Aftab-ur-Rehman Rana is the President of Sustainable Tourism Foundation Pakistan (STFP), Islamabad. Rana is a renowned tourism professional, and for the past six years, he is working for the USAID as a Tourism Development Specialist, on the project of Livelihoods Revival in Swat. He has previously been associated with the Adventure Foundation Pakistan and the Tourism Development Corporation of Punjab. He has an MBA in Tourism and Hotel Management. He is also a fellow of 'Leadership for Environment and Development'.
BR Research recently sat down with him in Islamabad for a discussion on domestic tourism economy.
Following are some excerpts from that encounter:
The "Tourism Economy"
Aftab-ur-Rehman Rana has been associated with the local tourism industry for the past 25 years, and offers many insights. First up, he explains what tourism economy actually means. "A tourism economy is based on assets which can attract the visitors. A tourism asset can be a landscape (riversides, mountain ranges, etc.), weather conditions or hospitable inhabitants in a particular place, traditional culture, rich archeological treasures, and historical sites. These assets generate economic value when visitors come there and spend money on things like transport, hotels, guide services, food items and other site-specific activities," he started off.
Apparently, a tourist has to meet certain conditions to be qualified as such. "A tourist is someone who spends from a minimum of 24 hours to a maximum of one year at a certain place other than his or her abode. The purpose of the visit could be different: it could be recreation, meeting friends and relatives, business meetings, health improvement programme, or religious festivals. However, the individual should not be there to start a business or involve him or herself into a job," he added.
Then he mentions various intermediaries in the tourism value chain, which span from the origin to the destination. They include service providers in the businesses of travel and tour operations, multi modal transport (airlines, buses, railways, etc), hotels, lodges and guest houses, restaurants, guide services, local sellers of goods, etc. Based on that classification, the global tourism industry is one of the fastest growing industries in the world, constituting about nine percent of global GDP ($1.2 trillion); Rana cited the UN World Tourism Organisation's statistics which also estimated the number of international tourist arrivals in excess of one billion in CY12.
Focus on Domestic Tourism
When inquired about the size of domestic tourism economy in Pakistan, Rana gave a guesstimate that around sixty billion rupees are being generated by the domestic tourism economy per annum, across the tourism value chain, besides employment strength of seven hundred thousand people.
Rana stresses on the need to focus on potential domestic tourists. He uses the erstwhile, pre-devolution Federal Ministry of Tourism's 2009 data and highlights that some 46 million Pakistanis travelled from their homes to other places within Pakistan - all these people qualified under the category of domestic tourism. But only 6.5 million of them travelled from their origins for the sake of recreation and sightseeing, essentially the tourists who would go to places of tourist interest in the mountains areas of northern Pakistan and some historical sites across the country. That is a very small number compared to overall population, he says.
"The market for domestic tourism is huge. People want to spend holidays and see places outside their cities - and these people belong to all income groups and household sizes, not just the elite or upper middle class folks. For instance, if you go to Murree, you will find people from different backgrounds visiting the same location. What is the issue then? The problem is that the entire focus of tourism planning in Pakistan has been to promote foreign tourism in Pakistan. All policies to date have been made keeping in mind foreign tourism, completely ignoring the domestic tourism market," he remarked.
"Tourism requires three essential things: free time, desire to travel, and money to spend. However, if it's not peaceful outside, people prefer to stay at home. In Pakistan, there are now a large number of people who have substantial incomes, they have the time, and they also want to step out of their surroundings. But 'peace and security' are missing. I personally think that the security issue in the North is overstated because our tourism-oriented spots are largely free from miscreants' reach. However, the perception is there, which creates negative vibe and damages the sector," he lamented.
Challenges and constraints
Rana urges the need to focus on developing Pakistan's tourism destinations, arguing that though the country is rich in natural attractions like mountain ranges, valleys, and ancient archeological heritage, the lack of tourism-specific development along these sites essentially forces many Pakistanis to trade domestic tourism for international tourism.
"It is important to have certain tourist activities which could make the travel experience more enriched, more fun, and more pleasure-oriented. While adults may be more open in knowing about a site's historical background or strolling across the landscapes, kids want something more, something different," he commented. Supporting his argument, he gives examples of Kaghan, Swat, Gilgit, Hunza, Chitral and Baltistan where besides sipping nature, there are not many tourist activities, while Murree, which is in a lower league than those places, has comparatively better tourist traffic in peak summer season due to presence of more facilities and activities there.
