Distinction in travel journalism
Is independent travel journalism important to you?
Click here to keep it independent

1 Apr, 2013

10 Great Branding Campaigns that Shaped Asia-Pacific Tourism

Imtiaz Muqbil & Murray Bailey

Two award-winning travel trade journalists have teamed up to offer a unique perspective on the future of the Asia-Pacific travel industry, based on a detailed analysis of the successes and failures of the past. This includes a look at the great branding campaigns that have shaped the industry, the major mistakes the industry has made, game-changing policies that took the industry to a new level, and very importantly, key personalities who led and influenced it.

Murray Bailey, Editor and Research Director, Travel Business Analyst, and Imtiaz Muqbil, Executive Editor, Travel Impact Newswire, covered the ups and downs of this industry first hand through its historic formative years dating back to the 1970s, and are well placed to lay out some clear guidelines for the future. The believe that at a time when the industry is undergoing major changes and seeking to establish sustainable development paths, it is becoming more important than ever to learn from past successes and failures in order to chart a better future.

They have prepared joint presentations that cover a broad range of historic and historical developments that shaped present-day travel & tourism, ranging from great branding campaigns to travel facilitation policies, from crises such as the SARS and AIDS pandemics and 2004 tsunami to the rise of China and the Greater Mekong sub-region countries. Very importantly, they will also discuss the role played by key people who led, influenced and moulded the industry over the years.

These presentations have been designed exclusively for management meetings, industry conferences, policy workshops and seminars. They provide a unique historical perspective that very few of today’s emerging generation of policy-makers, investors and strategic planners can match.

Imtiaz Muqbil

Says Muqbil, “Just as stockbrokers plan their buy or sell decisions based on past share movements, today’s travel & tourism industry stakeholders need to ponder realistic, independent, objective scenarios for the future, free of sugar-coating. Travel & tourism is belittled by being described purely in terms of economic value and resilience. It has become far more important than that. My partnership with Murray Bailey is about presenting ideas and strategies to realise the full, holistic potential of this fabulous industry which we are all proud to be part of.”

Bailey added: “I constantly learn of new strategy and development plans, new brands, and so on. In so many cases, a better understanding of past activities would probably change those plans. ‘That won’t work’ may be a common theme of experienced observers. But with Imtiaz Muqbil, we can show what worked in the past, and what went wrong with those plans that did not work.”

Murray Bailey

Muqbil has been covering the travel & tourism industry full-time since 1981. He was the first Asian editor/researcher/writer of PATA’s Strategic Intelligence Centre publication Issues & Trends, (Jan 1998 – Sept 2006). In 1997, he won a PATA award for “Outstanding Reporting on the travel industry” and in 2005, the PATA Journalism award for coverage of the Dec 26, 2004 tsunami disaster. He launched Travel Impact Newswire in August 1998, the first such e-newsletter when the era of email news delivery dawned.

Bailey worked with airlines in the UK, US, and Australia before moving to travel trade journalism in Hong Kong in 1974. He has also compiled reports including a market study for the planned airline Dragonair in 1985, an Outbound China report for PATA, a study on the Asia Pacific travel industry for the body that became WTTC. He started Travel Business Analyst – a hard-facts, hard-hitting, newsletter – in 1987.

His personal experiences in the region are wide. He drove in his own car from Singapore to Europe in 1970.  He travelled through China in the year of the Nixon/Mao meeting 1972 as part of official Ethiopian delegation, meeting Zhou Enlai. Through a logistical miscalculation, he was in Saigon, South Vietnam, at the time of its 1975 fall, to be evacuated by helicopter from the then-US embassy.

“Although Imtiaz and I do not always share the same opinions,” says Bailey, “we share a deep knowledge of Asia Pacific’s travel business, and together we have transformed that knowledge into presentations to support those in the industry working for a better future.”

Please contact either of the two journalists at the contacts below to discuss details.

Imtiaz Muqbil, Executive Editor
TRAVEL IMPACT NEWSWIRE
24 Soi Chidlom
Bangkok, Thailand 10330
Tel: (66-2)-255-1480 Fax: (66-2)-254-4316
imtiaz@travel-impact-newswire.com
www.travel-impact-newswire.com

Murray Bailey, Editor/Research Director
TRAVEL BUSINESS ANALYST©
46 Blvd des Arbousiers
83120 Ste Maxime, France
Tel: (33-4)-9443-8160
murray.bailey@travelbusinessanalyst.com
Skype: TBAbailey
www.travelbusinessanalyst.com