Networked Nomads:

Networked Nomads: Internet and Tourism in Southeast Asia

Paula Uimonen

Department of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University, Sweden

Paper prepared for INET 2001, Stockholm, 5-8 June 2001

Abstract

Over the last few years, Internet cafés have mushroomed in tourist destinations throughout Southeast Asia, catering to visiting travelers. From the beaches of Southern Thailand to the historical sites of Laos, from the island of gods of Bali to the rainforests of Borneo, travelers use the Internet to stay in touch with friends and family back home as well as fellow travelers. Based on anthropological fieldwork in selected tourist areas in the region, this presentation will provide an assessment of the growing importance of Internet usage to tourism development in Southeast Asia. Particular emphasis will be placed on how tourist areas have come to benefit from Internet access, not only by providing connectivity to visitors but also by proactively using the Internet to market their locales and services. The paper will further address how Internet access for tourists has promoted the development of connectivity in underserved areas and the extent to which public access points such as Internet cafés are benefiting local users.

Introduction

In this paper, we will look at Internet and tourism in three different settings, the islands of Bali and Koh Samui in Indonesia and Thailand respectively, and the ancient Lao capital of Luang Prabang. The observations presented here are based on my fieldwork in these areas in year 2000, the results of which are also presented in a forthcoming thesis.[1] In all cases presented here, we will see how tourism has spurred Internet development, which in turn has promoted tourism development in these localities. In addition to providing an advantageous means with which to promote specific tourist destinations, Internet development is also providing public access points to local users through Internet cafés. We will find that the initiation of connectivity has been undertaken by expatriate Internauts who have transmitted their knowledge of an advanced communications technology to peripheral parts of the world. These entrepreneurial individuals have thus played a key role in both Internet and tourism development.

Internet as a Tourist Communications Infrastructure

Over the last few years, the Internet has developed into a prime means of gathering tourist related information. Increasingly, tourists can look up information on accommodation, transportation, and activities of various sorts, along with background information on the historical and cultural specificities of their destinations. Although this information is typically found in travel guides, the Internet provides a number of advantages over printed versions. For one, given the ease of publication, on-line information is often more up to date. Moreover, images and links to related information provide a more detailed account than the short entries found in travel guides. Thirdly, the Internet provides an interactive forum in which travelers share their own views and experiences, thus complementing more formal accounts.

In addition to assisting tourists in their planning activities, the Internet provides an advantageous means of communicating during the traveling itself. Young backpackers traveling through Southeast Asia explained to me that they use the Internet whenever and wherever they can. Using the Internet while traveling has become so common that it has become part of the backpackers’ grapevine, information on Internet access in different locations being shared among backpackers, along with advice on accommodation and transportation.

The most common application among travelers is e-mail. Typically, they use a Web-based service such as hotmail or yahoo mail that is primarily accessed through public Internet cafés. E-mail is mainly used to stay in touch with friends and family at home, allowing travelers to maintain close contact with their place of origin. Cheaper than telephony, and more rapid than traditional mail, e-mail has become a popular means of sharing the travel experience with people back home. It is also used to receive news from home. Today, e-mail accounts accessed through Internet cafés have largely replaced the poste restante service that post offices used to offer. Some travelers also create a personal mailing list that is used to send regular postings to a select number of recipients, allowing the traveler to share their experiences in the form of electronic travel journals. E-mail is also used to stay in touch with fellow travelers, and to plan and coordinate joint activities.

Although they tend to represent the largest groups of users, Internet usage is by no means restricted to young backpackers. In general, the social profile of Internet users is a reflection of the type of tourism that different areas cater to. In places such as Bali, where tourist development has evolved towards a more up market clientele, Internet cafés tend to cater to tourists rather than backpackers, while in Samui one finds a mix of the two. Conversely, in more offbeat areas, such as Laos, backpackers tend to dominate the scene.

