Operations
The technical assistance facility will help countries in Southeast Asia prepare sustainable tourism projects and catalyze financing to support them. It supports regional priorities to revive tourism, develop green and resilient urban and transport infrastructure in secondary cities, accelerate inclusive digital transformations, and mobilize domestic resources.
The project is financing climate-resilient roads, water transport infrastructure, urban infrastructure, and capacity development needed to boost and better manage tourism in Cambodia’s coastal areas, Lao PDR’s Champasak, Luang Prabang, and Vientiane Provinces, and several secondary towns in Viet Nam.
The Community-Based Tourism COVID-19 Recovery Project will help communities in Preah Vihear and Takeo provinces generate local jobs and income by improving tourism services infrastructure, enhancing visitor experiences, and strengthening tourism supply chain linkages.
The technical assistance will design and operationalize ADB’s Frontier Financing Partnership Facility. The facility will house multi-donor trust funds and technical assistance that initially support and invest in tourism and light manufacturing companies with potential to generate sustainable development goal impact in Southeast Asian and Pacific frontier markets.
This technical assistance helped the Greater Mekong Subregion Tourism Working Group design and implement the Mekong Innovative Startups in Tourism (MIST) accelerator program. MIST identified and helped scale traditional and technology-based solutions that boost tourism’s sustainability and inclusiveness.
The first batch of Greater Mekong Subregion Tourism Infrastructure for Inclusive Growth projects covered Cambodia, the Lao PDR, and Viet Nam, focusing on improving last-mile transport connections and environmental management in emerging tourist destinations. The projects also supported tourism-related enterprise development and heritage protection in several historic towns.
