The establishment of a unified tourist visa in Southeast Asia is among the topics set to be covered by the tourism ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member states during a high-level gathering in Cebu this week.<\/p>\n
Tourism Secretary Christina Frasco confirmed this ahead of the ministerial meetings that will take place during the three-day ASEAN Tourism Forum (ATF) from Jan. 29 to 30.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs part of the ASEAN tourism strategic plan (ATSP), there is a priority on seamless access and accessibility overall to the region, and therefore visa-free access and unified visas may be taken up as a component of the ATSP,\u201d she said in an interview on the margins of the 2026 ASEAN Travel Exchange at Mactan Expo.<\/p>\n
The Tourism chief said all ASEAN member states are committed to position Southeast Asia as \u201cone unified destination.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, she declined to provide details when asked what markets ASEAN is looking to prioritize with this future unified visa.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really would not want to preempt our fellow ASEAN ministers. Only that the desire is for us to be able to develop the ASEAN region in a manner that will allow benefits to be felt across the region,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can certainly both learn from each other and benefit from each other’s tourism flows,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Frasco, along with First Lady Liza Araneta-Marcos, led the formal opening of the ATF on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The event is part of the week-long ASEAN-related meetings taking place in Cebu under the Philippine ASEAN chairship. (PNA)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ministers will discuss ways to improve cross-border travel convenience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":75,"featured_media":262253,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-262252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-travel"],"zyndk8_nxtgen_metadata":{"nxtgen_comments":[{"7372":"Mahalaga talaga ang consensus sa ASEAN setup \ud83e\udd1d\r","7373":"At least the conversation is already happening \ud83c\udfa4\r"}]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uptownmanila.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uptownmanila.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uptownmanila.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uptownmanila.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/75"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uptownmanila.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=262252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/uptownmanila.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262252\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uptownmanila.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/262253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uptownmanila.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=262252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uptownmanila.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=262252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uptownmanila.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=262252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}