Nonetheless, there is a close correlation between backpacking and Internet usage. Seeing that backpackers tend to travel for longer periods of time, it is perhaps no coincidence that they are more likely to use e-mail. After all, the need to stay in touch with the folks back home is often more pressing when you are gone for a few months rather than a couple of weeks. Moreover, backpacking tends to be of a more exploratory nature than short-term tourism, wherefore the sharing of these experiences with friends and family tends to enhance the sense of adventure. Younger backpackers also expressed the advantages of being able to keep their parents informed of their activities and whereabouts, thus reducing parental worries. Budgetary constraints further enhance Internet usage among backpackers. In addition to being a lot less costly than telephony, e-mail is often cheaper than traditional mail. This is not to suggest that e-mail has replaced traditional mail. Backpackers still send letters and postcards. But the complementary use of e-mail allows them to communicate more often and more instantly than is the case with normal mail.

Backpackers also tend to have a social profile that is well represented among Internet users in general. To start with, they are often younger than tourists, and thus more likely to be accustomed to Internet usage. Although some of the backpackers I encountered did not have Internet access at home, they had all used the Internet prior to their travels. In fact, some backpackers were using the Internet far more frequently when traveling than they normally did at home. Nonetheless, they all knew how to use it, and part of their travel preparations included the set-up of a web-based e-mail account. Older backpackers are equally well accustomed to the Internet. Although far less numerous than their younger counterparts, they tend to be well-educated professionals who prefer independent travel to organized tours. Their social background is thus as Internet-oriented as that of young backpackers, both groups representing an increasingly connected, urban middle class that likes to travel.

For the host environment, the Internet is becoming an important means of promoting and accommodating tourism. Seeing that Internet users represent the mobile, metropolitan middle class that the tourism industry caters to, entrepreneurs have been quick in picking up on the promotional opportunities that the Internet has to offer. Web sites have become a prime means of providing information on various tourist areas. Although they vary in quality, these sites allow local entrepreneurs to market their products and services to a global audience of potential customers. Moreover, on-line reservations allow customers to arrange their accommodation and transportation needs, along with various activities, such as excursions and sightseeing. Increasingly, businesses are also taking advantage of features like electronic mailing lists to keep clients informed of their activities. For instance, in Bali, restaurants encourage visitors to sign up for their electronic bulletins, a practice that allows them to build up a long-term relationship with their clients.

In some instances, the Internet has become the main medium over which tourist business is conducted. For instance, initially developed in late 1995, the www.balivillas.com soon replaced the direct mail and brochures that the site’s owners had used to promote the rental of foreign-owned private villas in Bali. Today, all of their business is carried out on-line, including reservations and payments. The site has allowed the owners of the rental service to reach out to customers as far away as South Africa and Russia, making it what they call a “fantastic tool” with which to reach a global audience. It has also enabled the owners to relocate their business from the bustling metropolis of Hong Kong to the less developed island of Bali.

On-line promotional activities are in turn complemented by the provision of public access points through Internet cafés. By definition, an Internet café is a place in which Internet access is complemented by the provision of food and beverages. Although some Internet cafés correspond to this formalized model, a great many are far simpler in nature. Typically, an ‘Internet café’ in a tourist area in Southeast Asia contains 3-10 computers, a printer and at times a scanner. Access is often complemented by other services, but these do not necessarily fall in the category of food and beverages. For instance, in Samui, most Internet cafés are operated by travel agents, who also sell fax and telephony services. The most scenic one I came across was a travel agency cum Internet café located right on the beach, providing a panoramic view of the ocean as a backdrop to the computer screens. In Laos, some Internet cafés have a token fridge or coffee machine, but in most cases access is bundled up with a rather different set of services. In Vientiane, I noted one Internet café housed in a beauty salon, and another one in a doctor’s office. So, when I use the term Internet café, I refer to an enterprise that sells access to the Internet, regardless of what other services are provided.

Over the last few years, Internet cafés have mushroomed in tourist areas throughout the region. On Chaweng beach in Samui alone, I counted over 20 Internet cafés, of varying size and sophistication. Seeing that the island’s first Internet café was only set up in late 1997, the development was quite remarkable. In the Kuta/Legian area in Bali, it was impossible to count the number of Internet cafés, while the sleepy town of Ubud featured at least half a dozen of them. In Vientiane, the number of Internet cafés grew from 2 to half a dozen in a matter of years, and today there are 10 cafés. Increasingly, Internet access is available even in remote tourist areas. A traveler in Luang Prabang told me that he had come across an Internet café in a small village in the interior of Sarawak, while another one sent me the following message from the peripheries of Thailand “We are in the North now, Mae Hong Son. they have Internet, but sloooowlyyyyyyyyyy. You need bhuddist [sic] patience to use the net.”

