23 May 2026

Brilliant PATA digital scrapbook recaps its 75 years of nation-building history

PATA’s marketing team has compiled a digital scrapbook comprising of events, milestones and fun engagements over its 75-year history of nation-building across the world’s most populous region. It is fully interactive – you can check out any part of the timeline by scrolling and dragging around, and you can zoom in or watch the embedded videos.

As the Asia Pacific region’s leading Travel & Tourism historian, I was highly impressed by this comprehensive effort, which was unveiled at the 75th anniversary PATA Annual Summit in Korea in Gyeongju and Pohang between 11-14 May. It is stellar record of PATA’s achievements — building on the rich culture and heritage of the Asia Pacific to help the region emerge from wars and conflict, recover from natural disasters, alleviate poverty, create jobs and distribute income to remote communities.

PATA events and forums have connected peoples, unleashed creative marketing and branding campaigns and facilitated investment in infrastructure. PATA’s combined direct and indirect contribution to the social, cultural, economic and technological advancement of the Asia Pacific is unmatched by any other association of any economic sector.

At the same time, anyone perusing the digital scrapbook should also take an objective look at the other side of the story: How and why this once high-flying organisation of the 20th Century came close to extinction in the first quarter of the 21st Century. That in itself is HIstory well worth studying, equally as important as the sunny-side up perspective.

The old archives and materials were studied and collected by PATA’s Marketing Manager Alice Gong and marketing associate Ram Cartney Cortez, with support from comms executive Ms Prapimchun (Moowan) Soonthornpanich. The scrapbook was put together by Alice and Ram.

The team also received a number of materials and help from the community to build this archive. Specifically,

•⁠ ⁠Nadine Leon Guerrero from Guam Visitors Bureau helped identify a number of occasions and people from old undocumented photos

•⁠ ⁠⁠Russell Johnson from Travelmedia provided a collection of PATA event and promotional footages from the 1980s-2000s.

•⁠ ⁠⁠Life members helped clarify some specific details of the history.

Finally, this direct quote from Alice: “And of course we were also able to recover a lot of missed details from your published articles!”

I am certain the project will contribute significantly to filling one of the most important scholastic voids — an in-depth study of Asia Pacific tourism history, a cause which I have proudly championed for years.

Congratulations to the entire team… great job.. Check out the digital scrapbook here…

https://prezi.com/view/cRMM2a4dm7uSPpjiDVhr/?referral_token=V9dgwZlnB3FN