Destination Pakistan-2007

[FMC]

Destination Pakistan:- How PIA can help!
A feature from today's DAWN for the forum's interest.


December 18, 2006 Monday Ziqa'ad 26, 1427


Are we neglecting airlines’ role in tourism promotion?

By Aileen Qaiser

THE ministry of tourism recently unveiled an impressive calendar of cultural attractions for ‘Visit Pakistan Year 2007’, now renamed by the livelier slogan ‘Destination Pakistan 2007’, to attract what would hopefully be a record number of tourists next year.

The big question is even with these 52 or so colourful events all over the country lined up for the coming year, would we be able to bring in a record number of visitors given the poor health of our national flag carrier PIA.

For any country to be worth visiting, it needs not only tourist attractions but also accessibility. Statistics show that accessibility by air is crucial for international tourism.

Given the geo-political environment around Pakistan, it is obvious that the majority of visitors come by air. According to statistics of the UN World Tourism Organization, Pakistan had an estimated 648,000 tourist arrivals in 2004, up from 378,000 in 1995.

Country Tourist arrival

2004 1995

Iran 1,659,000 489,000

India 3,457,000 2,124,000

Malaysia 15,703,000 7,469,000

Thailand 11,737,000 6,952,000

China 41,761,000 20,034,000

Pakistan 648,000 378,000

Technically speaking, all airlines flying into Pakistan, most important of which is naturally our very own PIA, play a noble role in making our country accessible to international tourists. Some 14 airlines land at Islamabad Airport, including PIA and three other local airlines, while Lahore Airport is served by 16 airlines and Karachi has some 36 airlines flying through its airport.

However, it is not only the number of airlines but which airlines and also the frequency of flights in a week which determine the accessibility of a country. For instance, Spain’s Madrid and Barcelona airports each have only 35 airlines serving them, as compared to India’s New Delhi and Mumbai airports which have 70 and 42 airlines respectively. Yet Spain was the second top tourist destination in the world in 2004 with 52.4 million tourist arrivals while India only had 3.4 million tourist arrivals in the same year.

How effective PIA is in performing the role of increasing the accessibility of Pakistan to international tourists can be judged by the health of the airline. And our national airline is in very bad health. It has degenerated over the past three-and-a-half decades from a successful trend-setting corporation in the 1960s to a concern today that seems to exist only to serve certain vested interests.
According to recent media reports, as well as revelations made during a recent briefing by PIA to the Senate standing committee on defence and defence production, PIA is not only deep in the red, it is also in a shambles administratively, hardly being able to cover existing international and domestic routes even by leasing or borrowing aircraft from here and there.
PIA is even having trouble handling newly acquired aircraft. The airline seems unable to put into routine operation the new ATR turboprop planes on routes to the tourism-important Northern Areas, access to which was practically cut off after the grounding of the Fokker planes in July.
Although PIA cites rising fuel costs as the major reason for it being in the terrible mess that it is in, it is obvious that other factors are also responsible, chief of which seem to be a combination of management failure and the lack of government commitment to the success of the airline, both in terms of revenue generation and tourist promotion.

Although the Public Accounts Committee of the National Assembly and the Defence Committee of the Senate have both raised the issue of PIA’s poor performance, and the ministry of defence had reportedly ordered an inquiry into PIA’s affairs earlier this year, nothing seems to have moved so far.
It is puzzling that we have not deemed it fit as yet to order a commission of inquiry into the affairs of PIA, particularly into decisions in the past that have adversely affected its performance. Such a commission of inquiry is also very much needed for recommending measures that should be taken to turn PIA around.
Even a layman knows that one of the first basic rules in tourist promotion is an efficient national airline. If we really want to encourage tourism, we must rejuvenate PIA and give it a new lease of life. PIA needs to lower costs yet at the same time raise quality and standards, operate more efficiently, exploit business opportunities, enter into new marketing alliances, promote new investments that raise productivity and last but not least raise profits, all this to be achieved despite rising fuel costs.
While reforming PIA, we should at the same time actively engage with other foreign airlines in developing and promoting the tourism industry in our country. Some ministries of tourism in other countries have signed memorandums of understanding with foreign airlines to market their countries as attractive tourist destinations to holiday-makers travelling on these airlines. For example, Australia’s tourism ministry has an umbrella memorandum of understanding with Singapore Airlines to market Australia as an attractive tourist destination.

Similarly, our ministry of tourism could consider cooperating with foreign airlines that land here in the joint promotion of Pakistan internationally as a compelling tourist destination and boost tourist arrivals here. Aside from joint promotional activities, such agreements would also represent commitment of resources by our ministry of tourism in promoting Pakistan overseas with important airline partners.

Finally, our ministry of tourism might want to start looking at Saarc as one of our key sources of tourism, particularly as people in the region are beginning to earn more and can afford to travel. A major bottleneck towards the promotion of tourism in Pakistan and in other South Asian countries has been the dearth of travelling within the region. As experience in regions elsewhere has shown, e.g., in Southeast Asia and Europe, it is the regional tourists which usually form the bulk of tourist arrivals in any particular country.

In the promotion of regional tourism, low-cost or budget airlines have an important role to play in providing point-to- point services bypassing congested hubs. But the success of budget regional airlines, as with the success of any regular national airline, depends on active commitment and support from the government.