Tourism Guns for Peace, Sustainable Development

The World Tourism Forum for Peace and Sustainable Development that took place in Brazil’s Salvador de Bahia last week –the event was opened by Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva- was intended to foster tourism as a tool for the promotion of peace, economic and social development, cultural diversity and environmental protection.

The World Tourism Forum gathered tourism authorities, scholars, impresarios and NGOs representatives from 28 countries in the Brazilian city of Salvador de Bahia under the sponsorship of the WTO, the United Nations Development Program and UNESCO.

International tourism must be resilient enough to put up with the kind of crises that have hit the industry in recent years, said Francesco Frangialli, secretary-general of the World Tourism Organization (WTO), in his remarks at attendants to the opening ceremony.

The WTO Secretary-General noted the world travel industry has gone through the worst of times since the 9/11 terrorist attacks in NYC, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the SARS outbreak in Asia, a slumping world economy and an array of natural disasters in different parts of the globe.

But regardless of these hardships, the tourist sector has shown superb resiliency and has even made some headway in certain areas.

”All types of low-cost companies grew dramatically in this period of time, cutting-edge technology muscled its way through, and partnerships between the private and public sector are now stronger than ever before,” Mr. Frangialli went on to say.

The world travel industry climbed by 12 percent in the first ten months of 2004, compared to the same span of time a year ago. “This indicates clearly that the industry is staging a comeback,” he added.