On behalf of Yasuyuki Nodera, Regional Director, ILO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, it is my pleasure to welcome you all to the Tripartite Regional Meeting on Employment in the Tourism Industry for Asia and the Pacific.

Our purpose in holding this meeting is to provide Governments as well as Employers’ and Workers’ Organizations of the region with a unique opportunity to exchange views and experiences on the efforts to mitigate the negative effects of the crisis affecting the tourism industry, with particular regard to the uncertainties the industry has been facing in recent years.

In this meeting, the ILO would like to obtain a clear picture as to how the Organization can best assist the tourism industry in the region through its tripartite constituents. Through consultations over the next few days, we expect to come up with a concrete Action Programme, which will guide the way forward.

Back in October 2001, the ILO quickly responded to the events of September 11th, by organizing a Tripartite Informal Meeting on the Hotel and Tourism Sector in Geneva. The meeting adopted a number of recommendations to be addressed by Governments and the social partners to mitigate the social impact resulting from the aftermath of the events. The main recommendations included:

• Help promote tourism;
• Recognize the importance of the hotel and tourism sector for strategic economic planning;
• Encourage consultation among the social partners at national and local levels;
• Temporary measures to reduce costs (including a review of all tourism-related taxation);
• Assistance to Employers’ and Workers’ Organizations in setting up education and training programmes principally designed to retain employees within the industry;
• Provide state-supported education and training opportunities, where possible, as an alternative to unemployment;
• Commitment by the social partners to seek mutually agreed ways to extend employment, avoid and limit employment losses and, wherever possible, to prioritize the reintegration of workers facing short-term job loss as a result of the crisis.

Certain countries have already implemented these measures especially in light of the onset of SARS. The full recommendations are available displayed outside, or through the ILO’s website.

After the September 11th, the crisis situation in the region has continued and has even been exacerbated by the War in Afghanistan, the bomb blasts in Bali and elsewhere, the outbreak of SARS and the War in Iraq, all of which posed hard challenges to the tourism industry. Today’s meeting is also an opportunity to revisit these recommendations to see them in light of a current and regional perspective.

In view of the continuation of the crisis, five technical papers on employment have been published since the Informal Meeting took place in Geneva in 2001. The last of these, published in May this year, looked at the potential impact of SARS on employment in the tourism industry in 2003.

It predicted a loss of 1.7 million jobs in the region, excluding most of China (except for Guangdong Province). This early assessment has now largely been confirmed in the paper prepared by the ILO for this week’s Meeting. The job loss in the whole region, including China, is now estimated to be 2.8 million.

The number of jobs lost in tourism during the period could have a substantial impact on national economies. In terms of GDP and employment, the tourism sector contributes around 3 to 4 per cent to the respective totals. In some countries that are particularly reliant on tourism, the share can reach 10 or even 20 per cent. In a destination like Bali, the tourism sector accounts for up to half of all jobs.

How can the ILO best contribute to reducing the deficits posed by the crisis and improve the employment situation in the tourism industry? I will refer to the ILO’s guiding principles, which are embodied under the theme of ‘Decent Work’.

Decent Work is a development framework, which lends a balanced approach to social justice. It ensures more people will benefit from the advantages of open markets in an increasingly globalized world. But what is the notion of decent work? In his report to the International Labour Conference in 2001 Juan Somavia, Director-General of the ILO put it simply like this:

The goal of decent work is best expressed through the eyes of the people. It is about your job and future prospects; about your working conditions; about balancing work and family life; putting your kids through school or getting them out of child labour. It is about gender equality, equal recognition, and enabling women to make choices and take control of their lives. It is about your personal abilities to compete in the market place, keep up with new technological skills, and remain healthy. It is about developing your entrepreneurial skills, about receiving a fair share of the wealth you have helped to create and not being discriminated against; it is about having a voice in your workplace and your community. In the most extreme situation it is about moving from subsistence to existence. For many, it is the primary route out of poverty.

In short, the primary goal of the ILO today is to promote opportunities for women and men to obtain decent work, in conditions of freedom, equity, security and human dignity.

But there are considerable gaps between the objectives of Decent Work and the reality. In the tourism industry, typical Decent Work deficits lie with:

• A large informal economy;
• Unusual working conditions with odd working hours, which if not managed properly as suggested in ILO Convention 172 on working hours and regularity of income, could create significant insecurities and precarious situations;
• Few training opportunities;
• Little continuity in employment (and high turnover);
• Low skill levels of vulnerable groups of workers including women, young workers, migrant workers and other newcomers to the labour market; and
• Little social dialogue at all levels.

Employment in tourism industry played an important role in the social tissue. It used to absorb, to a certain extent, workers who had become redundant elsewhere, such as in agriculture, or other newcomers to the labour markets like young people with little schooling and no experience, or women who cannot stay at home without earning as they are too poor or single.

At present, we cannot expect tourism industry to play this role to the same extent like before, because the elasticity of employment in the sector is decreasing. In addition, the Decent Work deficits need to be addressed in order to provide enterprises with better-prepared and competitive labour force.

At this point, I would like to bring your attention to the Report and Conclusions of the ILO’s Thirteenth Asian Regional Meeting held in Bangkok in 2001. The meeting involved extensive discussions on the issues posed by the Asian financial crisis, which had started in 1997. There was consensus among delegates at the meeting that social dialogue, as a basic value of the ILO, played a very strong economic and socially stabilizing role for the economies during the period.

It was also pointed out that the countries, which had built up appropriate systems of social protection in advance, in particular protecting those who lost their jobs in such circumstances, gained a major advantage in their subsequent recovery. However, few schemes in the region make provision for unemployment benefits at present. An awareness of these issues, expressed in many countries through proposals to develop "social safety nets", is growing in the region.

There can be no decent work without work. The Asian Regional Meeting viewed unemployment as the greatest exploiter of labour on one hand. While it is equally true that employment is the best antidote to poverty. Social protection must accompany employment, while social dialogue plays the fundamental role in times of crisis.

In order to work out the challenges that lie ahead of us, we may build on what we have already achieved. However, we must also acknowledge our successes and failures, distinguishing the contexts, and specifying issues at country level.

Finally, I would like to thank you for demonstrating by your presence here the importance you attach to employment in the tourism industry in the region, and hope you have a very positive and fruitful meeting.