INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TOURISM RESEARCH Int J Tourism Res 12, 205–218 (2010) Published online 10 August 2009 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/jtr.746 Factors Affecting the Service Quality of the Tour Guiding Profession in Macau Athena H N Mak1,*, Kevin K F Wong2 and Richard C Y Chang3 School of Management, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey, GU2 7XH, UK School of Hotel and Tourism Management, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong Department of Tourism, Providence University, 200 Chung Chi Rd., Taichung 43301, Taiwan ABSTRACT INTRODUCTION This study examines the factors affecting the service quality of the tour guiding profession in Macau In-depth interviews were conducted with representatives from the Macau Tourist Guide Association, the Macau Government Tourist Office and selected practising tour guides to explore the issues from multiple insiders’ perspectives The factors identified were classified into six categories: unhealthy business practices, market domination, immaturity of tourist market, changing tourist behaviour, intense competition between inbound tour operators and human resource issues The findings suggest that a number of these problems actually originated from the unhealthy business practices of the tourist-generating country, namely mainland China in this study Considering the growing importance of the Chinese outbound tourism market, the study findings will be of significant value to Macau and to other destinations targeting the Chinese market Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd he tourism literature has widely recognised that the service quality of the tour guide is a critical factor in achieving tourist satisfaction (Lopez, 1980; Geva and Goldman, 1991; Mossberg, 1995; Wang et al., 2000; Ap and Wong, 2001; Wong, 2001; Zhang and Chow, 2004; Black and Weiler, 2005), influencing travel operator’s reputation and wordof-mouth publicity (Heung, 2008) and affecting the image and revisit intention of a destination (Whipple and Tach, 1988; Chang, 2006; Sahin and Balta, 2007) On the other hand, destination governments and tourism industries are increasingly aware of the need to improve the service quality of the tour guiding profession; for instance, by investing in training programmes (Weiler and Ham, 2002; Dioko and Unakul, 2005) as well as quality assurance and regulatory mechanisms (Ap and Wong, 2001; Black and Weiler, 2005) This is a particularly pressing issue in many Asian destinations in the face of fierce intra-regional competition Macau is one of the destinations in Asia which faces strong competition from established destinations in the neighbourhood such as Hong Kong, Guangzhou and Singapore (Leong, 2007) Macau has been experiencing a rapid expansion of the inbound tourism market over the past decade According to the Macau Government Tourists Office (MGTO) (Macau Government Tourist Office, 2008a), visitor arrivals in 2007 exceeded 27 million, representing a growth of 22.7% from 2006 The advent of the liberalization of the gaming industry in 2002 (Yong and Fu, 2006) and the resultant significant scale expansion of the casino business, as well as the relaxation of travel Received 26 January 2009; Revised 18 June 2009; Accepted 25 June 2009 Keywords: Macau inbound; Mainland China outbound; service quality; tour guide; tour guiding profession *Correspondence to: Athena H N Mak, PhD Researcher, School of Management, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey, GU2 7XH, UK E-mail: athena-mak@hotmail.com T Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd 206 A H N Mak, K K F Wong and R C Y Chang arrangements made by the Mainland Chinese government have significantly contributed to the exponential growth of Macau’s tourism industry in recent years In spite of the thriving success in the inbound market, the large influx of visitors has posed great challenges to the MGTO and the travel industry on retaining and recruiting enough well-qualified and well-trained tour guides in the industry, especially when there is an acute labour shortage in Macau (Kale and De, 2006) More importantly, the monitoring and controlling of the service quality of the tour guides has become more difficult There are a number of reported incidents of rows and conflicts between tourists and the tour guides (The China Post, 2007); Macau Daily Times, 2008) about excessive shopping trips and the changing of the original itinerary without the agreement of the tourists These incidents resulted in a growing crisis of confidence in the tour guiding profession in Macau Accordingly, there is a pressing need for policy-makers and stakeholders to understand the current state of the tour guiding profession and its impact on the travel industry in Macau It is in such a context that this study attempts to examine the factors and the underlying causes that affect the service quality of the tour guides in Macau This study is part of a wider research project that seeks to document and explore the issues and problems affecting the tour guiding professions in the Southeast Asia region LITERATURE REVIEW Roles of tour guides According to the European Federation of Tourist Guides Associations (EFTGA), a tour guide is defined as a person who ‘guides groups or individual visitors from abroad or from the home country around the monuments, sites and museums of a city or region; to interpret in an inspiring and entertaining manner, in the language of the visitor’s choice, the cultural and natural heritage and environment’ (European Federation of Tourist Guides Associations, 1998, unpublished) In Macau, MGTO defined a tour guide as ‘the person who receives and escorts tourists, provides commentaries as a tourist service, and receives remuneration for his or her service’ (Macau Government Tourist Office, 2008b) Although the two definitions differ, both emphasise the ‘guide/lead’ and ‘interpret/inform’ roles of the tour guide, which are respectively represented under the ‘leadership sphere’ and ‘mediatory sphere’ in Cohen’s (1985) model on the dynamics of the tour guide’s role (see Table 1) Cohen’s (1985) model delineates the four major components of the role of modern tour guides, namely ‘Original Guide’ (pathfinder), ‘Professional Guide’ (mentor), ‘Animator’ and ‘Tour-leader’ Although the model aptly captures the roles tour guides play based on the Table Cohen’s Model on the dynamics of the tour guide’s role Outer-directed Inner-directed Leadership Sphere (1) Original Guide (Pathfinder) (instrumental primacy) a Direction b Access c Control (2) Animator (social primacy) a Tension-management b Integration c Morale d Animation Mediatory Sphere (3) Tour-leader (Inter-actionary primacy) a Representation b Organisation (4) Professional Guide (Mentor) (communicative primacy) a Selection b Information c Interpretation d Fabrication Source: Adopted from Cohen (1985) Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Int J Tourism Res 12, 205–218 (2010) DOI: 10.1002/jtr Service Quality of Tour Guiding needs of the tourists, there are other ‘mundane’ roles that they perform For instance, as employees of the tour operators, tour guides are the ‘spokespersons’ representing the image and reputation of the company and the ‘salespersons’ selling the next tour (Grönroos, 1978; Fine and Speer, 1985; Chang, 2006) From the host destination’s perspective, they serve as the ‘interpreters’ translating the cultures and values of the host destination (Holloway, 1981; Katz, 1985; Ryan and Dewar, 1995) and as the ‘mediators’ mediating between the host destination environment and its visitors (Weiler and Davis, 1993; Ballantyne and Hughes, 2001) In a wider scope, they also function as the ‘ambassadors’ of the host communities who are entrusted with the public relations missions ‘to encapsulate the essence of place’ (Pond, 1993, p vii) and serve as the window to a particular destination (Holloway, 1981; Pond, 1993) The studies by Zhang and Chow (2004) and Black and Weiler (2005) provide a comprehensive summary on the various roles tour guides play Among the many diverse roles tour guides play, there has been a strong emphasis on their ‘mediator’ role which includes mediation between the tourists and the tour operator, hotels and other tourism suppliers (Dahles, 2002), as well as between the tourists and the host community and environment (Weiler and Davis, 1993; Ballantyne and Hughes, 2001) The harmonious balancing of the benefits of these various stakeholders is most ideal; however, as cited by Dahles (2002), the process of mediation in the actual tourism practice can be problematic, and the roles of tour guides are not likely to be harmonious at all times In fact, the different roles are often in conflict with one another (Holloway, 1981) Moreover, tour guides have an ‘entrepreneurship’ role to fulfil, as they have a need to make their encounters with tourists profitable for themselves (Steege et al., 1999; Dahles, 2002) Based on these arguments, there is a tendency of an overidealisation on tour guides’ ‘mediator’ role with their various stakeholders including tourists, tour operators, host communities, host environment and government authorities (Steege et al., 1999; Dahles, 2002), and an underawareness on tour guides’ ‘entrepreneur’ role to satisfy their own economic self-interests Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd 207 Service quality in tour guiding Service quality is defined as the difference between customer expectations and perceptions of service (Parasuraman et al., 1988) Parasuraman et al (1985, 1988) posit that a customer’s assessment of overall service quality depends on the ‘gap’ between expectations and perceptions of the actual performance According to this paradigm, customers decide whether they are satisfied, and a smaller gap between expectations and perceptions leads to the service being perceived as a higher quality, thus resulting in customer satisfaction In the context of tour guiding, the perceived service quality of a tour guide can be evaluated through three major constructs: (i) core