On 4 July 2018, the 48th Meeting of the ASEAN National Tourism Organizations (ASEAN NTOs) was held in Daerah Belait, Brunei. The meeting was co-chaired by Ha Van Sieu, Deputy Director General of Viet Nam National Administration of Tourism (VNAT), and Wardi Bin Haji Mohamed Ali, Deputy Permanent Secretary of the Brunei Ministry of Primary Resources and Tourism. Representatives of tourism organizations of the 10 ASEAN countries and the ASEAN Secretariat attended the meeting. Representatives of ASEAN-China Centre (ACC), ASEAN-Korea Centre and ASEAN-Japan Centre were present and gave briefings respectively on their tourism cooperation with ASEAN countries this year and future cooperation plans.

Ms. Kong Roatlomang, Director of the Education, Culture and Tourism Division of ACC, addressed the meeting and had extensive exchanges with the participants. She highlighted the positive role of ACC in promoting tourism cooperative partnership between ASEAN and China and exploring new ways of two-way tourism exchange. She said that in 2018, which celebrates the 15th anniversary of ASEAN-China strategic partnership and ASEAN-China Year of Innovation, with the strong support of ASEAN tourism authorities and relevant international organizations, ACC has actively implemented the consensus reached by leaders of both sides, seized new opportunities to launch three flagship projects in tourism, and carried out a series of exchange activities on strengthening the promotion of ASEAN tourism resources, sustainable tourism and high quality services. All these efforts have achieved good results. ACC will continue to hold a variety of activities, such as Chinese language training course for tour guides in Brunei, the second ASEAN-China tourism festival and the first ASEAN-Guizhou tourism exchange week, with the aim of further deepening ASEAN-China tourism cooperation and promoting regional economic and social sustainable development. She looked forward to continued support from the tourism authorities of ASEAN countries.

At the meeting, ACC also gave briefing on the progress of co-producing a travel documentary Hi! ASEAN with Beijing TV Station and the broadcast plan for this year. The video clip was presented at the meeting, which was of fresh visual appeal to the guests.

Representatives at the meeting spoke highly of the contributions made by ACC in promoting tourism exchanges and cooperation between ASEAN and China and propelling the common development of tourism. Deputy Director General Ha Van Sieu and Deputy Permanent Secretary Ali highly commended ACC for carrying out and making plans for the above-mentioned activities. They expressed hope to further strengthen communication and exchanges with ACC to jointly promote ASEAN tourism resources and pledged their full support to ACC’s future work.