Proceedings of the 12th Meeting of
The COMCEC Tourism Working Group
16
7. International Institutions’/ Private Sector’s Perspective
7.1. WORLD TOURISM ORGANIZATION (UNWTO)
Ms. CLAUDIA LISBOA, Technical Coordinator from UNWTO, made a presentation about
“Tourism: A Key Sector for the 2030 Agenda”.
At the outset she expressed that UNWTO is responsible for promotion of sustainable and
accessible tourism in the field of tourism. Tourism is a drive for the economic growth and
development, supports the sector in advance of knowledge and tourism policies worldwide.
UNWTO encourages the implementation of global codes of ethics in tourism in order to
maximize tourism socio-economic contribution while minimizing the possible negative effect.
Over the decade, tourism has become one of the fastest growing economic sectors in the world,
creating jobs, investment, and infrastructure and promoting education among people. The
sector is a vital peeler for national strategies and economic diversification. The value growth of
tourism sector is important to achieve the tourism agenda goals. Tourism is also the mainly
income industry for many developing countries.
Tourism produces employment benefit in many related sectors from construction to
agriculture and communication. These dynamics turn tourism into key area for socio-economic
progress. Tourism sector is a major force for sustainable development requiring integrated
policy framework and encourage stakeholder cooperation. UNWTO encourages countries to
put tourism in their national agenda to get the ultimate outputs from tourism the aim is to
make tourism smarter, create better jobs, facilitate travel and protect our heritage.
UNWTO also encourages countries to contact and share best practices with other countries to
show the possibilities in tourism. In terms of users, what they are trying to learn from UNWTO
are; poverty, economic growth, sustainability in tourism sector, life on land, life below water.
She underlined that UNWTO has tools for tourism destination to become successful, marketing
and promotion, DMO’s leading role, strategic planning, stakeholders UNWTO quests, UNWTO
guidelines.