"Tourism is the name of an overall experience. The tourism resorts abroad have arrangements for activities all round the day, which makes people spend more time and money there. Look at Dubai. It has no natural tourism assets the likes of which Pakistan has, but due to the under-developed state of Pakistani tourism destinations, it's no surprise that a person living in Karachi would rather go to Dubai, Thailand, Malaysia or Sri Lanka. There are many middle class families in Pakistan, particularly in the cities of Karachi and Lahore, who save up round the year(s) and undertake recreational tourism once every year or two years," he said.
Rana finds among other things that hamper domestic tourism expensive airline fares, low quality of service across the tourism value chain, and absence of plastic money infrastructure in many tourism destinations. "The entire tourism value chain must improve their quality of service if they want to attract more tourists. Even the most expensive of the hotels have pathetic quality of service. There is no system or organisational set-up to check the quality of service, booking rates, or food safety. Service providers should look no further than the example of Daewoo Bus Service which has established good name in the transport market because of good service standard."
He calls on provincial governments to properly regulate the service providers while working with the industry associations. He urges other provinces to follow the lead of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government which is revising its tourism-related laws in the post-18th amendment milieu. He thinks it will be better to have one apex regulatory body at the federal level which can enforce general laws following international best practices, while giving the provinces ample space to have separate non-overlapping regulations due to their peculiar tourism profiles.
For tourism promotion, Rana suggests that the federal government can effectively promote Pakistan as an international tourism destination through its embassies and consulates, whereas within the country, provincial governments are in a better position to promote their tourism destinations and resorts through their district and local governments. He believes that the private sector has a greater role to play in and around the destinations, by a) improving their service quality across the value chain, and b) investing in development of tourism destinations. It is important that the government should encourage investment in tourism sector through the promotion of public private partnerships and establishing institutions for developing quality tourism human resource.
Youth Tourism
Rana believes that the key to activating the demand for domestic tourism lays in Youth Tourism. "This segment is important, not just because college and university students are a huge majority in Pakistan. In a few years' time, these young fellows would go on to enter practical life and become big spenders. They would want to revisit the tourism destinations with their families later on. If we ignored the youth, we would be ignoring future households who would be permanently lost from the domestic tourism economy," he cautions, while again stressing the need to develop tourist resorts within Pakistan so that people can come back year after year.
Think Local, Attract Global
Rana is confident that by building up the domestic tourism economy, Pakistan can lure foreigners into the country's travel resorts and destinations. "It will be more effective to experiment with local's taste and tendencies for tourism before trying such things on foreigners. That way, Pakistan can present its culture and traditions, its distinct outlook, to the world, which tailoring everything with foreigners' tastes in mind won't ever accomplish," he remarked. In the same breath, he emphasises that this is the right time to build up the domestic tourism industry, for, hopefully, when law and order situation improves in the future, Pakistan would have a better and unique product to offer.
Sustainable Tourism Foundation Pakistan
The tourism foundation, Rana is heading, is based on the principles of sustainable tourism, which is about minimising tourism's negative impact on environment and local economy(s), and minimising socio-cultural imbalances at tourist destinations. "Uncontrolled tourism leaves the sights as well as cultures in disarray, and the very assets which tourism is built on get damaged. Sustainable tourism's principle is exactly that of sustainable development - a tourism destination should be developed in such a way that it holds up, so that future tourists can also enjoy that destination," he elaborated on the concept, noting that tourism has to be economically friendly, in that the local community must have livelihood opportunities to be able to benefit from the tourist visits and accompanying spending in their area.
Towards that pursuit, STFP shares international best practices through workshops, seminars and interactive meetings with all the stakeholders. The foundation also comes up with demonstrable activities, like its eco-camping village at Batakundi (Kaghan) and waste management initiatives at Lake Saif-ul-Malook National Park. "We have also designed some Micro Enterprise projects, through which we are trying to incorporate communities that were out of the tourism economy. For instance, we have helped women from the Kaghan area to start the business of picking, processing and packaging the walnuts grown in that area. We sell their product to the tourists and distribute earnings among those women. Similarly, with STFP's involvement, traditional embroidery and tourist souvenirs are now being sold as the craft of Kaghan. We are now trying to expand this programme with support of donors like the ILO."
STFP also trains tourist guides, hotel employees and other people, on the principles of sustainable tourism. Financial support comes from the foundation's members, who also invest their time. "Our tourism expeditions also take care of the core principles of sustainable tourism. Our motto is 'leave nothing but footprints; take nothing but photos'. Those expeditions give us a chance to train at least 15-20 people on every trip, besides the opportunity to create a sense of responsibility in the service providers. Our main focus is to share our knowledge and experience, and these are the ways through which our message spreads," he summed up.
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