service delivery, (ii) customer orientation and (iii) communication effectiveness (Heung, 2008) Heung (2008) explicates that core service refers to the essence of a tour guide’s service (e.g follows the agreed itinerary, provides commentaries and assures customer satisfaction during the tour) which the guide must deliver with consistency Customer orientation, on the other hand, denotes the extent the guide puts tourists’ needs and interests ahead of his/her own in providing superior value to tourists (e.g not to be focused on short-term selfinterest and not to adopt a ‘hard’ selling approach to tourists) Communication involves the exchange of information (e.g communicates the itinerary/arrangement to tourists and handles tourists’ inquiries) and is regarded as a crucial function of the tour guide Likewise, Ap and Wong (2001) suggest that the tour guide’s attitude with respect to service (particularly in terms of the extent of moneyoriented or customer service-oriented), product knowledge and communication skills are significant aspects in assessing the perceived service professionalism of the guide Indeed, the service quality aspect of the tour guiding profession is starting to receive more research attention For instance, Zhang and Chow (2004) identified 20 tour guide service quality attributes pertinent to mainland Chinese tourists The six most important attributes perceived by Chinese tourists were: (i) punctual, (ii) able to solve problems, (iii) knowledge of destination, (iv) honest and trustworthy, (v) inform safety regulations and Int J Tourism Res 12, 205–218 (2010) DOI: 10.1002/jtr 208 A H N Mak, K K F Wong and R C Y Chang (vi) deliver service promised in itinerary Other studies have collectively contributed to a growing insight and understanding of the service quality aspect of tour guides (Mossberg, 1995; Wang et al., 2000; Wong, 2001; Heung, 2008) Nonetheless, most of these studies have taken the perspective of tourists and have not taken account of the guiding profession’s and the industry practitioners’ perspective Although Ap and Wong (2001) raised and discussed some of the issues and challenges facing the tour guiding profession in Hong Kong from the tour guide and industry practitioners’ perspective and provided insights into understanding the nature of and issues faced by the tour guiding profession in Hong Kong, this study extends and delves more deeply into those challenges and seeks to identify and evaluate specific (and new) tour guiding issues which are unique to Macau, a strongly competitive Asian tourist destination which still receives a large number of tourists By exploring and investigating the viewpoints of various stakeholders, this research aims to present an updated and in-depth analysis of the current state of the tour guiding profession and its impact on the travel industry in Macau or other local or overseas higher education institutions approved by the IFT As of the end of 2007, there were 1317 licensed tour guides in Macau, representing a 6.8% growth from 2006 (Macau Government Tourist Office, 2008b) The Macau Tourist Guide Association (MATGA) was established in July 2002 The MATGA is devoted to advancing the professional development of the tour guides in Macau It also aims to promote unity and encourage communication between its members as well as the coalition and cooperation of the other guide associations in other parts of the world (Macau Tourist Guide Association, 2008) With the rapid growth of the tourism industry in Macau, the role of the MATGA as the official tour guiding association offering support to upgrade its members’ service professionalism has been gaining momentum through its close cooperation with the IFT in providing new or refresher courses for member guides and by working closely with the MGTO to identify solutions for the problems faced by the guiding profession The development of the tour guiding profession in Macau MGTO is a government statutory body with the task of pursuing the overall goals defined by the tourism sector in Macau It has five subdivisions, namely Licensing and Inspections Department, Promotion and Marketing Department, Product Development and Special Projects Department, Research and Planning Department, and Administrative and Finance Division (Macau Government Tourist Office, 2008c) The Licensing and Inspections Department of the MGTO is responsible for the issuing of Tour Guide Cards and monitoring of any illegal practices in the guiding profession There are strict qualification requirements stipulated by MGTO, particularly educational qualifications For example, prospective Tour Guide Card applicants must pass the qualifying courses offered by the Institute for Tourism Studies (IFT) or obtain a diploma or bachelor’s degree in the field of tourism offered by the IFT Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd METHODOLOGY This study adopted a qualitative case study research approach that is rooted in the philosophy of phenomenology, which offers the opportunity of discovering ‘the reality working behind the reality’ (Saunders et al., 2000) The two-phase data collection process included a first phase of secondary data collection from various sources including travel and tourism literature, government reports, tour guide association websites and newspaper databases to gain an insight into the current situation regarding the Macau tourism industry and the tour guiding profession The second phase involved semi-structured in-depth interviews with authoritative sources from both the Macau Tour Guide Association and the Macau Government Tourist Office, as well as three practising tour guides in Macau to explore the issues and problems from multiple insiders’ perspectives According to Patton (2002, p 244), ‘there are no rules for sample size in qualitative inquiry’ The sample size of qualitative inquiry is determined not by the number of interviewees but by data saturation, when no new Int J Tourism Res 12, 205–218 (2010) DOI: 10.1002/jtr Service Quality of Tour Guiding 209 information is discovered on the study phenomenon Considering that the current study was mainly a pilot investigation with no intention to make generalisation, a small sample size is adopted However, it is germane to point out that the small sample size limits the generalisability of the findings Purposive sampling was used as the sampling procedure in selecting the interviewees, whose insights would be relevant to the issues being studied (Lincoln and Guba, 1985) With purposive sampling, the selection of the sample can include the most informed respondents in terms of knowledge of the studied topics and those most likely to affect change within the policy realm Unlike most of the past studies that investigated the service quality aspects of tour guides from the perspectives of tourists, this study is purposely focused on the insiders’ perspectives It is believed that the underlying causes of the problems faced by the guiding profession would be more meaningfully investigated using a multiple insiders’ perspectives approach involving the monitoring authority/ government, tour guide association and practising tour guides Table summarises the profile of the interviewees Given the fact that some of the tour guiding issues and problems are sensitive, interviewees may be reluctant to discuss them in a group setting As such, individual in-depth interview was considered a more appropriate method to obtain primary data in this study All interviewees were assured of confidentiality and anonymity The interviews were held in the beginning of June 2007 and completed by the end of July 2007 Each of the interviews lasted on average an hour and a half and all interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim into Chinese The Chinese transcripts were then translated into English The English transcripts were checked and compared with the Chinese transcripts and the audio recordings in order to ensure accuracy A total of 53 pages of transcribed data were obtained Content analysis was employed as the means for contextualising the connections between categories and themes in this study According to Maxwell (1996), content analysis is a research technique for making replicable and valid inferences from texts to the contexts of their use It provides new insights, increases a researcher’s ability of understanding particular phenomena or informs practical actions This research technique enables the researcher to include large amounts of textual information and systematically identify its properties by detecting the more important structures of its communication content Tree structures were constructed to identify the themes and evolving concepts with the aid of the NVivo computer programme Triangulation of sources was used as a means to add to the credibility by strengthening confidence in conclusions being drawn (Patton, 2002) For example, issues and problems recounted by the tour guides were validated by the discourse from the informants from the monitoring authority, or representatives from the tour guide associations (Figure 1) In addition, assistance was sought from two professional colleagues in the university Table Profile of the interviewees No Code Primary organisational affiliation MATGA-1 MGTO-1 MOTG-1 The Macau Tourist Guide Association (MATGA) The Macau Government Tourist Office (MGTO) Macau Tour Guide MOTG-2 Macau Tour Guide MOTG-3 Macau Tour Guide Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Tour guiding experience and specialisation Gender Not applicable Female Not applicable Male -Over 33 years guiding experience -English-/Spanish-speaking tours -Over years guiding experience -Mandarin-/Cantonese-speaking tours -Over 15 years guiding experience -Japanese-/Mandarin-/Cantonese-speaking tours Female Female Male Int J Tourism Res 12, 205–218 (2010) DOI: 10.1002/jtr 210 A H N Mak, K K F Wong and R C Y Chang Figure Triangulation of Data Source to serve as peer debriefers in order to identify any hidden aspects in the transcripts Member checking was done during the interview process in which the researchers asked relevant probing questions so as to assess whether interviewees’ meanings were interpreted accurately For instance, if an interviewee acknowledged that conflict between tourists and tour guides was caused by the unwelcome coercing into shopping by tour guides, the researchers would accordingly probe into the ‘unwelcome coercing into shopping’ variable by asking: ‘Could you tell me more the possible consequences of unwelcome coercing into shopping?’ This iterative process permitted the researchers to ensure the credibility of interpretation that emerged from the interviews These strategies collectively contributed to the trustworthiness of data, thus enhancing the rigor of this study (Lincoln and Guba, 1985) FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS The findings are delineated under two themes, tourist-generating country and host destination, and four categories: travel agent, tourists, tour operators and tour guides Specific factors affecting the service quality of the tour guiding profession in Macau are demarcated under the following six sub-categories: unhealthy business practices, domination of market, immaturity of tourist market, changing tourist behaviour, intense competition between inbound tour operators and human resource issues Figure illustrates the structure of the categorisation Tourist-generating country — travel agents Unhealthy business practices The findings reveal that many of the outbound travel agents in Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd mainland China have adopted unhealthy business practices that have severely affected the service quality of the guiding profession in Macau A number of researchers have previously raised the issue of unhealthy business practices of travel agents in mainland China (Ap and Wong, 2001; Wong, 2001; Zhang and Chow, 2004; King et al., 2006; Zhang et al., 2009) The findings of this study corroborate this assertion and at the same time classify the major unhealthy business practices into the two categories: below-cost tour fare and belowcost reception fee The below-cost tour fare practice is commonly known as the zero/negative tour fare in the travel industry It is found to be a prevalent practice in the mainland Chinese tourism market This practice pertains to the system in which outbound travel agents in mainland China use a low tour fare that is under their actual cost to attract tourists to join group tours On the other hand, the below-cost reception fee practice, also known as the zero/negative reception fee is also another current unhealthy business practice It refers to the situation in which outbound travel agents in mainland China give a below-cost reception fee or even none at all for inbound tour operators (ITOs) in Macau to receive their tour groups The findings reveal that the belowcost reception fee practice actually stems from the below-cost tour fare practice Because of the fact that the tour fare received from tourists are below-cost, outbound travel agents in mainland China must cut costs and logically decline to offer a proper reception fee to the ITOs in Macau In most cases, they allow the ITOs to ‘bid’ for the right to receive incoming group tours with the lowest possible reception fee In some extreme cases, the ITOs even have to pay out a fee just to ‘bid’ for the right to receive the Int J Tourism Res 12, 205–218 (2010) DOI: 10.1002/jtr Service Quality of Tour Guiding 211 Figure Factors Affecting the Service Quality of the Tour Guiding Profession in Macau tour groups Consequently, the ITOs will incur expenses even before the tour groups arrive To cut costs, they tend to shift the financial pressure to the tour guides, for instance, by setting a ‘shopping quota’ per tourist for the tour guides to meet The comment of a Macau tour guide duly reflects the seriousness of this problem: As the reception fee is low or even negative, the tour operators have the [financial] pressure, and tour guides have the [financial] pressure too [sic] As such, service quality of the tour guide is bound to decline, and this is a critical issue faced by the guiding profession (MOTG-2) Under the aforementioned circumstances, the tour guides will inevitably have to bring tourists to visit various designated shops to coerce them to purchase or join optional tours Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd to cope with the financial pressure laid by the ITOs Hence, instead of focusing on delivering the ‘core services’ (Heung, 2008), the guides are forced to shift their focus to that of the ‘salesperson’ role This practice inevitably downgrades the quality of the tour and is likely to be detrimental to both tourist satisfaction and the perceived service quality of the tour guides Domination of the market The findings further reveal that many travel agents in China not directly deal with the ITOs in Macau Instead, they make their deals through wholesale travel agents (WTAs) which are mostly located in Shenzhen or Guangzhou This is because these WTAs have a long-established wide network to receive tourists from all over China and can usually obtain air or train tickets at a relatively lower price For those provinces whose residents are still required to travel to Macau in Int J Tourism Res 12, 205–218 (2010) DOI: 10.1002/jtr 212 tour groups and not as individual travellers, it would be much more efficient in terms of logistics for the travel agents in these provinces to send the tour groups to Macau via the WTAs in Shenzhen or Guangzhou Aside from this, China is a country with a large geographic span covering 9.6 million square kilometres, many of the travel agents scattered all over China not have the staff or resources to deal with the ITOs in Macau directly These travel agents would usually sell the tour groups to the WTAs in Shenzhen or Guangzhou, as they would benefit from the economies of scales and efficiency in outbound logistics Likewise, it would be uneconomical for individual ITOs in Macau to recruit tours directly from the many provinces in mainland China by themselves Consequently, these practices have led to the situation in which the mainland Chinese outbound market to Macau is largely dominated by a few large WTAs in Shenzhen and Guangzhou The account made by a veteran Macau tour guide stresses the problem: Wholesale travel agents in Mainland China serve as intermediaries They receive tours from all over China and sell them to ITOs In fact, there are many intermediaries involved, and everyone has to earn a profit However, tourists are not aware of this They paid for a high tour fare but eventually did not receive the service quality they would have expected Unfortunately, there are not much monitoring measures adopted by the mainland Chinese government (MOTG-3) This market domination by the WTAs has given them the advantages of hefty profit-taking and misrepresentation of tour quality, which are at the expense of the ITOs and the tour guides in Macau It is found that very often a large part of the tour fare is taken by the WTAs as intermediary fee, and most often the tour itineraries and components presented by the travel agents in mainland China to the tourists are of a higher quality Another tour guide offered explication on the situation: For instance, if it is stated in the itinerary that a seafood meal will be arranged, Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd A H N Mak, K K F Wong and R C Y Chang when they reached us, it will become an ordinary meal, and the difference had been taken by WTAs in Shenzhen And if there should not be shopping in the itinerary, when they reached us, shopping will be included (MOTG-2) In many cases, the tour itineraries and components are often not what the tourists would have expected Because ‘deliver service promised in itinerary’ is considered an important ‘core service’ by many tourists (Zhang and Chow, 2004; Heung, 2008), this situation often leads to arguments and conflicts between the tour guides and the tourists, causing much dissatisfaction on the service quality of the tour guide Tourist-generating country — tourists Immaturity of tourist market The immaturity of the tourist market in mainland China is found to be a factor that indirectly affects the service quality and healthy development of the guiding profession in Macau The China tourism market, especially the outbound market, is relatively immature compared with the other welldeveloped markets One of the main problems that arise from this is that tourists tend to be overly-concerned about the tour fare instead of the quality of the tour itself The immaturity of the tourism market in mainland China is largely attributable to its relatively short history It was only in 1984 that the Chinese government permitted Chinese citizens to visit their relatives in Macau Eventually in 1990, China began to relax its policies on outbound trave, and Chinese citizens were allowed to join group tours to visit some Southeast Asian countries for tourism purposes (Wen and Tisdell, 2001) The insight of an authoritative source from MATGA reflects this phenomenon: As the outbound market in Mainland China is immature, tourism bureaus in China must monitor their tour operators, in particular, their way of doing business, so that unhealthy and unethical practices can be eliminated Or else, there is not much we can on our side (MATGA-1) Int J Tourism Res 12, 205–218 (2010) DOI: 10.1002/jtr Service Quality of Tour Guiding As pointed out by King et al (2006), China’s travellers will typically only accept low prices which are not compatible with the input costs The findings of this study appear to corroborate this phenomenon and further reveal the fact that tourists are overly concerned with tour fares instead of the quality of the tour components Hence, travel agents in mainland China emphasise low prices to attract tourists, and as a result the tour fare is forced to be below-cost Coupled with the profit-taking and price dictation practices by the WTAs, the reception fee being paid to the ITOs in Macau is often minimal if not below-cost Consequently, the ITOs are not able to afford highly skilled guides and even guide fees, causing