Positive Outlook for World Tourism

An upbeat outlook is coming from the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) as fresh information shows more than 400 million tourists are expected to visit destinations. Small island nations of the Caribbean depend heavily on tourism, and with a global recession still lingering, these countries have been hard-pressed to keep numbers on tourist arrivals on the up.

As the summer season gets underway in the Northern Hemisphere, the short-term outlook for international tourism remains positive. The UNWTO Confidence Index for May-August has improved compared to previous periods, particularly among experts in advanced economies.

UNWTO expects some 415 million tourists to travel internationally between May and August, the peak season in most of the world’s leading outbound markets and tourism destinations. In past years, these four months represented 41  percent of the yearly total.

Prospects are confirmed by data on air transport booking from business intelligence tool ForwardKeys – featured for the first time in the UNWTO World Tourism Barometer – which shows that reservations for international air travel world-wide for the period May-August are 5  percent higher than in the same period last year. Reservations for air travel within the same region (+7  percent) are stronger than for air travel between regions (+4  percent).

In general terms, growth is somewhat more moderate than in the first four months of 2012 (+7  percent globally). Air transport is an important tourism indicator as it represents around half of all international travel world-wide according to UNWTO destinations data.

UNWTO forecasts international tourism to increase by 3  percent to 4  percent for the full year 2012. While the pace of growth is slowing down somewhat, international overnight visitors remain firmly on track to hit the milestone of one billion arrivals expected this year.

The organization said that the continued strength of tourism is particularly important in the context of the current economic uncertainty, and reinforces the need for increased political commitment and support to the sector.

“The capacity of tourism to drive growth and create jobs needs to be accompanied by strong supportive public policies,” said Mr. Taleb Rifai, Secretary General of the UNWTO.

For the first time, tourism has been identified by the G20 as one of the sectors that can spur the global economic recovery. Meeting last month in Mexico, the G20 underscored the role of tourism in the economy and committed to work on advancing travel facilitation as a means to stimulate demand and spending, and thus promote job creation.

Sustainable tourism was further included in the Outcome Document of the Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development and identified as a sector that, if well-designed and managed, “can make a significant contribution to the three dimensions of sustainable development, create decent jobs, and generate trade opportunities”.

“UNWTO is confident that the growing political commitment in support of the sector will result in overall positive outcomes for tourism and contribute to global growth, employment and a sustainable economic transformation,” added Mr. Rifai.

The Americas recorded six  percent growth slightly above the world average, with solid results across almost all destinations. Europe, with four  percent expansion in arrivals, consolidated its record growth of 2011 despite continuing economic volatility in the Eurozone.

The UNWTO Confidence Index confirms these positive results. The evaluation of tourism performance in the first four months of 2012 by the over 300 participants of the latest UNWTO Panel of Tourism Experts’ survey slightly exceeded their expectations expressed at the beginning of the year.