BY MAHYOUB AL-KAMALI
YEMEN TIMES STAFF
The terrorist incident against the French oil tanker Limburg on Oct. 6 has began to have its negative impact on the Yemeni economy.
The act did not affect the marine life and activity of fishermen alone, but has extended to include other income-raising sectors.
Tankers avoid frequenting Yemeni ports claiming they are unsafe, despite means and measures the government has taken to ensure safety of tankers and mercantile vessels going to those ports.
Isurance has been raised on tankers and ships that would enter the Yemeni ports under the pretext of the increase of risks and levying duties of war circumstances by companies.
Figures suggest Yemen loses an estimated amount of US $3.8 million per month because of recession in navigation activity and additional insurance prices.
The Yemeni government has taken strict security measures for protecting ships and tankers but insurance companies exaggerate in imposing additional war dangers duties.
There is a drop in tourist ships coming from tourist markets and as it is reflected negatively on revenues of the tourist sector, harms the national income.
Preliminary statements indicate that the efforts exerted by the government for tourist promotion have lost their significance because of the Limburg incident and official sides are in need of new promotional plans to restore confidence in the tourist climate.
But observers think there could be fears for lives of tourists resulting from the aftermath of the Qaed Senyan al-Harithi killing along with five al-Qaeda elements in Mareb. There are fears that tourists might be kidnapped especially that the most important tourist features and sites are situated in Mareb and Jawf.
Owners of tourist agencies confirm that the killing of al-Harithi and his colleagues has created a feeling that an aggression occurred on their land, thinking that the flow of tourists would witness a noticeable retreat.
Observers also say that the British decision urging its nationals not to travel to Yemen would increase the tourit recession and reduce greatly financial returns.
Tourist authorities have some options for activating tourism..
They say efforts must be forwarded towards Arab tourist markets to encourage inter-Arab tourism and visit Yemen's tourist landmarks and sites.
Attention should be drawn to alternate markets in the south-east Asia countries to attract tourist groups especially from countries not affected or influenced by the western media propaganda, especially Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore.
There should be more tourist exhibitions in foreign markets to restore confidence in the Yemeni tourist climate.
Observers expect that these options would lead to improving the reputation of tourism atmospheres and attracting new tourists to Yemen. Such a success would revive vitality of tourism sector and provide financial resources that help activate the sector's activities.

BY YEMEN TIMES STAFF
Yemen is qualified to play an important role in supporting the Arab economic objective of dealing with challenges of globalization of the economy. It has a strategic position, possesses human labor power and has fertile arable land, mineral wealth and huge reserves of natural gas.
Added to those elements is that Yemen constitutes a good market and provides vital opportunities for Arab investors. Given the above elements and factors, Yemen can play at a significant role in the economic integration with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states to attain the Arab regional grouping capable of accomplishing joint economic interests and serving the nation's ambitions.

Terms of partnership
Terms and bases necessary for establishment of an economic partnership between Yemen and other Arab counties are available in areas of:
-commercial partnerships for exchanging domestic products and imported goods,
- the private sector for bearing its responsibility for economic development and expanding its Arab domain partnership to increase products that are for exportation,
- reconsidering bilateral economic agreements concluded between Yemen and Arab countries, taking into account Arab economic circumstances and challenges of globalization,
-reactivating tourism according to the new developments that took place after events of 11 September in the U.S., and the need to reorganization of Arab tourist markets, encourage tourist agencies to establish Arab partnerships and prepare feasibility studies of Arab investments in tourism, and implementation of projects by the private sector.

Financial and customs measures
For scoring success by Yemen and Arab countries in enhancing the Arab economic grouping, there is a need for taking financial and custom measures under which prices of customs duties get unified under the Arab Free Zone scheduled in 2007.
Also, Arab countries need to reconsider activities of their banks and to work for unification of traditional and Islamic banking systems legislation.
More important in this field is the embarking on implementation of financial steps leading to issue a unified Arab currency. Unifying Arab currency would facilitate and speed up Arab grouping towards economic incorporation and achievement of the goals of the Arab economic integration in various fields.
Yemen's continued efforts for merging with the GCC economies have represented a mature regional vision, as it is useless for the Arab countries to remain separated and weak under changing world circumstances.
Yemen and some Arab countries have taken serious steps for reforming their economic structures and enabling the private sector to take the lead of some work sectors and carrying out investment projects formerly were restricted to the state. Such a trend would develop the role of the Arab capitals in the establishment of regional partnership.
It is unfair that inter-Arab trade continue to be at the level of 10% of the total Arab foreign trade. Yemen and the Arab countries have an opportunity to reconsider their commercial policies and to deal positively within their regions.
Yemen and other Arab countries possess all constituents of building a great economic grouping capable of facing and dealing with world economic variables.

The Road Ahead
BY RAIDAN A. AL-SAQQAF
r_saqqaf@hotmail.com
One of the major difficulties faced by service-oriented businesses, and one that causes their failure is their inability to meet customer expectations.
Customer expectations keep on evolving and changing amid different social and economical trends. As a result of that a gap is created between customer expectations and perceptions about the service. Businesses need to bridge this gap between what their customers expect from them and what they actually receive in order to ensure their satisfaction and build a long-term relationship with them.
Meeting customer expectations starts with improving the quality of the service. In fact, bridging the gap should serve as the primary task for businesses attempting to improve quality standards and services marketing. In other words the business should begin with customer expectations and perceptions and build the organizational tasks around it.
At the outset, the business should understand the difference between customer expectations and perceptions; customer perceptions are subjective assessments of the actual service experienced by them, whereas customer expectations are the standards of performance against which services and service experiences from one business or another are compared.
Many managers are not aware of what exactly their customers expect; they may not interact directly with them or they are unwilling to ask about expectations, which results in bad decisions regarding the services and the business future.
Consequently the quality of services suffer and the business lose customers.
The authority to change or influence service policies and procedures should be delegated to empowered teams and front-liners because they have better knowledge of customer expectations and perceptions.
Another problem is the lack of strategies to retain customers and strengthen relationships with them, when businesses have strong relationship with current customers this gap is less likely to occur.
Such a relationship would help the business understand the changing needs and expectations of existing customers. You don't expect much while flying Yemenia airlines comparing to emirates airlines, for example, do you?
As part of that, there are a variety of techniques used to collect accurate information about customer expectations, such as, for example customer visits, survey research, complaint systems and customer-help offices. Feedback collected from such sources should be analyzed in order to improve the service quality and hence reduce the gap.
Understanding customer expectations includes recognizing the reasons behind customer complaints, analyzing the things that may go wrong or upset the customers, and also creating recovery strategies for dealing with unavoidable faults and service failure.
This means building a well-defined complaint handling system to process customer complaints, and compensate the customer for any errors or unfulfilled promises.
Remember: Gaining an accurate understanding of customer expectations and opinions regarding the service is critical for long-term success through building organizational objective around that.