much grievance to the tour guiding profession Without appropriate remuneration, the tour guides are forced to coerce tourists into making as many purchases as possible in a desperate attempt to meet the shopping quota and to secure their personal earnings This inevitably results in the neglect of their ‘core services’ (Heung, 2008) Accordingly, both tour quality and the tour guides’ performance are unavoidably perceived as downgraded, thus further fostering the consumers’ unwillingness to pay high package prices These events form a vicious circle Changing tourist behaviour Another factor found to have an indirect adverse effect on the service quality of the tour guides in Macau is the changing tourist behaviour in the touristgenerating country More specifically, the changing tourist behaviour identified in this study relates to the tourists’ spending attitude and purchasing power Because of the relaxation of travel restrictions in mainland China, more and more mainland Chinese tourists have visited Macau Their spending attitude has been increasingly prudent along with the increased travel experience and increased understanding and knowledge about Macau, either obtained first-hand or through friends and relatives Furthermore, the extension of the Individual Visit Scheme (IVS) by the mainland Chinese government to more cities has resulted in a rapid growth in the number of Chinese residents who are allowed to visit Macau as individual travellers The findings reveal that there are an increasing number of Chinese tourists Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd 213 who travel on the IVS, especially among the repeat visitors For those who travel in tour groups, their demographic profiles have changed, and they have a relatively lower spending power compared with the tour group members in previous times The comment of a Macau tour guide corroborates this trend: Nowadays, those who join tour groups are mostly elderly, retirees, women and children They usually travel during summer vacation, and have a relatively lower spending power Those with higher spending power would not be first time traveller to visit Macau, and they not need to join tour groups and will usually travel as individual travellers So, the spending powers of Mainland Chinese group tourists are very different as compared with previous years (MOTG-2) Nonetheless, the below-cost tour fare and below-cost reception fee practices have remained unchanged Therefore, the ITOs still face a great financial pressure to recover costs, and the tour guides still need to meet the shopping quota preset by the ITOs Because of these changes in tourist behaviour, it becomes more difficult to meet the shopping quota, and the incomes earned by the tour guides have declined compared with the previous times Consequently, the changes in tourists’ spending attitude and purchasing power have become one of the sources of conflict between the tour guides and tourists Host destination — tour operators Intense competition between inbound tour operators As a result of the prevailing below-cost tour fare practice in mainland China, the ITOs in Macau have to compete against each other to offer the lowest possible reception fee or even pay out a certain amount to ‘bid’ for the incoming tours The intense competition among ITOs is found to have led to a number of problems affecting the guiding profession, namely diminution of guide fee, ‘mai tou’ fee practice, shopping quota and prepayment of tour expenses Among these problems, the diminution of guide fee is found to have a severe damaging Int J Tourism Res 12, 205–218 (2010) DOI: 10.1002/jtr INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF TOURISM RESEARCH Int J Tourism Res 12, 291–302 (2010) Published online November 2009 in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com) DOI: 10.1002/jtr.757 Understanding ASEAN Tourism Collaboration — the Preconditions and Policy Framework Formulation Emma P Y Wong1,*, Nina Mistilis2 and Larry Dwyer2 Centre for Tourism and Services Research, Victoria University, Australia School of Marketing, University of New South Wales, Australia ABSTRACT Intergovernmental collaboration in tourism among ASEAN nations has received little attention in the literature despite the significant contribution that tourism makes in the region This paper helps improve our understanding of the phenomenon by providing empirical evidence that explains the preconditions that gave rise to ASEAN tourism and the formulation of its policy framework It is suggested that, to truly realise the vision of economic integration and sustainable tourism development, continuous efforts are required to establish, promote and protect the common interests of member countries Policy-makers should also strive for a good balance between pragmatism and mechanism when implementing policies Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Received 19 February 2009; Revised October 2009; Accepted October 2009 Keywords: intergovernmental collaboration; ASEAN; tourism policy INTRODUCTION D espite the continuous cooperative endeavour among ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) member nations since 1998 and the significant *Correspondence to: Dr Emma Wong, Lecturer, School of HTM, Victoria University, PO Box 14428, Melbourne, Vic 8001, Australia E-mail: emma.wong@vu.edu.au contribution that tourism makes in the region, there are very few studies that examine ASEAN tourism collaboration The majority of existing studies that are related to ASEAN economic cooperation deal with general framework agreements, namely ASEAN Free Trade Agreement (AFTA) and ASEAN Framework Agreement on Services (AFAS) Collaboration in specific economic sectors is overlooked by researchers Each supranational organisation forms and operates in a specific context Often, existing theories cannot fully explain the various interactions within these organisations Using ASEAN tourism as a case study, we identified the unique features of this collaboration These findings not only help expand the boundaries of existing theories and thus contribute to the literature, but also provide input into improving ASEAN tourism policies, which in turn enhances the contribution of tourism to the development of the region This study has three objectives: (1) to identify the factors and conditions under which members of ASEAN have entered into a collaborative relationship in tourism development; (2) to identify the factors involved in the process of formulating the existing ASEAN tourism policy framework; and (3) to discuss some implications for ASEAN countries to improve their collaboration in tourism While the authors acknowledge the presence of bilateral agreements and partnerships such as BIMP-EAGA (Brunei Darussalam–Indonesia–Malaysia–Philippines East ASEAN Growth Area), this paper focuses on explicit ASEAN initiatives in tourism collaboration Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd 292 RESEARCH CONTEXT ASEAN was established as a means of maintaining peace and stability in Southeast Asia by providing a forum for the discussion and resolution of regional issues that had the potential to destabilise the region Five countries officially formed the Association on August 1967: Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand Together with Brunei, which joined on January 1984, the six countries are also known as ASEAN-6 With the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and the end of the Cold War, there was no longer a pressing need for ASEAN countries to fear their communist neighbours such as Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos These countries had started to abandon central planning and implement market-oriented economic reforms since the early 1980s, changes that implicated trade and investment opportunities and indicated that ASEAN regional grouping needed to be enlarged to maintain relevance The momentum to expand ASEAN was further accelerated by the need to strengthen the region’s voice in international trading bodies, such as the Asia–Pacific Economic Cooperation forum (APEC), the World Trade Organization, and in negotiations with the European Union (Tan, 2003) Between 1995 and 1997, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam joined ASEAN They are sometimes referred to as newer members with lessdeveloped economies The long-term goal of ASEAN is to establish a free trade area in Southeast Asia (Yeh, 2002) While ASEAN’s economic emphasis has most often focused on trade in manufactured goods, minerals and fuels, tourism has grown to become an important consideration, in large part due to the rapid growth of the industry in the region (Timothy, 2003) Thus, there is a need to include tourism in the ASEAN trade agenda and effort Tourism is forecast to continue growing more rapidly than any other global region and currently is greatly significant to ASEAN destinations Inbound tourism includes intraASEAN travel (well over 50% for Laos, Malaysia and Myanmar) and extra-ASEAN (at least 70% for Cambodia, the Philippines, Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd E P Y Wong, N Mistilis and L Dwyer Vietnam and Thailand (ASEAN, 2009) While such differences in the proportion of market sources may affect the countries’ perception of the importance of intra- or extra-ASEAN travel, no country could ignore the significant growth of the regional market, from 33 million in 2002 to 65.5 million in 2008 (UNWTO, 2003; ASEAN 2009) In fact, according to UNWTO, the Southeast Asian region is expected to experience an average annual growth rate of 6.3% between 1995 and 2020 By 2020, the regional arrival figure is projected to reach 136 million per annum (UNWTO, 2000), illustrating the growing importance of tourism for and the interdependence among ASEAN nations METHOD The research adopts a case approach Case study is deemed appropriate in examining contemporary events when the relevant behaviours cannot be manipulated The case approach deals with evidence collected from direction observation of events and interviews of people involved (Yin, 2003) Considering the fact that the