Tourism

The Ministers of Tourism of the six GMS countries (Cambodia, People’s Republic of China, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand, and Viet Nam) met in Phnom Penh, Cambodia on 17 January 2011.

Senior officials from the GMS National Tourism Organizations (NTOs), and representatives from the Mekong Tourism Coordinating Office (MTCO) and development partners including the Asian Development Bank, UNESCO, French Embassy, UNDP, and Spanish Embassy also attended.

The meeting was held in conjunction with the ASEAN Tourism Forum 2011.

This sector assessment, strategy, and road map (ASR) documents the current strategic assistance priorities in the tourism sector of the governments of the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

The Ministers of Tourism of the 6 GMS countries (Cambodia, People’s Republic of China, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand, and Viet Nam) met in Ha Noi, Viet Nam, on 9 January 2009. Senior officials from the GMS National Tourism Organizations (NTOs), the Mekong Tourism Coordinating Office (MTCO), and development partners including the Asian Development Bank, French Embassy, European Union, Netherlands Development Cooperation (SNV), and GTZ, and US-supported ASEAN Competitiveness Enhancement Project also attended the meeting.

This is the summary of proceedings from the First GMS Tourism Ministers' Meeting.

In this issue of the Journal of Greater Mekong Subregion Development Studies, we feature five articles that concern some of the more pressing issues of cooperation in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) - trade facilitation and trade logistics, the trade impact of cross-border transport infrastructure, tourism corridor development, and biofuels and rural renewable energy. The diversity of the topics tackled in this volume reflects the multifaceted challenges of regional cooperation.

This issue of the Journal focuses on the seminal research undertaken by Social Research Institute of Chiang Mai University (SRI-CMU) on the question: How does community-based tourism (CBT) impact on poverty? Five research papers were selected from the SRI-CMU project. The overview article, Tourism: Blessings for All?, by Mingsarn Kaosa-ard, discusses the returns from tourism and how these returns are being shared from a national perspective. The benefits and the potential negative impacts of tourism are weighed.

This publication outlines the GMS Economic Cooperation Program (GMS Program) which was initiated in 1992 with the support of ADB. It aims to promote economic cooperation among Cambodia, People's Republic of China (PRC), Lao People's Democratic Republic (Lao PDR), Myanmar, Thailand, and Viet Nam.
The GMS Program covers nine priority sectors: transportation, telecommunications, energy, environment, human resource development, trade, investment, tourism, and agriculture.

The fledgling Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) Journal for Development Studies, published under the auspices of the Phnom Penh Plan (PPP) for Development Management, moves a step ahead with the second issue. In what might be considered as "ascending steps," GMS scholarship is moving forward, slowly but surely. The PPP's commitment is to ensure that we continue to make strides towards our goal of bridging the gap between research and capacity building and to propagate the gospel of balanced socioeconomic development in the GMS.