Welcome to the last edition of our Asia ATN Newsletter for 2022 - and what a busy past few months we’ve had in Asia!
Shannon Stowell, our ATTA CEO, kicked off September speaking at the Tourism Expo Japan’s Ministerial Roundtable in Japan, giving the ATTA team the opportunity to meet many of our ATTA members in Japan in person for the first time since the pandemic.
October saw the Adventure Travel World Summit (ATWS) 2022 in Lugano, Switzerland (and my first Summit experience), which was truly special. We had a record Asian attendee turnout, with more than 80 delegates flying in from Japan alone - meaning one in ten of the attendees were from Asia! Delegates also joined us from Thailand, Malaysia, India, Nepal, Taiwan and Pakistan, and I was so pleased to be able to finally meet some of the faces with whom I’ve been communicating the past year - and the ATTA team itself!
If you missed ATWS, one session you must check out is Jean-Claude Razel’s Keynote speech, Our World in Transition, where he challenged the audience to transform the tourism narrative to “less is better” and to stop selling what customers want, and to instead “start selling what destinations need”. It was so powerful that delegates were talking about it long after it was over. You can catch a recording of it here.
October also saw our first ITB Asia partnership, with an AdventureConnect, co-hosted by Switzerland Tourism and Flywire, as well as a two-hour session on the potential of adventure travel to boost recovery in the region. The panels were supported by fantastic speakers from the ATTA community and beyond, including Vanuatu Tourism Office, NEOM, the Indonesian Ministry of Communications, Destination Mekong and the Sarawak Tourism Board.
Together with our Oceania region, ATTA Asia hosted a fantastic webinar on accessibility and inclusivity within adventure travel, with speakers from Thailand, Nepal, Australia and New Zealand, discussing the challenges and massive opportunities that accessible tourism represents. What really resonated with me during the webinar was that making travel accessible isn’t rocket science. It doesn’t necessarily require big budgets to make it happen. Rather, it is providing information, allowing travelers to make choices based on that information, and being a good host.
I was happy to see some of our Asia member news featured on Adventure Travel News over the past couple of months, including a piece about community tourism in Japan by OKU Japan, and the challenges of establishing adventure travel in Pakistan by Beyond the Valley.
Do you have news you’d like to have featured in Adventure Travel News? Let myself, Miya Liu or the ATN editorial team know, and we’d love to share it. It’s free for members, and a great way to generate some exposure within the ATTA community for your business.
Please join me in giving a huge welcome to new Asian ATTA members: WhereNext Experiences from Singapore; Trans India holidays, Embarq Motoworld, Soulful Safaris and Majestic Ladakh from India; XXPlora from Hong Kong; Mr Linh’s Adventures from Vietnam; and Inoutbound Sendai Matushima, JTB Okinawa, JTBHokkaido and Akan Adventure Tourism from Japan.
Don’t forget to join our Member Connects to learn more about how to maximize your ATTA membership, as well as to meet other members. Our next Member Connect will be hosted by Asia Community Lead, Miya Liu, in March 2023.
ATTA will also have a presence at ITB Berlin in March 2023 once more, so if you are planning to visit the event, keep your eyes peeled for news on what date our in-person AdventureConnect will be held.
I wanted to take this opportunity to remind you that the Adventure Travel World Summit 2023 is finally coming to Asia next September. Hokkaido in northern Japan will be the hosts, and after an inspection trip there last month, I can promise that it is going to be an unforgettable experience. Tickets and marketplace tables are already ready for purchase, and you can check out the details here.
Finally, some of you may have spotted that my job title has changed - I will now be heading up both Asia and Oceania under one, huge APAC umbrella, and am super excited for it, given the synergies between the two regions. We also have a new Partner Manager supporting Asia at ATTA - Joy Especkerman, who will be replacing Nenna Salokangas as she deepens her role in research and sustainability.
With that, I wish you all an advanced Happy New Year - and here’s to a prosperous 2023!