current research concerns a contemporary social phenomenon that cannot be manipulated by researchers, case study is an appropriate research strategy for this research Various sources of evidence were used in this study, including official documents from ASEAN, non-official publications (e.g academic journals, books, newspapers and trade magazines) and interviews with key stakeholders involved The use of multiple sources allowed data triangulation and thus enhanced the credibility and dependability of findings (Lincoln and Guba, 1985) In-depth interviews were conducted in January to March 2005 and January to February 2006 by means of interviews A total of 22 face-to-face and telephone interviews were administered and two email responses were received Twenty-one individuals took part in the study, three of whom were interviewed twice Among the 21 participants, 13 were government officials, representing nine out of the 10 ASEAN member countries; the other eight represented international organisations (e.g ASEAN Secretariat; Asian Development Bank), industry associations (e.g ASEAN Tourism Int J Tourism Res 12, 291–302 (2010) DOI: 10.1002/jtr ASEAN Tourism Policies Association; Pacific Asia Travel Association) and the academia or consultancies (e.g Institute of Southeast Asia Studies; Sustainable Tourism Cooperative Research Centre) All data were inputted into the software NVivo 2.0 for analysis NVivo is a data management and analytical tool that not only facilitates coding of data, but, through its searching and modelling tools, also enable researchers to confirm propositions and to explore new relationships embedded in the data The basic underlying logic is that ideas expressed in the data are broken down into simple ‘units’ of concepts and the software can illustrate the relationships among selected concepts in tabular or graphical formats FINDINGS Preconditions for ASEAN tourism collaboration As a first step to better understand ASEAN tourism collaboration, we examined how the collaboration was formed Interorganisational relations (IOR) is a general term that includes relationships such as association, alliance and collaboration There is no one best theory that explains IOR, and scholars over the years have adopted an integrative approach to examine what leads to IOR formation Studies by Oliver (1990) and Gray and Wood (1991) have made important contributions towards this end Gray and Wood (1991) identified six major theoretical perspectives that appear to have significant possibilities for explaining IOR in general, and specifically ASEAN tourism collaboration: (1) Resource dependence theory argues that organisations will respond to demands made by external actors or organisations upon whose resources they are heavily dependent, and that they will try to minimise that dependence when possible (Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978; Aram, 1989; Logsdon, 1991; Bramwell and Lane, 2000) (2) Corporate social performance theory and institutional economics theory explain collaboration by the organisations’ intention to achieve effectiveness and social Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd 293 (3) (4) (5) (6) legitimacy (Gordon, 1980; Freeman, 1984; Pasquero, 1991; Stafford et al., 2000) Strategic management theory and social ecology theory emphasise the conditions of scarcity and collective problems in collaboration (Levine and White, 1961; Skidmore, 1979; Astley, 1984; Selsky, 1991; Westley and Vredenburg, 1991) Microeconomic theories explain collaboration by the efficiency that organisations seek to achieve during the process (Ross, 1973; Williamson, 1979; Husted, 1994) Institutional theory and negotiated order theory highlight the structural changes and negotiations involved between organisations seeking to achieve legitimacy (Day and Day, 1977; Eisenhardt, 1988; Nathan and Mitroff, 1991; Sharfman et al., 1991) Political theories emphasise the role of power and interests in forming collaboration (Keohane and Nye, 1977; Heymann, 1987; Golich, 1991) These six theoretical perspectives are similar to those identified by Oliver (1990), who suggests that there are six generalisable determinants of relationship formation — necessity, asymmetry, reciprocity, efficiency, stability and legitimacy The determinants are not mutually exclusive and may coexist Necessity refers to a relationship formed to meet necessary legal or regulatory requirements; asymmetry for relationships prompted by the potential to exercise power or control over another organisation or its resources; reciprocity when organisations want to pursue common or mutually beneficial goals or interests; efficiency when organisations want to improve its internal output/input ratio; stability when environmental uncertainty prompts organisations to establish relationship to achieve stability, predictability and dependability in their relations with others; and, finally, legitimacy for relationships that are established to demonstrate or improve an organisation’s reputation or congruence with prevailing norms in its institutional environment In what follows, we integrate the findings of Oliver (1990) and Gray and Wood (1991), and focus on three of these preconditions — necessity, reciprocity and stability As explained below, they seem to have particular relevance Int J Tourism Res 12, 291–302 (2010) DOI: 10.1002/jtr 294 E P Y Wong, N Mistilis and L Dwyer Table Preconditions of interorganisational relations (IOR) formation Precondition Explanation Theoretical perspective(s) Necessity IOR is established to meet necessary legal or regulatory requirements (Conflict with resource dependence and exchange theories which emphasise voluntary interactions and contingent cooperation.) Reciprocity IOR occurs for the purpose of pursuing common or mutually beneficial goals or interests (i.e common stakes) Cooperation, collaboration and coordination are emphasised Exchange and microeconomic theories, alternative to resource interdependence perspective Stability Environmental uncertainty generated by resource scarcity and by a lack of perfect knowledge about environmental fluctuations prompts organisations to establish relationships to achieve stability, predictability and dependability in their relations with others Strategic management and resource dependence theories — the propensity of organisations to engage in IOR is a function of both the need for reducing uncertainty and the feasibility of doing so effectively through interorganisational linkages (Pfeffer and Salancik, 1978: 155) Adapted for the present study, based on Oliver (1990) to ASEAN tourism Table gives a brief explanation of the three preconditions and how they are rooted from or related to the theoretical perspectives The formation of collaboration in tourism among ASEAN countries must be studied in the context of the nations’ commitment ‘to moving towards closer cohesion and economic integration’ (ASEAN, 1997) In other words, one should look into the wider economic cooperation framework in which tourism collaboration exists ASEAN was first established in 1967 to maintain peace and stability in the region Member countries were not drawn to cooperate economically until the 1990s when they moved to protect the region against threats of protectionism from European and North American Free Trade Agreement blocs Later in the decade, the devastation caused by the Asian Financial Crisis served as a wake up call to national leaders about the importance of cohesion to the region’s economic stability and prosperity From then on, a number of landmark strategic plans and agreements were launched with the long-term goal of establishing a free trade area or a common market in Southeast Asia (Tan, 2003), starting with ASEAN Vision 2020 in 1997, followed by Hanoi Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Plan of Action (HPA) in 1998, the Initiative for ASEAN Integration in 2002 and Bali Concord II in 2003 These agreements are evidence of the nations’ intention to achieve stability and reciprocity through regional economic cooperation We, therefore, argue that stability — relationships that are established to achieve predictability and dependability under circumstances of environmental uncertainty — and reciprocity — relationships that are formed for the purpose of pursuing common or mutually beneficial goals (Oliver, 1990) — are the two main preconditions for the formation of ASEAN economic collaboration Tourism was identified as one of the specific areas of cooperation within the ASEAN general economic cooperation framework because, clearly, it is a trade activity common to all member countries In the beginning, when a permanent committee of tourism was formed in 1969, tourism collaboration was there to support the wider economic cooperation project Until the Asian Financial Crisis in the late 1990s, cooperative efforts such as the ASEAN Tourism Forum, which started in 1981, the establishment of the Tourism Information Centre in 1988 (closed down in 1996) and the Visit ASEAN Campaign, which started in 1991, were rather insignificant and unstructured Int J Tourism Res 12, 291–302 (2010) DOI: 10.1002/jtr ASEAN Tourism Policies 295 Simply put, ASEAN tourism was not driven by an intention to develop or promote regional tourism but by the necessity to form to meet an institutional requirement Therefore, the immediate precondition for ASEAN tourism is considered necessity (Oliver, 1990) This argument is much supported by the primary data where participants viewed that tourism collaboration was formed for political and diplomatic reasons Tourism was probably seen as something else that could be used to give substance to the broader political and economic objectives of ASEAN (Academic) You know we have this vision of ASEAN free trade zone, so that whole idea of the common economy coming together is all part of that and tourism is a only component of that vision (Singapore government official) It [ASEAN tourism collaboration] is a political agenda It’s regionalism as you see that the world is now more on regionalism And tourism is one part of the agenda (Thai government