Fri 12 Feb

“Travel and tourism: stimuli for the global economy”

By Roy Weavers

The Ministry of Tourism of the Republic of South Africa, with the support of UN World Toutism Organisation (UNWTO), will host a Tourism Ministers’ Meeting (T20) under the theme “Travel and tourism: stimuli for the global economy” from 22 to 24 February 2010 in Johannesburg.

Tourism ministers from around the world meeting at the UNWTO General Assembly (October 2009, Astana, Kazakhstan) expressed a strong sentiment that tourism should be further mainstreamed in global economic decision making, with a focus on the sector’s efforts to build resilience, stimulate growth and development and support the transformation to the Green Economy.

Travel and tourism can make a valuable contribution to the economic recovery, and can be an important pillar of the global efforts to unlock enhanced economic growth, infrastructure development, trade promotion, poverty eradication and particularly job creation.

In addition to ministers responsible for tourism and the UNWTO Secretary-General, the meeting will be attended by high-level representatives and experts from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the United Nations Social and Economic Commission for Asia, the International Labour Organization (ILO), the African Union, and the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC).

Editors comments: It's all well and good having these high profile get togethers, I'm sure they are great fun, but shouldn't they generate an action plan rather than just generating a lot more green house gas from the hot air that generally comes out of politicians mouths. Get the airlines on side to provide enough planes to carry the tourists, cut the red tape and make sure the government funded tourism boards are spending the money in the right areas and that isn't necessairly outside their own areas.

It's time for the destinations themselves to take responsibility for themselves and they can't do that with traditional forms of marketing, which, let's face it are currently not working. Comments please...

Comment

Hans Van Veluwen, 15-02-10 10:23:

Dear Editor,
I beg to differ with your comments...if the aim of all tourism promotions is to generate hot air, support multi million dollar convention centers, waste hard earned dollars contributed by the majority of tourism stakeholders and alienate them to the idea of giving more promotional funds for their regional areas, create promotional campaigns that attract visitors to our region in times when we are traditionally full anyway...then these campaigns are highly successful.
For our own region, Far North Queensland, we urgently have to get away from accepting that between Jan 30th and May 30th , the best time to visit the WET TROPICS, we have very few visitors at all. We need to get together and create a whole new season..Gondwana Greening Dreaming Season...am busy planning a campaign to do this and wont be going to South Africa to do so...what do you think? c3d.net.au

Roy , 15-02-10 12:58:

I think my problem is that we spend a lot of taxpayers money on promotions, tourism conferences and advertising campaigns but very often in the high season the accommodation houses still have to discount their rates to encourage people to book and that's without any ability to influence where the original spending was allocated. This strikes me as being a double whammy...Contribute to the advertising and then discount your rates! On the Jan to May season, I'm with you all the way, I can't believe there is any need for an 'off' season. Visitors from Europe don't mind warm rain and niche market holidaymakers don't care when they come as long as they get what they came for, especially with respect to our amazing wildlife which so many normal visitors miss during the southern hemisphere's winter months. Let us know what your campaign plans are and we'll help all we can. Ed.