Global Challenges and Tourism Industry Reform

The 88th session of the UNWTO Executive Council (EC), just ended in Argentina on the 10th of June asserted that the world tourism industry has no way but to make a comprehensive reform to adapt itself to the current and future global challenges.
According to the chairman of EC Carlos Ricardo Benavides and UNWTO Secretary General Taleb Rifai, the central component of the reform is to make it one of the “main sectors” of the world economy, and a driver of socio-economic development.
UNWTO claimed that each nation itself needs to nationally recognise the importance of tourism industry in job generation and economy development; these renovations were widely appreciated and put into law drafting agenda by many National Assemblies all over the world.
UNWTO highlighted the need to boost cooperation between nations due to the global nature of the challenges to the industry such as: European airspace closure due to ash cloud. The Organization also emphasized the development of new tool, framework and principle guidelines aiming at promoting cooperation and international consensus on tourism.
Mr. Benavides reckoned that the industry has experienced significant changes since the establishment of UNWTO in 1975. In 1975, there were just 222 million international tourist arrivals, with 75% from developed countries. This number increased to 880 million in 2009, and half of them are from developing countries.
However, the world tourism industry is facing new and complicated challenges such as: the on-going climate change, widening development gap between nations, and economy instability worldwide.
Mr. Rifai claimed that UNWTO need to identify the current and future challenges that the world tourism is facing in order to find out the sufficient solutions and methods to overcome the difficulties.
TITC