VIENTIANE - Senior Asian tourism officials, scared a bird flu epidemic sweeping the region will hit an industry that employs millions, sought on February 3 to lure more holiday-makers by promising discounts and safety from the virus.

Meeting in Laos, lodged between bird flu-stricken Thailand, Viet Nam and China, they played down the threat of the disease to humans and talked up the tourism industry's recovery from a SARS epidemic last year.

But fear lingered that the strain of avian influenza, which has resulted in the slaughter of millions of chickens, could mix with a human virus and mutate into a deadly form that spreads between people.

"The situation is changing rapidly, so we're watching carefully," said Lim Neo Chian, chief executive of the Singapore Tourism Board. "We're keeping our fingers crossed."

The World Health Organization said this week two sisters in Viet Nam may have contracted the virus from their brother, who had come into contact with chicken during preparations for his wedding. If so, this would be the first recorded case of human-to-human transmission during the outbreak.

Campaigns

Viet Nam's Vice Minister for Tourism, Pham Tu, said he regretted 1,000 Japanese tourists had cancelled their trips because they feared bird flu, but said visitor arrivals in January had jumped 17 per cent from the previous year.

Viet Nam's government is keeping tourists away from affected areas and even chicken meals, even though experts say meat is safe if cooked well.

"We would like to send a message to Japanese tourists that there's no evidence of human-to-human transmission in Viet Nam. I still eat chicken, but to react to the concerns of tourists, we've taken it off their menus," Pham said as he headed for lunch.

After a meal of crab mousse, wild mushroom soup and fried fish, the ministers from Southeast Asia, Japan, South Korea and China were to talk about joint marketing campaigns, mutually abandoning visas and a US$399 three-city air pass with hotel discounts.

Japan's vice minister responsible for tourism, Hayao Hora, said he expected more Japanese to travel abroad this year because fear of bird flu was far less than fear of SARS and terrorist attacks in 2003.

"The cases of bird flu have not affected tourism so far," Hora said. "Outbound travel fell 20 per cent last year, but I think we'll be back to normal levels this year."

Some 16 million Japanese travelled abroad in 2003, with 1.2 million visiting Thailand and 2.2 million holidaying in either Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines or Singapore.

But some officials thought bird flu would have some impact on travel.

"I'm expecting that maybe bird flu will cause the number of tourists coming to Asia to decline a bit," said South Korean vice minister for tourism, Shin Hyun Taek. He said SARS caused Korean tourist arrivals to fall 10 per cent last year from 5.35 million.

But promoting intra-regional tourism offered hope.

Laos, where per capita income is around US$400, opened a brand new US$75 million exhibition centre on the edge of its dusty capital on Tuesday to host a week-long tourism fair for the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

"In the region we have 550 million people who know ASEAN well," said Lim. "Even if there are small trouble spots here and there they will travel, which isn't necessarily the case if you're living far away, say in Europe."

Expanding outbreaks

Bird flu continued its seemingly inexorable march through Asia, as Indonesia on Tuesday found a strain of the virus in its poultry flocks that can be deadly to humans.

"The identification process indicates the virus H5N1 in poultry ... but so far there is no case among humans," Tri Satya Putri Naipospos, director of animal health at the Agriculture Ministry, told a new conference.

It was not clear where in Indonesia the strain was detected, but government officials have said the main island of Java and the tourist centre of Bali were the worst hit by the bird flu.

Indonesia's poultry industry, estimated to be worth about 60 trillion rupiah (US$7.2 billion) annually, has seen costs from the outbreak run to about 7.7 trillion rupiah.

The Thai government said cock fighting fans would have to wait until the end of the epidemic to place their next bets.

Health Minister Sudarat Keyuraphana said cock fighting had been banned temporarily because of fears the birds were often taken long distances to their sand-pit arenas and might spread the avian influenza which has now hit 10 Asian countries.

In Viet Nam, the World Health Organization said it was safe to eat chicken and eggs that had been thoroughly cooked. A hospital said on February 2 that an 18-year-old boy it said had died of bird flu had eaten chicken killed by the H5N1 virus.

"Our feeling is that chicken and eggs, properly cooked, doesn't seem to present a threat of infection," said Robert Dietz, spokesman for the UN agency in Hanoi. (Agencies via Xinhua)