These Internet cafés also provide important access points for local users. While tourist demand has played an important role in the initiation of these Internet cafés, they have developed into primary connectivity hubs for locals. In Laos, Internet cafés catering to tourists have rapidly evolved into the main public access point for local users. In a country where the number of Internet accounts amounts to less than 2,000, Internet cafés represent the only viable means of Internet access among the general public. Similarly, in both Bali and Samui, the availability of Internet cafés has resulted in greater Internet access among the local population, especially among younger generations. In Internet cafés in tourist areas, it is not uncommon to see local youngsters immersed in chat rooms, or busy preparing e-mails.

Pioneering the Internet in Tourist Areas

When it comes to the initiation of connectivity in tourist areas, a rather remarkable pattern of Internet development emerges. In all the tourist sites that I visited—Bali, Samui and Luang Prabang—expatriate entrepreneurs pioneered Internet access. In Bali, a Singaporean expatriate, Haaris, set up the island’s first Internet café. Although a great many cafés have emerged since the first one was established in 1996, Haaris’ Bali@Cyber Cafe & Restaurant remains the island’s only true Internet café in the formal sense of the term. It is also the only Internet café in Bali to be a member of the International Cybercafé Association. In Samui, two German expatriates, Bernd and Roland, took the initiative of establishing Internet connectivity back in 1997. Unlike Haaris’ operation, the primary objective of the Sawadee Internet Service was the sales and hosting of Web sites for local hotels, along with Internet access, while the establishment of the island’s first Internet café was a secondary activity. The first Internet café in Luang Prabang was set up in December 1998, within months of the establishment of the first ISP in Laos. Operated by Planet Computers, a computer retailer company in Vientiane run by two Australian expatriates, the Luang Prabang café was second only to the country’s first two Internet cafés in Vientiane, both of which were initiated by expatriate businessmen.

In pioneering the Internet in tourist locales, these expatriates have been driven by a combination of entrepreneurial innovation and a community-oriented appreciation of cultural differences. Having worked as a professional in Singapore for more than a decade, Haaris had become disillusioned by the “artificial face” of the rat race back home. Fascinated by Balinese culture, he had already visited the ‘island of Gods’ over 20 times and had even undergone training in the traditional music of gamelan. When he returned in 1996, he was looking for an alternative lifestyle. During his visit to Bali, he wanted to check his e-mail, but no services were available and there were few computer shops on the island. So Haaris set up the island’s first Internet café, Bali@Cyber Cafe & Restaurant.

From the outset, the Bali@Cyber Cafe & Restaurant was established as a community service, catering to local businessmen and tourists. Located on one of the back streets of Legian beach, the Internet café is within easy reach from hotels and businesses in the area. During high season, the café is busy with tourists, while expatriate businessmen patronize the café during the low season. Intent on establishing himself in the local community, Haaris has developed a reliable clientele of regular users who appreciate his personalized service and the training he offers. In order to be of help to local businessmen, he provides added services such as Web page development and CD ROM production. Although he keeps the number of terminals low, between five and ten computers, he also allows regular users to plug in their laptops in his network. He has personally trained his staff, and he acquires his equipment through contacts in Singapore, the latter allowing him to maintain state of the art technology. In order to promote Internet usage among locals, Haaris offers them a 50% discount. Students under 18 years old can use his services for free, while older students get a discount rate.

Similarly, the main objective of the Sawadee Internet Service was to provide the owners with an income that would enable them to stay on the island they had chosen to make their home. Initially, the technical director, Bernd Schneider, worked out of the backroom of a restaurant that he managed on Lamai, the second most popular beach on the island. Under the framework of the site www.sawadee.com, the owners promoted web pages to local entrepreneurs. Initially, sales were rather slow and required considerable promotion and awareness raising, not to mention training. Nonetheless, in the first six months, they had developed Web sites for a dozen hotels on the island.

