(TITC) – Focusing on Tourism’s ability to foster inclusive development and social transformation, the 21st session of the UNWTO General Assembly meeting opened on 14 September 2015, in Medellín, Colombia.
There were more than 900 delegates from 120 countries, including over 70 Ministers of Tourism gathering in the meeting, in particular President of Colombia Mr. Juan Manuel Santos was present with opening speech.
Held every two years, the General Assembly is UNWTO’s main statutory meeting and the most important international gathering of senior tourism officials and high-level representatives of the private sector. At the meeting, UNWTO Secretary General Taleb Rifai reported world tourism situation, development trends and various challenges in global and the delegates discussed the working plans of UNWTO for next two years.
According to the report, in 2014, despite several challenges, international tourism reached new records with 1,133 million tourist arrivals travelling the world, increasing by 4.3% over 2013; and tourism expenditure also grew up 3.8% over 2013, with 1.246 billion USD. In the first 6 months of 2015, total international tourists continuously rose 4% over the same period of 2014, reaching 538 million arrivals.
Among the highlights of the Assembly was the joint UNWTO/ICAO High-level Forum on Tourism and Air Transport for Development. The forum aimed to enhance cooperation between aviation and tourism by solving challenges related on policies, links, competitiveness and facilitation which could maximize the impact of both sectors on employment, inclusive growth and sustainable development.
This year, Viet Nam participates in the UNWTO General Assembly meeting as Vice President on duty of East Asia and the Pacific Committee of UNWTO (in company with Philippines as President and Japan as co-Vice President). On the sidelines of the event, Vietnamese Delegation had worked with UNWTO on coordination to organize an international conference on tourism and sports for preparation of Asian Beach Games (ABG) which will take place in September 2016, in Da Nang, Viet Nam; on implementing to continue the second stage of Project building ASEAN river tourism products under UNWTO’s assistance. Vietnamese Delegation also had meetings with German, Italian Delegations and signed Memorandum of Understanding on tourism cooperation with Colombia.
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The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) is the United Nations agency responsible for the promotion of responsible, sustainable and universally accessible tourism which was launched on 27 September 1970.
UNWTO’s membership includes 158 Member States and 545 Affiliate Members representing the private sector, educational institutions, tourism associations and local tourism authorities.
Viet Nam has become one of Member States of UNWTO since 1981. Since then, Viet Nam has fulfilled financial obligations and participated in numerous activities, took advantage of UNWTO’s technical assistance in this field.
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Thanh Tam