official) Figure illustrates that from the absence of any cooperative relationship among Southeast Asian countries to their commitment to economically integrating the region, there were two key preconditions: stability and reciprocity, which can be considered as the indirect preconditions for tourism collaboration Within the wider economic framework, the collaborative relationship in tourism was formed to support the political economic agenda of ASEAN Hence, the direct precondition for tourism collaboration is necessity The authors argue that there is a need to distinguish between indirect and direct preconditions in the case of ASEAN tourism because the collaboration in tourism was formed in the context of a broader collaborative relationship In other Independent, unrelated SE Asian countries Stability words, there is a set of indirect preconditions that led to the formation of a contextual collaborative relationship (i.e economic collaboration), and a set of direct preconditions that contributed to the formation of a sectoral collaborative relationship (i.e tourism collaboration) To relate the findings to the theories, our study shows that when studying the formation of intergovernmental collaboration, there may be a need to distinguish between indirect and direct preconditions It also highlights that collaboration such as ASEAN tourism is a complex phenomenon and that sectoral collaborative relationships warrant in-depth study ASEAN TOURISM POLICY FRAMEWORK FORMULATION To further our understanding in ASEAN tourism, we examined the process of formulating the ASEAN tourism policy framework The framework here refers to the ASEAN Tourism Agreement signed by the member countries in 2002 The Agreement, which set out seven objectives, remains as the blueprint for today’s cooperation Figure was constructed to illustrate the various stages in the formulation of the policy framework and the factors involved — from a point where no significant collaboration existed to having established an action plan for policy implementation They are discussed in detail below ASEAN Tourism Agreement 2002 As previously discussed, ASEAN tourism was first established to meet an institutional requirement and as a means to support the general economic cooperation framework Its policies were set in the direction of liberalising intraASEAN trade in services, principles of which were laid out in the 1995 AFAS Cooperation in tourism among the member countries was Commitment to ASEAN Economic Integration Necessity ASEAN Tourism Collaboration Reciprocity Figure Indirect and direct preconditions of ASEAN tourism collaboration Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Int J Tourism Res 12, 291–302 (2010) DOI: 10.1002/jtr 296 E P Y Wong, N Mistilis and L Dwyer Insignificant tourism collaboration pre2001 Environmental trigger National level initiation Implementation of the action plan by various ASEAN bodies Stability ASEAN Tourism Agreement 2002: more cohesive relationships and transparent communication Decentralized institution Lack of procedural rules and monitoring mechanisms Reciprocity The seven objectives in the Agreement Rejuvenation of cooperative spirit Bali Concord II 2003; Roadmap for Integration (the action plan) & AFAIPS 2004: more transparent communication Figure ASEAN tourism policy framework formulation rather insignificant and unstructured until 1998, when the region was striving to recover from the Asian Financial Crisis The economic importance of tourism was eventually recognised In that year, a Ministerial Understanding of ASEAN Cooperation in Tourism was signed, followed by the adoption of the HPA The HPA marked the start of formalised and institutionalised ASEAN cooperation in tourism Several task forces were established then, including marketing, manpower, tourism investment and cruise tourism However, the ASEAN Tourism Agreement, the current policy framework, is not the immediate product of AFAS or HPA The content of the agreement was in fact conceptualised in November 2001 after 9/11 in an ASEAN Summit (ASEAN, 2002a), when global tourism was shattered by terrorism The impact of terrorism hit the Southeast Asian countries even harder when the confidence of travellers was further weakened by the October 2002 Bali bombing incidence As a result of the attack, governments around the world issued travel advisories against travelling to Indonesia Such advisories had a spill-over effect on the rest of the region The November 2002 ASEAN Tourism Agreement can thus be considered a timely measure to address the common threat facing the region; it was an agreement aimed at strengthening the unity among members, enhancing competitiveness and increasing tourist flows Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Hence, in terms of the process of formulating the ASEAN tourism policy framework, the beginning of the process is an environmental trigger — the threat of terrorism and consequently the lack of confidence of people travelling to the region, which led to a national level initiation of collaboration This is a pragmatic, or to some, a reactive approach, where actions are taken only when necessary, in response to threats in the environment Some scholars regard the pragmatism as part of the ‘ASEAN Way’, i.e the unique set of norms practiced within ASEAN across sectors (Acharya, 2000) These findings are congruent with the literature, which suggests that exogenous forces in the environment external to a regime (Young, 1982), commonality of interests (Young, 1982), political culture and experiences and learning (Haas and Haas, 1995; Dougherty and Pfaltzgraff, 1996) are factors that may influence the dynamics within a regime For ASEAN tourism, the exogenous forces of terrorism elevated the degree of commonality of interests among members (i.e restoring the tourism industry) The drop in arrival numbers to the region made member states realise they were ‘on the same boat’ Such circumstances enhanced the solidarity among them at that point in time One Indonesian government official said: Bali bombing brought some of us [tourism ministers] together we had to help each other Int J Tourism Res 12, 291–302 (2010) DOI: 10.1002/jtr ASEAN Tourism Policies In terms of political culture, the pragmatic approach adopted by ASEAN helps explain the need for an environmental trigger to drive collaboration Such style of policy-making and its implications are yet to be fully addressed in the literature Experiences and learning also took place because with the signing of the Tourism Agreement, the interrelationships among the member nations (on a national level) had become more cohesive and characterised by more transparent communication compared with the pre2001 period the ASEAN Tourism Agreement formed the basis of our collaboration Before [the Agreement], we [our efforts] were not very coordinated (Cambodian government official) The seven objectives Specifically, the ASEAN Tourism Agreement set out seven objectives (ASEAN, 2002b): (1) to co-operate in facilitating travel into and within ASEAN; (2) to enhance cooperation in the tourism industry among ASEAN member states in order to improve its efficiency and competitiveness; (3) to substantially reduce restrictions to trade in tourism and travel services among ASEAN member states; (4) to establish an integrated network of tourism and travel services in order to maximise the complementary nature of the region’s tourist attractions; (5) to enhance the development and promotion of ASEAN as a single tourism destination with world-class standards, facilities and attractions; (6) to enhance mutual assistance in human resource development and strengthen cooperation to develop, upgrade and expand tourism and travel facilities and services in ASEAN; and (7) to create favourable conditions for the public and private sectors to engage more deeply in tourism development, intraASEAN travel and investment in tourism services and facilities Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd 297 Upon further examination of the seven objectives in the Agreement, we argue that they can be put into three categories of purposes: (i) to liberalise the flow of money and people from outside and within the region; (ii) to increase the competitiveness of the tourism industry, so as to compete against other regions in the world; and (iii) to strengthen the unity and identity of ASEAN as a region, maintaining its relevance in the international arena, and also ultimately helping counter the competition from other regions These three purposes are in fact congruent with the two preconditions of ASEAN economic cooperation — stability and reciprocity — where the member countries have a common goal of attaining higher regional competitiveness, becoming a ‘stronger segment of the global supply chain’ (ASEAN, 2003) Table shows the categorisation of the seven objectives Facilitation of travel (objective i), reducing trade restrictions (objective iii) and encouraging tourism investment (objective vii) are objectives set to liberalise the flow of money and people from outside and within the ASEAN region Improving industry efficiency and competitiveness (objective ii) together with enhancing facilities and services (objective vi) aim to increase competitiveness of the regional tourism industry Finally, establishing an integrated network of services (objective iv) and enhancing promotion (objective v) can be categorised as objectives to strengthen the unity and identity of ASEAN as a region Bali Concord II and ASEAN Agreement for the Integration of Priority Sectors (AFAIPS) The realisation of these objectives requires an action plan The so-called Roadmap for Integration of the Tourism Sector was introduced in 2004 following the launch of the Bali Concord II in October 2003 The Bali Concord II can be considered one of the landmark documents of ASEAN as it reaffirmed the members’ commitment to cooperation and declared their aspiration of establishing an ASEAN community The Concord also created a significant positive impact on tourism collaboration For example, tourism was identified as one of the 11 priorities