The first World Tourism Organization Tourism Policy Forum was held at The George Washington University on October 19-20 in Washington, D.C. This forum convened a wide variety of experts in the field of sustainable tourism and featured a full day of speeches by leading representatives of the global donor community who presented their planned approaches toward sustainable tourism.

Andrew Natsios, Administrator, United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Washington, D.C., USA stated that “astonishingly in 2001, one in every twelve workers globally work in the tourism sector.” He reminded the audience that tourism is now 11% of the global economy and, “tourism receipts are of critical importance to many countries’ balances of payment and general economic welfare.”

Natsios stressed that “sustainable tourism does not simply happen. It requires an overall strategy, detailed planning, with a host of supporting mechanisms including public-private partnerships, appropriate legislative and institutional reforms, training and public education, infrastructure and technology, finance and credit systems that reach down to the poor, and continued monitoring and evaluation.”

Natsios continued that “tourism must be based on real market demands, not simply the supply of possible products associated with threatened natural or cultural resources. Markets must be engaged from the beginning.” He also stressed the importance of establishing strong indicators to measure the effects of tourism activities. The full text of the speech is linked here.

James Adams, Vice President of Operations Policy and Country Services at the World Bank in Washington, D.C. stated that there has been “global recognition that tourism can contribute more to development strategies in low income countries.” Adams stated that the “World Bank’s core business is poverty reduction; tourism is a valid contributor because it is an important source of employment, environmental stewardship, and cultural preservation.” “However,” he notes, “tourism reforms are still slow in coming, governments typically have not committed resources, accurate tourism statistics and indicators of growth are elusive. There is a lot to be done to improve government performance of tourism in developing countries.” The full text of the speech is linked here.

According to Richard Scobey, of the Africa Division of the World Bank, the World
Bank has learned several lessons from its large investment program in tourism development over the past 30 years. He noted that the World Bank is now responding to past weaknesses which included; undertaking investment without a comprehensive national tourism development program, not paying enough attention to public-private partnerships, and giving insufficient attention to the community development and poverty reduction benefits of sustainable tourism.

In response, Scobey states that the World Bank is now “deepening its focus on strategy and analytics of sustainable tourism development.” Some examples include focusing on value chain analysis, tourism demand studies, and competitiveness studies. In addition, he noted that the World Bank is deepening its collaboration with other partners to support the development of partner networks to facilitate learning and knowledge sharing - particularly private sector expertise.

Enrique V. Iglesias, president of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) in Washington, D.C. called tourism "a most important sector," and stated that IDB is very much aware of this sector's ever-increasing significance for social and economic development in Latin American and Caribbean countries. He also noted that IDB will continue to work alongside these countries to improve the performance of this sector which can contribute to efforts to fight poverty and promote sustainable growth in the region.

For more information and background on the conference see the conference website, http://www.dantei.org/wto-forum/wto-index.html. Interviews with leading representatives in the donor community will be presented in upcoming reports on www.eplerwood.com and planeta.com.