Cross-Border Cooperation: Strategies for Marketing Sustainable Development Tourism in Northeast Asia

The book discuss cooperation between all countries that make up Northeast Asia in marketing growth strategies to achieve successful tourism development. International travel and tourism is the movement of people across international boundaries. Therefore the openness of a country s border is the key to the development of international tourism. Niles (1998) argued that to achieve regional economic growth and development close cooperation between countries is inevitable. The tourism industry has not only created richness and contributed to the EU s GDP growth, but it is connected with other economic and social spheres. For the continuous growth development in telecommunication, increase regional political relationships and high mobility of people, a new process in globalization has arisen. As argued by Ohmae (1992) the globalization process has brought together many countries in a variety of economic, social and political relationships, resulting in the world s economies becoming ever more part of an interdependent system. While the process has brought countries together, the process has not been able to establish stable political relationship system either has it been able to achieve the long talked about sustainable development in tourism especially in Northeast Asia. For a sustainable development to be achieved in tourism, a combination of globalization, international cross-border cooperation and collaboration framework must first be established. This according to Vanhamäki (2009) requires collaboration between private and public sectors as well as between the local residents at the destination. A proactive role should be play by the private sector in partnership with the public sector to achieve solutions through the day-to-day operations and marketing, especially in product enhancement and quality controls of cross border cooperation in tourism (Middleton & Hawkins, 2009). Achieving a sustainable tourism development as part of a broader concept of economic development and sustainable development depends upon factors which Manning (2004) has identified such as community wellbeing, sustaining cultural assets, community participation, tourists wellbeing, economic wellbeing of the local residents, sustaining the tourism product, protection of natural assets, managing resources, limiting negative impacts, designing green products and services, controlling tourists activities and managing quality. But in Northeast Asia achieving these key sustainable issues in tourism is almost impossible because of the various governments tourism policies. Ozturk (1996) reported that the marketing approach adopted by destination countries does has considerable impacts on conditions for sustainability in the tourism industry. There has hardly been any policy of sustaining tourism in the Northeast Asia region; attention is mostly focus on competing against each other to attract tourists to destination, thereby neglecting the importance aspect of a sustainable tourism policy. Admittedly, it is not going to be easy to fully implement an international cooperative or collaboration strategy in the region mainly due to the unstable political situation and lack of historical trust among the nations. Another reason identify in the book is the power structure of monopoly of the market among the big tour operators in each of the countries. But Kotler et al. (1999) argued that to achieve sustainability in tourism, countries should adopt a social and ecological marketing practice that balances the needs of the tourists, the host communities, the environment, and profits. This book discussed international cooperation in destination marketing with special reference to the Northeast Asian countries of Japan, China, Korea, Mongolia and Far East Russia; it does not undermine cooperation in tourism marketing among other countries around the globe.