areas by the High Level Task Force on ASEAN Economic Cooperation Int J Tourism Res 12, 291–302 (2010) DOI: 10.1002/jtr 298 E P Y Wong, N Mistilis and L Dwyer Table Categorisation of the ASEAN Tourism Agreement objectives Purpose Objective in the agreement (Numbering follows that in the original agreement) To liberalise the flow of money and people from outside and within the region (i) To increase the competitiveness of the tourism industry, so as to compete against other regions in the world (ii) To strengthen the unity and identity of ASEAN as a region, maintaining its relevance in the international arena, and also ultimately helping counter the competition from other regions (iv) To establish an integrated network of tourism and travel services in order to maximise the complementary nature of the region’s tourist attractions (v) To enhance the development and promotion of ASEAN as a single tourism destination with world-class standards, facilities and attractions Subsequently, AFAIPS was signed in November 2004 A ‘green lane’ system was introduced under the ASEAN Pioneer Project Scheme to expedite business project (including tourism projects) approvals in regulatory procedures (Vietnam News, 2004) As a result of the Bali Concord II and AFAIPS, ASEAN Economic Ministers (AEM) drew up an action plan for tourism in 2004 outlining relatively specific measures, respective implementing body/bodies and a timeline for implementing the measures These two landmark documents can therefore be considered a sign of rejuvenation of the cooperative spirit as they serve to accelerate the implementation of the objectives set out in the ASEAN Tourism Agreement The provision of guidelines and directions in these policy documents to strengthen cooperative efforts also contributed to more transparent communication among members Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd To co-operate in facilitating travel into and within ASEAN (iii) To substantially reduce restrictions to trade in tourism and travel services among ASEAN member states (vii) To create favourable conditions for the public and private sectors to engage more deeply in tourism development, intra-ASEAN travel and investment in tourism services and facilities To enhance cooperation in the tourism industry among ASEAN member states in order to improve its efficiency and competitiveness (vi) To enhance mutual assistance in human resource development and strengthen cooperation to develop, upgrade and expand tourism and travel facilities and services in ASEAN Implementation of the action plan Finally, we examined the implementation mechanism of the Tourism Agreement We began by studying the institutional arrangement Figure shows only the bodies directly related to tourism collaboration under the purview of AEM, namely the AFTA Council, Cooperation in Investment, ASEAN Tourism Cooperation and Cooperation in Transport Committees and officials meetings are established under each Bodies such as DirectorsGeneral of Immigration Departments and Heads of Consular Affairs Division of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Senior Labour Officials Meeting that are not the responsibility of AEM are not shown The diagram illustrates that the institutional arrangement is rather decentralised It is not hard to see that, for tourism collaboration to succeed, coordination Int J Tourism Res 12, 291–302 (2010) DOI: 10.1002/jtr ASEAN Tourism Policies 299 ASEAN Economic Ministers (AEM) AFTA Council Coordinating Committee on Services (CCS) & ASEAN Consultative Committee on Standard and Quality (ACCSC) ASEAN Secretariat (as coordinator) Cooperation in Investment ASEAN Tourism Cooperation Cooperation in Transport Coordinating Committee on Investment (CCI) Meeting of ASEAN Tourism Ministers Senior Transport Officials Meeting (STOM) – Air transport working group ASEAN National Tourism Organizations Meeting Various task forces Figure ASEAN bodies involved in tourism collaboration and close monitoring on the part of AEM and the ASEAN Secretariat are crucial It was also found that when implementing policies, a ‘bottom-up’ approach is adopted where the operationalisation of the action plan is done by the task forces (there are currently six for tourism: cruise, marketing, communication, investment, manpower and tourism integration; chairmanship on volunteer or upon-request basis) Work is really done in the task force level, and it’s elevated only to the NTO level for a second level of polishing And then in the ministerial level it’s practically a ceremonial option because the value there is once the ministers adopt then it achieves legitimacy of some sort That’s why the important level here is really in the working level of the task forces And what we [NTO heads] need to really is the shepherding of the work of the task forces (Philippine government official) Interviewees also expressed that apart from the guidance provided by the Roadmap for Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Integration and the reporting line described above, there is no formal mechanism or procedures to follow for policy implementation and monitoring I don’t think we follow a very strict regimen of actually implementing initiatives but certainly task forces and committees help people to organise their resources, help set certain time lines so that you set the pace (Singapore government official) Drawing on the literature, Nesadurai (2001) proposes that an institution should be composed of four components: (i) nature of constitutional documents — degree of formality, nature of commitments and form of the agreement; (ii) decision-making procedures — e.g voting style; (iii) modality of cooperation — substantive policy targets and procedural rules; and (iv) nature of coordination — decision-making, monitoring and enforcement One more dimension to be added to the list that is equally important for analysing institutionalisation is resources, i.e leadership, expertise and financial resources, etc This is because Int J Tourism Res 12, 291–302 (2010) DOI: 10.1002/jtr 300 within an institution, states seek to resolve issues and around them, actor expectations converge (Dougherty and Pfaltzgraff, 1996) It was found that in the case of ASEAN tourism, there is a lack of industry-specific procedural rules as well as monitoring and enforcement mechanisms Hence, the modality of cooperation and the nature of coordination have not been clearly defined (Nesadurai, 2001) On the other hand, resources (e.g rules for members’ monetary contribution), the nature of constitutional documents (e.g various framework agreements) and decision-making procedures (e.g conflicts resolution and voting) are mandated by general, non-industry specific ASEAN agreements Figure illustrates the process of tourism collaboration policy formulation and highlights the factors involved It indicates that before 2001, tourism collaboration in the region was insignificant In 2001/02, terrorism and the weakened travellers’ confidence that resulted posed as a common threat to the industry across Southeast Asia and served as a trigger to formulation of the ASEAN Tourism Agreement Such agreement was initiated by national leaders (as opposed to tourism ministers who have little political power) The interrelationships among member countries can be considered more cohesive and characterised by more transparent communication There are seven objectives proposed in the 2002 Agreement which are congruent with the two preconditions of ASEAN economic cooperation: stability and reciprocity A proper action plan for the Agreement was not available until 2004, following a rejuvenation of the cooperative spirit marked by Bali Concord II and AFAIPS These documents, which provide guidelines and directions to strengthen cooperative efforts, are sign of more transparent communication among members Finally, the actual implementation of the policies is influenced by the decentralised institutional arrangement as well as the lack of procedural rules and monitoring mechanism Relating the findings to the theories, the empirical data have helped provide a more profound understanding of ASEAN tourism policy formulation than the general institutionalisation literature does To start with, one must acknowledge the pragmatic, necessityCopyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd E P Y Wong, N Mistilis and L Dwyer driven approach to ASEAN policy-making At this stage, little has been written to address such style of policy-making and its theoretical implication Second, among the five dimensions of institutionalisation, it is noted that the modality of cooperation and the nature of coordination in ASEAN tourism are not yet clearly defined Finally, in terms of influences on ASEAN tourism collaboration, it is evident that changes in the larger economic and political environment (i.e terrorism and its effects) have elevated the common interests among members and triggered significant collaborative efforts, resulting in more cohesive relationships and transparent communication among members IMPLICATIONS FOR ASEAN TOURISM COLLABORATION Based on the findings on preconditions and policy framework formulation, two important implications for ASEAN tourism policy-makers can be drawn First, they should continue to harness the drive for reciprocity and stability, which provided the rationale for the seven objectives in the 2002 Agreement A collaborative relationship is hard to survive on necessity as a precondition alone To truly realise the vision of economic integration and sustainable tourism development in the region, continuous efforts are required to establish, promote and protect the common interests of member countries Having experienced several crises in the past decades, they should understand that tourism is an industry heavily influenced by the external environment Collaboration should not be seen as a short-term solution at difficult times but a long-term relationship for developing a sustainable and competitive industry Second, policy-makers need to strive for a good balance between pragmatism and mechanism As discussed in the findings, there