DILI, 20 september 2021 (TATOLI) – A Tourism Asset Mapping (TAM) requires a detailed survey project to identify positive tourism assets available for development and promotion in the country, and provide a ranking of identified opportunities for tourism investment,” said Vice Minister of Community and Cultural Tourism, Inacia da Conceição Teixeira.
“The detailed survey will focus on flora and fauna, cultural activities, myths, traditional music, tradition story (legend), traditional clothes, and so on,” Teixeira told TATOLI at her office, in Dili, on friday.
She said that so far no Tourism Asset Mapping (TAM) has been carried out, saying MTCI has made plans to work on the TAM project.
“Through TAM, all of the various activities would be identified and define which activities are more attractive to sell to the tourists,” Teixeira said.
“MTCI had planned to undertake both tourism mapping and tourism asset mapping at the same time to reduce the operational cost, because, if we do the tourism mapping and tourism asset mapping separately, then it would cost a lot of money.”
Tourism Mapping is important to guide tourists in identifying and finding the best tourism spots in the country, while Asset Tourism Mapping provides detailed information about the various activities of a particular tourism spot.
“For instance, the Matebian Mountain, we need to know about its heritage, cultural and historical events, mountain habitat, etc,” added Texeira.
Due to the Covid-19, Timor-Leste experienced a sharp decline in the number of trips of tourists coming into the country.
Last year, the then US Ambassador to Timor-Leste, Kathleen Fitzpatrick informed that the Tourism For All (TFA) program of the United States is committed to assisting the Ministry of Tourism, Commerce, and Industry to implement its national tourism strategy, which has a goal of attracting 200,000 international tourists annually by 2030 to earn the country $150 million in revenues and directly employ 15,000 workers.
She said growing Timor-Leste’s tourism industry is a key element of Timor-Leste’s plan to diversify its oil-dependent economy.
According to a report of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) published on june 30, 2021, the crash in international tourism due to the coronavirus pandemic could cause a loss of more than US$4 trillion to the global GDP for the years 2020 and 2021.
Journalist: Filomeno Martins
Editor: Nelia Borges Rosario
