Regional Tourism Development in Southeast Asia

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to address the role of tourism to the regional economic development of Southeast Asian economies. The assessment was accomplished by investigating the state of tourism development and by determining the drawbacks of tourism industry existed in Southeast Asia. This paper also explores strategies required to develop tourism collectively in order to achieve gains through establishing favourable environment and mobilizing endowed strategic resources. The assessment suggests the need to give attention on formulating transparent objective, implementation and integration of these objectives into national plans, participation of community people, tourism entrepreneurship and cooperation and integration of governments in developing tourism. Successfully overcoming the difficulties of regional tourism development, Southeast Asian tourism industry has the potential to reap benefit from the economies of scale.