provision of their outcomes and profits to university seminars. In addition it supported Northeast Asia Academic Forum at
Busan round and Northeast Asia Youth Forum in 2001.
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tors. Its aim is the achievement of new international society in Northeast
Asia. On the other hand, Northeast Asia Forum is held at Maizuru every
year. It collaborates with Pusan Development Institute (PDI), the
University of Busan, Dailian, Nakhodka and Portsmouth as well. Its intercity cooperation is managed by multi-level actors, which are local governments, academies and industrial sectors. In 2000 Environmental
Cooperation Conference for the Sea of Japan (Dong Hae) was held in
Maizuru with the support of the Ministry of Environment. The members of
the conference were China, Japan, Korea, Mongol and Russia. In addition,
Local Governments Union in Northeast Asia established in 1992. This
union includes 32 local governments in its region. There is gradually the
advent of multilateral network in its region.
Maizuru prepares to establish Maizuru City Centre for Universities
Liaison as well as the Association of international exchange. The centre
mediates local residents and academies in Kyoto city area in order to promote and preserve particular resources in Maizuru. The centre has already
achieved some projects, such as the preservation and reproduction of folktales, production of (digital) archives for them, collaboration with academic
outcomes in environmental projects and research of eco-tourism.
It is common point in both organizations that they cooperate with local
government and some NPOs as much as possible. This action encourages
the ownership and empowerment of local residents.
3. Special Economic Zone Plan: Maizuru
Maizuru city is not large. However, Maizuru comes to make initiatives
to construct the infrastructure for international relationship and tourist
promotion. This section describes the concept for the special zone of
Maizuru. This plan tries to removes some controls in order to promote the
local business in the area. Maizuru suggested the acceptance of Korean and
Chinese without visa at Maizuru Harbour as one of the policies. But, the
central governments rejected this proposal because of the increase of illegal
entrant and unlawful immigration. Therefore, Maizuru city suggested the
acceptance of only students from Korea without visa. Finally this policy
applied to all of the cities in Japan when Ro Moo-Hyun visited Japan on 7th
of June. It can be regarded as a much progress in the point that its policy
will make it easier for both of youths to communicate. In the long term, its
policy will make the relationship between Japan and Korea much more pos-
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itive. This tells us that local initiative influenced the change of the national
government attitude even though the Special Zone of Maizuru did not
achieve.
Ⅳ. SUGGESTIONS TOWARDS TPO AND TOURISM INDUSTRY
This section suggests the evolution of inter-city cooperation and suggests implications for TPO in the future.
1. Bilateral to Multilateral
There are some problems in the current inter-city cooperation. One is
that international inter-city cooperation still focuses on individual issues.
And the other is that inter-city cooperation still based on bilateral relationship even though inter-city cooperation intends comprehensive activities. It
recognizes us that we need to promote the multilateral inter-city cooperation in order to overcome these problems. We need to suggest alternative
framework for comprehensive inter-city cooperation, which makes inter-city
cooperation more efficient and common ownership. As already suggested,
the establishment of ‘International Region’ is quite useful for new framework. Tourism industry can become hub to promote the international intercity cooperation to own common historic and cultural property. Then there
will appear new international society for mature inter-city cooperation. In
other words, tourism is a sort of cultivator to preserve environment, historic
and cultural properties and promote social and human development. In this
regard, tourism industries become the fundamental networker to create
international region.
2. Suggestions for TPO
Regarding the relationship between inter-city cooperation and the
establishment of TPO, This section suggests implications for this conference.
(1) Entrepreneurship
Tourism industry should have entrepreneurships for the creation of
new markets. It cultivates learning-tourism, which promotes ‘awareness’
and ‘expansion of mutual recognition’. In other words, tourism industries
renovate sight-seeing to sight-finding and sight-learning.
(2) Ownership
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Tourism industries respect ‘diversity’ in Asia-Pacific region and promote ‘Public-Private-Partnership’, which collaborate national and local governments with private sectors. They support the social and human development. They make an effort to promote peace and symbolism.
(3) Partnership
Tourism industries have to be infrastructure to support historic and cultural exchange. It means that they expand multilateral network independently. Through these activities, they play a role in the promotion of
exchange of residents and intelligence. They instruct common ownership for
tourist attractions. They promote mutual recognition, not one-side tourism.
(4) The expansion of Tourism Promotion Organization for AsiaPacific Cities
Tourism Promotion Organization for Asia-Pacific Cities (TPO) with
other private and public sectors, plays a crucial role in the promotion of the
multilateral network and the preservation of cultures and tourist attractions
3. TPO as Hub for Academy, Public Sectors and Private Sectors
After the participation of the first assembly, we’d like to suggest another point for TPO. As mentioned in ‘Visions of TPO’, TPO has the blueprint
that they establish the tourism collage in the future. It is quite interesting
plan, but there might be another plan we shows. TPO has already played a
role as hub, which connects local governments and tourism industries. As
the same as the current status, TPO can be a hub for academic networks in
Tourism Study. Firstly, TPO should organize academic association for
tourism promotion in the Asia Pacific. TPO calls member universities for
this association. Later, the students in each university can study in any
member universities for one-two years. TPO can provide academic programs
and practical trainings for students and tourism industries in the region.
TPO should establish academic network for tourism promotion rather than
do the establishment of new university. In addition, TPO publishes and
archives these activities through their web-site and publications. We hope
this provisional plan is applicable of the concept of TPO.
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Picture 1. Hub Plan of TPO
Researchers
Students
Universities in
Asia Pacific
Academic
Society
Practical
Trainng
@ Local
governments
and tourism
industry
TPO
•
•
•
Management
Archives
Publications
Students
Enterprise agents
Government Agents
* Students, Agents = actors in each organization
** words under TPO = some of main functions
Researchers
Government Agents
Enterprise agents