Professor Geoffrey Lipman is currently Director of greenearth.travel and President of the International Coalition of Tourism Partners (ICTP). He is also an Associate at Schuman Associates Brussels, leading the global Travelism practice. He is Advisor to the Secretary General of the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), Advisor to the World Economic Forum (Aviation & Tourism), Chair of the Advisory Board of the DeHaan Institute at Nottingham University UK, Adjunct Professor at Victoria University Australia, and Senior Tourism Research Fellow at George Washington University in the US. He is a Board Member of STDI and Dragon Trails, as well as the Live The Deal campaign.

With all this Travelism experience and knowledge, he has been asked by some of the UNWTO candidates for the Secretary General position for his support. Most are his friends. Here is how he answered:

“I have been asked by several of my friends who are running for UNWTO Secretary General to ‘support their candidacy.’ I have resisted this for 2 basic reasons. First, who the hell cares about my views amongst the 36 states who get to decide next month? Second, it’s late in life to lose friends by taking a stand. BUT I’ve decided to weigh in over the last month of the rather unusual campaign.

“It would be imperative to have a Secretary General who stands up for smart solutions to the existential issue of climate change. Also, it would be good to have a Secretary General who realizes that we need to move from image travel to ‘Impact-Travel’ with good and bad impacts measured to manage, with green growth at the core and 2050 climate and technology ‘future proofed.’”

From 2006 to 2010 Lipman was Assistant Secretary General and Spokesperson of UNWTO, and prior to that he acted as Advisor to the Secretary General. He was the first President of WTTC (World Travel & Tourism Council) from 1990 to 1999, Chair of Green Globe from 2000-2007, Executive Director of IATA (International Air Transport Association) where he worked from 1966-1985, and he was a founding partner of Global Aviation Associates which specializes in aviation government relations and competition.

Lipman has written and lectured around the world on tourism strategy, sustainability, and airline liberalization. He has co-authored books on opening up European aviation, established a Think Tank on “Free Trade in the Air,” and led a major study on the EU airline merger policy. He was a member of two European Union High Level Commissions – on Airline Liberalization and on Tourism Employment – as well as a member of the UK Roundtable on Sustainable Development, the President of Zambia’s Business Advisory Council, and the Ethiopia Think Tank. He is a Fellow of the Tourism Society.

Over this period, Lipman has played a leading role in many global tourism initiatives including IATA’s Liberalization reform, Development Support and Consumer interface, WTTC’s Agenda 21 for Travel & Tourism, Green Globe and Tourism Economic Research, UNWTO’s ST-EP initiative, Liberalization with a Human Face trade strategy, Davos Process on Climate Change, and Roadmap for Recovery/T20 Strategy.

Lipman has participated in many international, regional, and national Travelism economic summits as a speaker and a moderator. He is recognized for irreverent, out-of-the-box thinking on strategic and tactical policymaking, commitment to the Travelism sector as an instrument of positive socio-economic development, and his passion for sustainable development and the green economy.

See the Sky Interview with Alain St.Ange here: