Tourism Matters copied from the US initiative Black Lives Matter was the slogan of the UN Tourism News New Year edition by the World Tourism Organization.
Of course, tourism should matter to all of us, not only to those that sit in the VIP section.
Meaningful tourism
is obviously an agreeable assessment used by UNWTO, but UNWTO remained a closed organization functioning around one person.
As UNWTO did in 2021, the United Nations-affiliated agency again was allowed in 2022 to discriminate against those that may not agree completely with Secretary-General Zurab Pololikashvili.
Tourism operators in Nigeria under the aegis of the Federation of Tourism Associations of Nigeria (FTAN) boycotted a self-serving cultural UNWTO tourism event in that African country.
For 3 years UNWTO staff fired were battled in a tribunal to get justice. After 3 years justice was served and EUR 480,000 in compensation.
The UNWTO chief forced the World Travel Market to ban critical media from UNWTO events. This may be a yearly discrimination already set up in sand against the free press since this secretary-general is now working on changing the rules, so he can seek a third term.
In another show of a one-man rule was the discrimination against a European member country only because this country cooperated with a known critic of the organization. There are numerous cases of former high-ranking leaders in UNWTO being discriminated against because they are critical to UNWTO activities, and provided information to this publication.
The UNWTO report did not mention the influence Saudi Arabia and also Spain now have over UNWTO. The new task force put in place by KSA and Spain was clearly designed in a UNWTO rescue mission to put the Secretary-General in check.
According to UNWTO, these were the achievements and activities in the outgoing year.
January 2022
2022 began on a positive note. Data from UNWTO showed that tourism was cautiously taking off and that it needed to be rethought. The UN amplified UNWTO’s global advocacy for tourism’s role in recovery. UNWTO partnered with sister agencies like WHO for example, around joint warnings that “Blanket Travel Restrictions Don’t Work”.
February 2022
Advancing common UN goals, UNWTO and WHO called for the lifting of travel bans and agreed to collaborate on a global trust architecture for the recovery of travel. While leaders committed to joining UNWTO to build social and environmentally sustainable tourism, February ended with UNWTO leading the voice of tourism for peace and solidarity in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
March 2022
UNWTO data continued to reflect the promising start of tourism in 2022. This month, UNWTO released New Guidelines Put Women’s Empowerment at Heart of Tourism’s Restart and announced the launch of the second edition of Best Tourism Villages by UNWTO to promote rural development through tourism.
April 2022
Meeting for the first-ever extraordinary UNWTO General Assembly against the backdrop of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, UNWTO Members voted to suspend Russia from Membership. Reinforcing its Global Goals, UNWTO launched the “Awake Tourism Challenge” for startups. The Glasgow Declaration kept growing since its launch at COP26 and surpassed 500 signatories to take climate action through tourism.
May 22
A landmark moment: UNWTO and tourism reached the top of the UN agenda: the first-ever UN General Assembly High-Level Debate on Sustainable Tourism in New York, fueling immediate actions and reverberating during the rest of the year. Other May highlights include upgrading SMEs with the Digital Futures program and strengthening consumers’ rights with more countries adhering to the International Code for the Protection of Tourists.
June 2022
Facing up to uncertainty, tourism kept on growing, as reported by the UNWTO World Tourism Barometer. This set the backdrop for the 116 UNWTO Executive Council (Jeddah, Saudi Arabia). UNWTO successfully advocated for tourism action at the UN Ocean Conference (Lisbon, Portugal), ahead of the biggest event on tourism and youth.
July 2022
Youth empowerment is a UNWTO priority. The first Global Youth Tourism Summit gathered young people from 57 countries to be part of tourism’s decisions, as reflected in the Sorrento Call to Action. That same month, the UN Secretary-General’s Progress report on SDGs drew on UNWTO’s statistical work to track tourism’s role in driving growth.
August 2022
International tourism continued reporting positive, recording 250 million international arrivals during the first five months of 2022. This set the backdrop ahead of World Tourism Day 2022 and its theme Rethinking Tourism.
September 2022
27 September, World Tourism Day emphasized the sector’s unique potential to drive recovery and deliver positive change for people everywhere. This followed the G20 Tourism Working Group meeting in Bali, where UNWTO presented the G20 Bali Guidelines for SMEs. Looking at the progress since the start of the year, tourism was back to 60% of pre-pandemic levels.
A busy month also saw UNWTO advancing tourism and rural development at the 6th Wine Conference on Wine Tourism (Alba, Italy), and promoting education in tourism with the launch of the first national competition of the UNWTO Students’ League in Switzerland.
October 2022
Sustainability and the green transformation of tourism took center stage in October as the UNWTO International Network of Tourism Observatories (INSTO) welcomed more members, and Ministers agreed to advance circularity and climate action in Pan-European tourism.
November 2022
Tourism was transformed at the UNWTO Ministers’ Summit, the most successful edition to date with delegates joining UNWTO’s vision to rethink tourism. UNWTO made the case for tourism in COP27, where it represented over 700 signatories of the Glasgow Declaration advancing a NetZero sector. This was followed by new data showing arrivals reached 63% of pre-pandemic levels during January-September 2022. This set the framework for the 117 UNWTO Executive Council (Marrakesh, Morocco).
December 2022
Rural development, inclusivity, and sustainability led conversations at the 7th World Forum on Gastronomy Tourism. Winners of Best Tourism Villages and Students League wrapped up 2022 with their solutions to boost rural development through tourism. In 2023 we look forward, to making the shift from rethinking to transforming the sector around key priorities: jobs and training, education and youth development, and sustainability and innovation. With UNWTO as tourism’s voice at the global level, including at the UN General Assembly, the sector has never been more relevant – nor more needed.
(eTN): The Year 2022 According to UNWTO: Something is Missing | re-post license | post content
