COMCEC Tourism Outlook-2019

Creating various potential multi-national tourism corridors in OIC and integrating these into

tourism planning and development policies of individual countries would result in joint

development, marketing and management of these multi-national destinations and would be

helpful for the member countries to cooperate and create synergies in developing their tourism

industries.

Destinations are “systems” and “networks”, beyond physical spaces, therefore destination

development should be structured on a strong authority, taking its roots from networking skills,

as well as professionalism, transparency, and resource endowment. Without a well-designed

development strategy and stakeholder engagement; individual activities of countries and

actions might create conflicts, overlap, become fragmented and result in waste of scarce

resources. Thus, the ideal multi-national DMO should create the much needed collaboration and

efficiency for sustainable development of international tourism corridors. DMOs also create

economies of scale in marketing and cost sharing, audit stakeholders, manage use of shared

resources and internalize external costs of tourism activity for a more sustainable development.

In order to preserve natural environment and enhance economic benefits and to distribute latter

equitably, tourism must be planned, developed and managed within a hierarchy of structures

ranging from the local to the territorial or provincial, to the national, and even to the

international level. The responsibilities at each level should be clearly identified and

implemented for potential multi-destination tourism corridors. Therefore, identifying potential

multi-national tourism corridors and understanding the processes that lie within the potential

multi-destination development strategies are significant for OIC countries. Equity, participation,

accountability, responsiveness, transparency, monitoring and control are other features of

effective international destination management and institutionalization strategies. In the

analytical study, it is expected that these recommendations will be elaborated for the member

countries and offer alternative tourism corridors, development, marketing, management

strategies, solutions and implementation. In this regard a policy framework is suggested as

displayed at Table 4.3.

The following policy framework is used to provide recommendations for OIC tourism corridors

based on whether they are new or established corridors as well as whether they are close on

the tourism readiness of OIC countries and openness spectrum.

Table 4.3 Policy Framework for Cross-Border Tourism Corridors

New corridors

Established corridors

Planning & Establishment

Demand Analysis

Infrastructure Assessment

Benefits Assessment

Formulating Theme

Governance &

Management

Governance Structure

Monitoring Performance

Stakeholder management

Capacity Building

Funding