Building tourism for SMEs through Visa

A partnership with Visa focuses specifically on building capacity of 2 crucial travel and tourism stakeholders, SMEs and informal workers.

The Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) announced the start of a new collaboration with Visa to extend the Tourism Destination Resilience (TDR) Program and continue to help build a more resilient and sustainable tourism industry. The COVID-19 pandemic has painfully proven the importance for destinations to be prepared for challenges and potential crises, and to know how to adapt to changes.

For small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), PATA and Visa will produce two new online learning modules, focusing on improving financial literacy, and digital competency and cybersecurity. The new courses will be added to PATA’s existing TDR Course and, as with the other modules, will be available to the public in six languages: English, Vietnamese, Bahasa Indonesia, Khmer, Thai, and Mandarin Chinese.

Apart from the online modules, PATA and Visa will also conduct in-person training for SMEs, which will take place in the second half of the year in four destinations: Cambodia, Indonesia, Vietnam, and the Philippines.

According to PATA Chair Peter Semone, “SMEs make up 80% of all tourism businesses. As we future-proof our destinations, SMEs also need to build resilience. In this sense, greater digital literacy and financial knowledge are imperative for learning how to adapt to the new era of tourism and prepare for future challenges that may arise.”

For informal workers working in the travel and tourism industry, the collaboration seeks to empower these professionals by helping build their capacity not only on digital and financial skills but also health and safety, marketing and communication, as well as other topics that may be identified during a needs analysis. For the latter part of the project, the implementation will take place in Indonesia

Informal workers make up a majority of tourism employment and provide entrepreneurial opportunities for women, youth, and the elderly. However, lacking formal government registration, they often fall through the cracks of social protection and employment benefit schemes in times of crisis.

About the partnership, Patsian Low, Vice President of Inclusive Impact & Sustainability for Asia Pacific at Visa, said, “Visa is proud to provide digital literacy and financial education to the thousands of small and micro businesses and informal workers, such as walking guides, transport drivers or translators, who are the backbone of the tourism industry in our region. As travel and tourism continues to accelerate post-COVID-19, our partnership with PATA will help enable individuals, business, and economies to thrive and deliver on our purpose to uplift everyone, everywhere by being the best way to pay and be paid.

Pavnesh Kumar, PATA’s Sustainability and Social Responsibility Programme Head, adds that “This partnership will not only allow us to expand the impacts of Tourism Destination Resilience within destinations but also target the two groups who most often lack support in the industry. We are looking forward to working with Visa and our country partners to build the capacity of SMEs and informal workers.”