Newspaper section: Business

The effort to rebrand Asean as "Southeast Asia" for tourism promotion is being closely watched by Burmese tourism authorities, who say they will hold the Asean Tourism Association (Aseanta) responsible if the new marketing website is used for anti-Burma criticism.

The warning came from U Htay Aung, director-general of the Directorate of Hotels & Tourism at the Ministry of Hotels and Tourism, at the Asean Tourism Forum (ATF) last month. He was responding to a question about how Burma would respond if the website, which is being developed with financial assistance from the US Agency for International Development, starts to attract bloggers who see it as another opportunity to step up pressure on the military regime in Rangoon.

Burma has been deeply suspicious of the agenda behind the campaign, especially as USAID's own mission statement clearly states that it "provides economic, development and humanitarian assistance around the world in support of the foreign policy goals of the United States".

In the various Asean meetings, the Burma delegation has sought guarantees from the consultants hired to execute the tourism component of the Asean Competitiveness Enhancement (ACE) project that Burma's tourism industry would be fairly represented on the website and without bias.

Mr Htay Aung admitted that the prospect of anti-Burma blogs had not come up in the preparatory discussions among Asean tourism leaders. But since Aseanta, the private-sector grouping of Asean travel industry associations, was the collaborating partner in the project, it would have to be responsible for controlling the content, he said.

Aseanta board members did not respond to e-mails seeking comment. One board member who hit the reply button to his colleagues, and mistakenly left all the cc fields intact, effectively suggested exactly that course of action.

Dr Surin Pitsuwan, the Asean Secretary General, was also asked by e-mail whether the Asean tourism organisations had discussed the issue of blog comments critical of their respective countries, and if so, how had they resolved to deal with it? He did not respond.

The lack of response to basic questions only heightens suspicion about whether the Asean tourism fraternity, especially Aseanta, has done its homework adequately and why it has such a low tolerance level for questions about the management and handling of the campaign.

One stakeholder responding adequately is USAID, which is putting up US$4 million for the project from 2008-13. USAID's Bangkok-based spokesman Hal Lipper outlined the various procedural and check-and-balance regulations that govern its relations with its project consultants (in this case Nathan Associates which shares an office with the Kenan Institute in Bangkok).

"In line with the requirements of the contract's scope of work, Nathan follows its established procurement procedures to obtain necessary services through subcontracts," he said. "USAID has no direct relationship with the subcontractors, only with the prime contractor."

The sub-contractor for the website http://www.southeastasia.org, the centrepiece of the campaign, it turns out, is the meta-search engine Wego.com, which will be bolted on to facilitate bookings.

At the media briefing during the ATF, Wego CEO Martin Symes highlighted the portal's financial strength by saying it was "backed by News Corp", the media and entertainment empire controlled by billionaire Rupert Murdoch.

When these links to the Murdoch empire were publicised by the travel publications TTR Weekly and Travel Impact Newswire, it drew a sharp response from Mr Symes who described Wego.com as an "Asean-based business employing 24 Asean residents and taxpayers".

However, Mr Symes declined to disclose Wego.com's shareholding structure, saying only that News Digital Media, a part of News Corp, owned a "significant minority" stake in the company.

"We were approached by ACE to provide travel search functionality for the southeastasia.org site in early 2009." he said. "We negotiated an agreement with them and Aseanta in good faith and on terms and conditions substantially similar to other distribution relationships. The details of the agreement and relationship have never been discussed with our shareholder News Digital Media Pty Ltd or anyone else at News Corp.

"The traffic and revenue Wego will receive from being on the website is small. To imply that somehow this deal will be the making of Wego is utter nonsense."

However, presentations made to Asean NTOs and Aseanta about the marketing plans for http://www.southeastasia.org showed plans for generating thousands of hits on the site. If they lead to bookings, it would yield a substantial revenue stream for Wego.com, which has to split the earnings with Aseanta.

The account for online marketing to build traffic on the website has been outsourced to Qais, a Singapore web design consultancy company, chaired by Keith Timimi, who stated on his website http://www.qaisconsulting.com that he was a "founding investor in Wego.com".

USAID says the value of this contract is less than US$100,000 but at the ATF press conference, it was said that $500,000 would be spent in total on marketing.

Imtiaz Muqbil is executive editor of Travel Impact Newswire, an e-mailed feature and analysis service focusing on the Asia-Pacific travel industry.