Sustainable Destination Management
Strategies in the OIC Member Countries
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Within the last two years, GosComTourism has focused on the 3-4-hour flight segment (visitors
from Russia, Kazakhstan, the Middle East, Turkey), plus European countries. In the near future,
they are going to start working on attracting tourists from long-haul countries. 480
Silk Road branding. “The Silk Road is one of the world’s most powerful brands, perhaps even
bigger than Disney or Coca-Cola,” Ben Simpfendorfer wrote in his Forbes article. He continued
by saying, “In my conversations across the region, whether speaking with a Chinese policy
official or Egyptian taxi driver, simple mention of the Silk Road brings immediate
recognition.”481
UNWTO, together with UNESCO, launched a study in which 300.000 local social networks were
surveyed. Online data showed that the “silk road” keyword combination came up in almost 30%
of all searches and discussions linked to route travel. However, not much is known about the
type of tourism there. 482
Several destinations are currently using the Silk Road for promotion; however, without a
universal communications strategy, including a professional and attractive brand toolkit
supported by guidelines for use, efforts are not reaching their full potential.483
This has been one of the objectives of the UNWTO Silk Road Action Plan, and the UNWTO Silk
Road Programme has been working to make its member states aware that increasing Silk Road
brand recognition will generate higher interest and more frequent visits to the destinations.
The initial Silk Road logo, in the shape of an arched double gate (which is now mostly out of use
but is still used by a few tour operators in Central Asia), was commissioned by UNESCO and
jointly launched by the World Tourism Organization (WTO – not part of the UN yet) and
UNESCO at the first Silk Road Meeting in Samarkand in 1994 (along with the Samarkand
Declaration). The logo was circulated among participants. At that time, the logo was distributed
in hard copy, not digitally, and there were no restrictions on how the Silk Road logo could be
used. The logo was used in association with all UNWTO activities along the Silk Road and only
used by UNESCO on the Silk Road activities carried out with UNWTO, as UNESCO has its own
Silk Road logo for its Culture section projects .484
When the UNWTO Silk Road Programme was created in 2010, there were some fresh issues
regarding the use of the existing logo by third parties due to the existing UN rules and
restrictions related to the use of UN system logos. The need to create shared promotional tools
and collective Silk Road brand identity has been an ongoing topic at all annual meetings with
the Silk Road Task Force, the programme’s working body. UNWTO thus developed a new logo
and toolkit, which was presented to the Task Force, offering the countries the opportunity to
take ownership and register it. So far, the process has been frozen due to the complexity of the
issue and the lack of dynamic parties ready to work on it.485
480 Interview with Head of the Department of Scientific Research and Work with Educational Institutions of GosComTourism
481 Ben Simpfendorfer, "What Does China's Silk Road Policy Mean in Practice?," Forbes, last modified June 15, 2015,
482 "ETC-UNWTO Seminar on Transnational Tourism Themes and Routes - the Silk Road".
483 "Silk Road Action Plan 2012/2013," UNWTO, last modified 2012,
484 Email correspondence with former head of UNWTO Silk Road Programme, Silk Road specialist on sustainable tourism
development
485 Ibid.