Following the set up of a Web camera at a well-known resort on the popular Chaweng beach in August 1998, the business got a boost. The Web camera allowed the transmission of real-time video images from the beach, thus promoting not only the resort, but also the island and the country, to an international audience. The first of its kind in Thailand, the operation received considerable media coverage, the positive nature of which helped establish the reputation of Sawadee Internet Service. As the business grew, another expatriate joined the team, André Allen. An Englishman by origin, André had lived in Australia for fifteen years, before moving to Thailand in the early 90s. Although he was the first to bring a computer to the island, he had initially planned to retire and devote his time to avocado farming. Instead, he got involved in the hotel business, and later the Sawadee Internet Service where he worked out an e-commerce strategy.

Entrepreneurial and cross-cultural interests also drove the establishment of the Luang Prabang café. The expatriate owners of Planet Computers arrived separately in Laos in the mid-90s, one of them as an employee of a large multinational telecommunications company, the other looking for an overseas experience. Both were keen on exploring the opportunities of what appeared to be an emerging market. Nonetheless, the Internet offered more than just a business opportunity. Despite the hurdles of doing business in Laos, they both developed a strong liking for the place and their efforts at promoting the Internet were largely driven by their interest in assisting the country in its overall development efforts. Having established an Internet café in Vientiane, the owners were keen on expanding their business to Luang Prabang, a town where the cross-cultural exchanges that they both appreciated could be promoted even further.

An instant success, the Planet Online café soon evolved into a social meeting point for visitors to Luang Prabang, the multicultural make-up of which was a pride to its owners. Strategically located on the main street, next to the town’s main historical sites and some of its most popular cafeterias, the café is busy from early morning to late at night. In addition to providing Internet access, the café also hosts a bulletin board displaying information on local activities and messages from travelers. Due to the poor quality of the telephone network, access is generally slow and at times the satellite link from Vientiane is out of service altogether, resulting in unavailability of access throughout the country. As a result, users in Luang Prabang often have to wait to get on-line, a delay that tends to enforce the socializing role of the café.

The pioneering efforts of these expatriates have in turn encouraged local entrepreneurs to follow suit. In each locality, following the initial set-up of Internet cafés, local entrepreneurs have been quick in picking up on the business opportunity these establishments offer. As mentioned above, Internet access is often bundled with other services, ranging from travel and communication to health and beauty care. While these follow-up operations tend offer less in terms of quality (speed of access, quality of equipment used and skills of operators), they play a significant role in spreading Internet access. Moreover, the competition arising from a greater number of players tends to bring down access costs.

The trickle down effect of Internet development in tourist areas is instructive of the workings of local economies in developing countries. Although profit margins may be low, the relatively low investment required to establish an Internet café makes it a lucrative business option for local entrepreneurs. As is often the case, potential business ideas are copied from other operators, and as long as there is some money to be made, these ideas spread rather quickly. The technical services and skills required tend to follow an equally informal, entrepreneurial model. Small businesses specialized in providing technical skills step in to backstop Internet café operators whose technical prowess is limited.

Tying Local Places into Global Webs

Followed by innovative local entrepreneurs, the activities of expatriate Internet pioneers have had a tremendous impact on tourist locales. By initiating Internet development in underserved areas, these entrepreneurial individuals have transferred a modern technology that is becoming a key factor in tourism development. Web sites and other on-line promotional activities allow these localities to figure more prominently in the global flows of tourism, the active participation in which is further enhanced through the provision of access for hosts and guests alike.

The activities of Sawadee Internet Service represent a poignant example of enhanced global embeddedness. Today, the sawadee.com site has become one of the world’s most popular tourist sites. During fieldwork in March 2000, it was ranked the 8^th most frequented travel site in the world, catering to some 120,000 users per month. The site has clearly enhanced Samui’s positioning on the virtual tourist market, not the least through the aforementioned Web camera, which in itself attracted some 1,7 million hits from around the world during its first year of operation. Although Samui figures prominently on the site, it is also used to provide information on other major tourist destinations in Thailand, namely Krabi in the south (covering the popular Phuket and Phi Phi islands), Chiang Mai in the north, and Bangkok. As such the site has contributed to the promotion of tourism throughout the country.

