The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) published its annual review assessment for 2022. Tourism matters, but something is missing.
Tourism Matters, copied from the US initiative, Black Lives Matter was the slogan of the New Year’s edition of the UN Tourism News by the World Tourism Organization.
Of course, tourism should matter to all of us, not just those in the VIP section.
Meaningful tourism
it is certainly a nice estimate used by the UNWTO, but the UNWTO remained a closed organization that functioned around one person.
As the UNWTO did in 2021, the United Nations-affiliated agency was allowed again in 2022 to discriminate against those who might not fully agree with Secretary-General Zurab Pololikashvili.
Tourism operators in Nigeria under the auspices of the Federation of Tourism Associations of Nigeria (FTAN) boycotted a self-serving UNWTO cultural tourism event in the African country.
For 3 years, the sacked UNWTO staff fought in a court to get justice. After 3 years, justice was decided and 480 thousand euros in compensation.
UNWTO chief forces World Travel Market to ban critical media from UNWTO events. This could be an annual discrimination already set in the sand against the free press as this secretary general is now working to change the rules so he can seek a third term.
In another display of one-man rule was discrimination against a European member country simply because that country cooperated with a known critic of the organization. There are many cases of former high-ranking UNWTO leaders who have been discriminated against because they are critical of UNWTO activities and provided information to this publication.
The UNWTO report did not mention the influence that Saudi Arabia and also Spain now have over the UNWTO. The new task force created by KAS and Spain was clearly designed in a UNWTO rescue mission to bring the Secretary-General under control.
According to UNWTO, these were the achievements and activities in the outgoing year.
January 2022
2022 started on a positive note. Data from the UNWTO showed that tourism was booming with caution and that it needed to be rethought. The UN reinforced UNWTO’s global advocacy for the role of tourism in recovery. The UNWTO collaborated with agencies such as the WHO, for example, on joint warnings that “Blanket travel restrictions don’t work”.
February 2022
Advancing the UN’s shared goals, UNWTO and WHO called for the lifting of travel bans and agreed to collaborate on a global trust architecture for travel recovery. As leaders committed to joining UNWTO to build socially and environmentally sustainable tourism, February ended with UNWTO leading tourism’s voice for peace and solidarity in response to the Russian occupation of Ukraine.
March 2022
UNWTO data continued to reflect a promising start for tourism in 2022. This month, UNWTO published new Guidelines to put women’s empowerment at the heart of tourism recovery and announced the launch of the second edition of UNWTO’s Best Tourist Villages to promote rural development through tourism.
April 2022
Meeting for the first UNWTO Extraordinary 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 “Smart Tourism Challenge” for startups. The Glasgow Declaration continued to grow since its launch at COP26 and surpassed 500 signatories to take climate action through tourism.
May 22
A milestone: UNWTO and tourism top UN agenda: First UN General Assembly high-level debate on Sustainable Tourism in New York prompts immediate action and reverberations throughout the rest of the year. Other May highlights include improving SMEs with the Digital Futures program and strengthening consumer rights with more countries adhering to the International Tourist Protection Code.
June 2022
Facing uncertainty, tourism continued to grow, as reported by the UNWTO’s World Tourism Barometer. This set the background for the 116th UNWTO Executive Council (Jeddah, Saudi Arabia). UNWTO successfully advocated tourism action at the UN Ocean Conference (Lisbon, Portugal), ahead of the biggest event for tourism and youth.
July 2022
Youth empowerment is a UNWTO priority. The first Global Youth Tourism Summit brought together young people from 57 countries to be part of tourism decisions, as reflected in the Sorrento Call to Action. That same month, the UN Secretary-General’s progress report on the SDGs drew on the UNWTO’s statistical work to track the role of tourism in driving growth.
August 2022
International tourism continued to report positively, 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
September 27, World Tourism Day highlighted 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 progress since the beginning of the year, tourism returned to 60% of pre-pandemic levels.
A busy month also saw UNWTO advancing tourism and rural development at the 6th Summer Tourism Conference (Alba, Italy) and promoting tourism education with the launch of the first national competition of the UNWTO Student League in Switzerland .
