On November 17th-19th, the 2020 International Mountain Tourism Alliance Annual Conference opened in Guiyang. The Conference is concentrated on the theme of "The Path of Mountain Tourism Development in the Post-COVID World". During the annual conference, the participants focused on this major topic, and discuss depth in how to promote the revitalization and quality of mountain tourism after the pandemic, and provide thoughts guidance and practice support for global mountain tourism management and promotion of global tourism industry.
This Annual Conference is hosted by the International Mountain Tourism Alliance. UNWTO, WTTC, PATA, GTEF, WTA, WTCF, ASEAN-China Centre, WCCO and other well-know international organizations and associations provided powerful support.
The Address at Opening Ceremony
Gloria Guevara, CEO and President of World Travel & Tourism Council ( WTTC )
Good morning!
Thank you for inviting WTTC to this very important International Mountain Tourism Annual Conference. I’m delighted to be here, greetings from London. But before that, I’ll start by bringing a global perspective.
I want to thank especially the organizers and I would like to thank Dominique de Villepin, Chairman of IMTA, my friend, Mr. Shao Qiwei, Vice Chairman, and also Mr. He Yafei, Secretary-General which is very important to bring everyone together during these difficult situations so that we can overcome the challenge together and at the same time, to recover. Let me walk you to the global view and our global data.
But before I do that, I would like to share who we are. WTTC as you know represents the global private sector. A little bit over 200 CEOS from around the world are our members. We represent all industries from airlines, airports, hotels, OTAs, travel companies, all industries around the world. Currently, our chairman is Chris Nassetta, CEO of Hilton Worldwide, our Vice Chair for China, Jane Sun from Trip.com. And we have vice chairs in all the regions including of course North America with Carnival Corporation with Arnold Donald and many others.
Now, let me tell you a little bit about the numbers and the global view.
For 30 years, WTTC has done a lot of research. We have done economic impact research in 185 countries around the world and that’s how we know that we contribute to 10% of the global GDP. As you will see here, 10%, that was the contribution from last year. And while the economy grew 2.5 average globally, the growth of travel & tourism GDP was 3.5％.In the chart below, the gray line shows the economy, the growth in the world in the last 9 years and the green lines shows travel & tourism GDP. For 9 years, we have outpaced the growth of the economy as you will see there.330 million jobs around the world or 1 in 10 were our contribution in 2019.
And all the jobs created from around the world, in all, the industries and all the sectors, new jobs in the last 5 years in every single year, 1 in 4 new jobs were contributed by travel & tourism which is amazing.
Now moving on the impact of travel & tourism globally as we are living an unprecedented time, let me share with you the data, the data we just released. Unfortunately, as of now, a 142 million people have been impacted. Yes, 142 million jobs have been lost globally and by the end of the year, this number is going to be 174. Our previous forecast say that by the end of the year, we are going to reach a number higher than 190 which was 191 million jobs. And the good news is that this number had decreased to 174.
One of the reasons is because couple of countries have recovered domestic such as China. That is impressive how domestic has been recovering. Other countries around the world also have been recovering domestic in Germany, France, Greece, and many others and that has helped us to reduce the loss of jobs.
It is very important to learn from the past and let me highlight three lessons that we at WTTC have analyzed with 90 different situations in the last 20 years.Let me get your attention in the top left graph, please.In the top left graph, you have the world, the last 20 years. The white line is the economy, the global economy. The green line is GDP for travel & tourism. The blue bars are job. As you will see there, there were two situations where the global economy was impacted. One was 9/11.That’s the top left. And the other one was the financial crisis. In those situations, there was a significant impact to travel & tourism.However, the reaction was different and the recovery was different. As you will see on the left, the recovery was a u-shape form. It took us years to recover and it was very painful. Then in the financial crisis in 2008, it was a pretty fast recovery in 18 months because we had a coordinated approach. Public and private collaboration was key and that allowed us to recovery in 18 months.Now, let me get your attention to the top right. That’s the G20. Whatever happens, the G20 has a direct impact in the world. Let me highlight the last lesson learned which is the bottom right. That’s China. It’s the last 20 years of the economy in China, unbelievable. The white line as I say is the economy. The green line is travel & tourism. Look what happened in 2003. That’s the outbreak of SARS. I look at how that was V-shaped recovery. That was very impressive because we didn’t have a vaccine. And despite that we didn’t have a vaccine, they were able to recover pretty fast because they were able to isolate the people infected and have the right protocols in place. And that tells us that we can recover from this outbreak if we do the right thing.
If we were together, public and private and also if we implement the right protocols and standards. That’s why in the G20 platform, it is crucial to get aligned. And on October 7, we made history when we had for the first time ever the private sector involved in the ministerial meeting that happened and hosted by Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia also, as the chair of the G20 asked us, asked WTTC and the private sector to put together a plan to bring back 100 million jobs. This plan includes 12 commitments from the private sector and it also includes some needs that we need from governments. Very important to move from just trying to contain the spread to contain the spread and also to try to coexist with the virus in a safe way. It is crucial, very important to resume international travel and for that, we have to work together. A coordinated approach to reopen borders is very important. We need to implement an international testing protocol. So that the next time that I traveled, I can have a test on departure and if that test is negative, I can board a plane. And then when I arrive in my destination, I don’t need quarantine because I am COVID free. That’s why testing is very important in departure to avoid exporting the virus.
Thank again for having me. Look forward to working with you and in our partnership. It is very important to continue having events like the one that you’re have today so that we can recover faster and we can bring back that millions of livelihoods that have been impacted.
Thank you.
