Six UNWTO Regional Commissions (Africa, Americas, Europa, Middle East, East Asia and South Asia, Pacific met before the official opening of the assembly

“The 17 SDGs, a roadmap to 2030, the Paris Agreement and the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development provide the perfect context to advance together towards a more sustainable sector,” said UNWTO Secretary General Taleb Rifai in the 10th Meeting of the Committee on Tourism and Sustainability, chaired by Colombia and held in Chengdu in the days prior to the 22nd session of the UNWTO General Assembly.”

Taleb Rifai also shared news on the advances of the UNWTO International Network of Sustainable Tourism Observatories (INSTO). Since its creation in 2004, 18 observatories worldwide have joined the Network: eight in China, one in Greece, one in Mexico, one in Brazil, three in Indonesia, one in Croatia, two in the United States and one in New Zealand.
The work of the Sustainable Tourism Framework Programs for this 10 year project on Sustainable Consumption and Production Patterns led by UNWT and co-led by Morocco and  the Republic of Korea, was also underlined at the committee meeting.

Measuring the full impact of the sector and making informed decisions based on better, reliable and comparable evidence were objectives raised at the 10th Meeting of the Committee on Statistics and the Tourism Satellite Account, chaired by Austria. The Measuring Sustainable Tourism (MST) initiative recently launched in the Philippines was underlined.

Chaired by Peru, the 6th Meeting of the Committee on Tourism and Competitiveness debated the operational aspects of the tourism value chain and the list of factors for destination competitiveness, elaborated by the Committee. “

“Assessing the state of knowledge on the basic concept of ‘destination competitiveness’ helps develop sustainable growth policies, ethics, quality,  governance, investment policies, image and local community benefits”, Taleb Rifai explained.