This global embeddedness is further enhanced by changes in transportation patterns that are tying tourist areas into global webs that increasingly bypass national centers. In Bali, the airport in Denpasar was opened to foreign airlines in 1986, following which the number of foreign visitors grew remarkably, from half a million in 1985 to 2 million in 1994. Although the national airline and the hotel industry in the capital had insisted on a more restrictive policy that would channel tourists through Jakarta, the pressure from local and international operators proved too great, wherefore the airport was opened up to international arrivals. Prior to the financial and political crisis in Indonesia, visitors to Bali reached over 3 million, the great majority of which arrived directly from other countries, without even getting a bird’s eye view of the capital.

In Samui, the construction of an airport in the late 80s had an equally beneficial affect on the number of arrivals, along with an upgrade of existing facilities. Although the airport is too small to cater to international flights, it does support regional flights from Singapore. Moreover, many visitors proceed directly to the domestic airport upon their arrival at the international airport in Bangkok, not the least to avoid the capital’s notorious traffic jams.

Although a latecomer to international tourism, a similar pattern is evident in Luang Prabang. As part of the Visit Laos 1999/2000 campaign aimed at promoting international tourism in the country, a direct flight was introduced between Bangkok and Luang Prabang in December 1999. A joint operation between the national carrier, Lao Aviation, and Thai Airways, this flight allows visitors to reach Luang Prabang without going through the national capital. Prior to the Bangkok connection, a flight was introduced in early 1999 connecting Luang Prabang to Chieng Mai in the north of Thailand. Following the inauguration of the Bangkok flight, the local tourist authorities noted a 40% increase in visitors, most of whom were Thais. Intent on increasing tourism even further, plans are in place to introduce direct flights to Northern Vietnam and Southern China by the end of year 2000.

Changes in communications and transportation, the key infrastructural requirements for tourism development, are instructive of the accelerated pace of globalization of which tourism forms an integral part. Increasingly, people, goods and services flow across national boundaries. For developing countries, capturing these transnational and translocal movements provides an unprecedented opportunity to participate in the global market place. Clearly, the Internet offers a unique digital opportunity to take advantage of these global flows, even in the most remote parts of the world.

Concluding Remarks

The Internet is highly compatible with tourism. By providing cost-effective, instant communications around the world, the Internet facilitates the mobility of modern nomads, the travel experience of which is increasingly networked. Through the use of e-mail, travelers are able to stay in touch with friends and family back home, no matter how remote their location. The Internet further facilitates the planning of travel experiences, including choice of destination and advance arrangements of accommodation.

More importantly, Internet access allows different locales to encourage tourism, the promotion of which is often crucial to the economic development of poor countries. In many countries throughout Southeast Asia, tourism represents one of the main, if not the major, source of external revenue. Seeing that tourism is one of the world’s fastest growing industries, efforts to accommodate tourism will only become more significant in the future.

By taking advantage of the Internet, tourist destinations can more easily promote themselves to a global audience. No longer restricted by the need for substantial marketing budgets, even small operators are able to target a global market. Granted, the quality of on-line tourism promotional activities is of a varied nature. Nonetheless, through the help on on-line brokering efforts, such as sawadee.com, even computer illiterate tourist entrepreneurs can market their services on-line, while taking advantage of state-of-the-art e-commerce facilities.

In addition to promoting local economic development, the demand for Internet access in tourism areas is also becoming an important means of providing public access points for local users. Internet cafés catering to tourists allow local users to access the Internet at affordable rates. Operated by local or expatriate entrepreneurs, these Internet cafés provide an alternative model for public access than the public sector run telecenters that have become something of a fashion in the international development community. Granted, their sustainability derives from commercial market demands, which is not necessarily replicable in other localities. Nonetheless, there are certainly lessons to be learned from these entrepreneurial efforts when striving to reach the goal of universal access to the Internet.

[1] Paula Uimonen. transnational_dynamics @ development.net. internet, modernization, and globalization. Stockholm: Stockholm Studies in Social Anthropology (forthcoming).