UNWTO Stresses Tourism’s Role in Economic Recovery

The World Tourism Organization is stressing that tourism can be a relevant factor in the economic recovery. Close to one billion international tourist arrivals per year generate millions of jobs.

Travel and tourism is one of the few sectors that cuts across the economy mobilizing employment, investment and sustainable development opportunities for emerging economies.

“We are weathering the storm,” said UNWTO Assistant Secretary-General Geoffrey Lipman. The global economic downturn has taken its toll on international tourism, “but we are resisting the worst that the deterioration of the marketplace is delivering. We will come back, stronger than we have been before, different than we have been as a sector, and those people who are understanding how to do this with us collectively, they will do it better,” Lipman said.

In this context, UNWTO collected different views to further mainstream travel and tourism in the global economic agenda. “Today a lot of countries don’t understand how important tourism is. The most important thing is to solve today’s problems with solutions that will last and will pay back in the future,” said Egyptian Minister of Tourism Zoheir Garranah.

“If we are able to put together the public and the private actors at the global level, which is the dimension of the UNWTO, it could (help to overcome) the crisis,” said Pedro Ortun, director of the Directorate-General for Enterprise and Industry, European Commission.

According to Jürgen Ringbeck, senior vice president of Booze and Co, “It is very sad to see how weak political support for the tourism sector is, specifically in the more developed countries. (Tourism) is the key platform to connect the world and transfer wealth from developed to developing countries.”