is a lack of tourism-specific procedural rules and monitoring and enforcement mechanisms While the authors acknowledge the pragmatic political culture in ASEAN, successful policy implementation does rely on rules and mechanisms Policy-makers may consider formulating implementation strategies that incorporate contingency plans In that way, efficiency and Int J Tourism Res 12, 291–302 (2010) DOI: 10.1002/jtr ASEAN Tourism Policies effectiveness of policy implementation can be improved while preserving the pragmatic culture at the same time CONCLUSION Given the paucity of studies in ASEAN tourism, this paper serves as a starting point to improve our understanding of the phenomenon It provides empirical evidence that explains the preconditions that gave rise to ASEAN tourism and the formulation of its policy framework ASEAN countries compete as well as collaborate Their collaboration in tourism operates in a specific and complex context Existing theories cannot always provide a complete explanation For example, our findings show the need to distinguish between indirect and direct preconditions for collaboration and that pragmatism in policy formulation is yet to be fully addressed in the literature The boundaries of existing theories thus need to be expanded The paper also provides suggestions to policy-makers for improving current collaboration, which in turn enhances the contribution of tourism to regional social and economic development Further research should focus on evaluating the progress of the collaboration, developing more concrete strategies for improving policy implementation and theorising regional collaboration in specific economic sectors Future research could also attempt a comparative study with similar supranational organisations, such as the European Union, identifying similarities and differences in terms of indirect and direct preconditions, approach to policy-making and factors involved in the process of formulating the tourism policy framework After all, the distinct influences on collaboration in tourism, in contrast to other industry sectors, remain unclear in the literature As ASEAN members evolve in their political, social and economic development alongside variations in the 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Rennes 1, Institut de Gestion de Rennes, Laboratoire CREM-UMR CNRS 6211, rue Jean Macé, Rennes Cedex ABSTRACT THEORETICAL BACKGROUND Previous research found that media richness is associated with positive evaluation of a web site An experiment was carried out where participants were instructed to explore a web site presenting a popular town: Venice According to a random distribution, participants were exposed (or not) to street-sounds when exploring the web site and had the possibility to control (or not) the photography (using a 360° navigation with their mouse) displayed on the web site Results shown that higher evaluation were associated with sounds and mouse-control Theory of media richness was used to explain our results and the managerial application for tourism was discussed Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd I Received 09 March 2007; Accepted 01 July 2008 Keywords: media richness; web evaluation; internet *Correspondence to: Dr Nicolas Guéguen, Université de Bretagne-Sud, IUT de Vannes- Département TC, Laboratoire GESTIC, 8, rue Montaigne, BP 561–56017 Vannes — France E-mail: nicolas.gueguen@univ-ubs.fr nteractivity and vividness have been extensively studied in the field of computermediated communication but empirical studies exploring the effect of interactivity and vividness of a website are scarce Previous experiments have shown that control and media richness are associated with a higher evaluation of a website Klein (2003) had tested the construct of telepresence, a sense of presence in a remote environment, to examine the process by which media characteristics influence consumer response She found that user control and media richness both contribute to the creation of a sense of telepresence and influenced consumer’s cognitive responses like higher realism scores and positive evaluation of the website Sewak et al (2005) instructed their subjects to evaluate a website to present a new pharmaceutical product designed with high visual appeal (the website was designed with a picture including a picture of a seashore below the overhang of a tree and the subject headings of the sections of the website were placed in buttons that permitted the participants to explore the relevant section) or low aspects of visual appeal (the website was designed with text but no picture and no buttons were present and it was possible for the participants to navigate in the various sections of the website through hyperactive links) Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd 304 The results showed that the website with the picture received high evaluations in terms of visual appeal and pleasantness It was also perceived as more attractive and prettier than the website with text Higher quality was also associated with the website with the picture The later studies were focused on the evaluation of the website and were not focused on the evaluation of information contained in the website (i.e a product presented on the website) Our experimental interest was to test the effect of the two factors (media richness and control) manipulated by Klein (2003) on the evaluation of the information presented on the website and on behavioral intention toward this information An experiment was carried out to test the effect of such factors on a tourism product METHOD Seventy-nine undergraduate students were instructed to explore a website presenting a highly popular town: Venice Six famous areas of Venice were presented in the website with the help of high resolution photographs According to four experimental conditions, participants were exposed (or not) to street sounds (the sounds of footsteps, pigeon cooing, hushed conversations of passers-by, etc.) when exploring the website and had the possibility to control (or not) the photography by using 360° navigation with their mouse Then, after exploring the website, a questionnaire was submitted to the participant that evaluated the website with the help of five questions, all using a 7-point semantic differential scale Each scale begun like this: ‘The navigation was: unexciting/exciting, boring/interesting, unpleasant/pleasant, and difficult/easy’ A later question was used to evaluate the interest of the participant toward Venice: ‘After viewing some areas of Venice, evaluate on the given scale the probability of your visiting this town in the future: no probability/high probability’ RESULTS Data analysis showed that the website was evaluated to be more exciting when street Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd C Jacob, N Guéguen and C Petr noises were displayed during the exploration of the site and when 360° navigation was possible Furthermore, no interaction effect was found between the two independent variables When street noises were displayed during navigation on the website, the site was perceived to be more pleasant and easier to use No further effect was found and no difference according to the experimental condition manipulated was found when interest toward the site was evaluated by the participants For the behavioral intention, displaying street noises during navigation increased the probability of visiting the town Again, no effect of the presence versus absence of 360° navigation was found and no interaction between the two independent variables appeared when analysing this dependant variable CONCLUSION AND INTEREST Our results showed that media richness and user control had a significant positive influence on the evaluation of a website intended to increase the value of a town These results confirm and extend the results obtain by Klein (2003) who also found that a website was perceived as more realistic and was associated to positive attributes when control and media richness were displayed We then confirmed these results by using a new methodology to increase some feelings of teleprence in a website Furthermore, our results extend Klein’s results because we have found that media richness and control had a positive effect on behavioral intention toward the product presented on the website This experiment was important to conduct because the results highlighted that the same information about a town can have differential effects when this information is or is not accompanied by contextual cues such as street sounds Such results have some managerial interest because we found that when information corresponding to a natural perception of a real place is present on a website, a positive evaluation of the site is found and the attractiveness of the place increases It would then be interesting for a webmaster who manages website that promotes a town or a tourist destination Int J Tourism Res 12, 303–305 (2010) DOI: 10.1002/jtr Media Richness and Internet Exploration to introduce such natural information onto them Many applications are possible in this domain It could be interesting to add the sound of waves when promoting a seaside spot In France, where our above-presented experiment was carried out, groups of people stay on a farm for a weekend during the summer holidays Such a stay, which is called ‘welcome to the farm’ or ‘a farmer’s stay’ is frequently reserved through websites Therefore, it could be lucrative for the farmer to record the sounds of his/her farm such as farmyard animals or insect chirping and to Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd 305 include these sounds on his/her website in order to create positive evocation and perhaps increase a more genuine farm effect REFERENCES Klein LR 2003 Creating virtual product experiences: The role of telepresence Journal of Interactive Marketing 17(1): 41–55 Sewak SS, Wilkin NE, Bentley JP, Smith MC 2005 Direct-to-consumer advertising via the internet: The role of Web site design Research in Social and Administrative Pharmacy 1: 289–309 Int J Tourism Res 12, 303–305 (2010) DOI: 10.1002/jtr