Articles tagged “unwto”

Most tourism boards understand that travelers need to eat well if they want them to be happy and return. One challenge with that is determining what food trend to focus on -- and whether it will fizzle out or stick around -- before throwing marketing dollars at promoting food.

With less than five percent of Chinese travelers holding passports, last year's spending totals for international Chinese travelers represents only a fraction of the market's spending potential as millions more Chinese choose to travel abroad each year.

There are some well-qualified insiders and total outsiders with little experience in tourism among the candidates for the new UNWTO Secretary-General. Whoever is nominated and elected later this year will need to work more closely with governments at the national and local level to show them why tourism matters.

Although the term arrival is somewhat ambiguous and different destinations have their own definitions for what counts as an arrival, it's clear some European destinations had a tough year convincing international travelers to visit and Western Europe bore the brunt of that.

International tourism remains strong this year in the face of plenty of reasons to avoid it. But regions like Western Europe, the Caribbean and South America, while seeing their arrivals grow year-over-year, are missing out on more arrivals because of a series of events including terrorism, the Zika virus and weak local economies.

If you want to understand what's happening right now in global tourism, the first person you should listen to is the UNWTO's Taleb Rifai.

International travel has definitely been impacted by terrorism and economic woes so far in 2016 but global tourism still grew in most regions around the world, some places significantly.

Airbnb knows that the road to worldwide acceptance (and legalization) is a long one. Joining an organization like the UNWTO brings the company one step further along in that journey.

Despite terror and disease fears throughout 2015, last year still turned out on top for international traveler spending and arrivals.

The world has less restrictive visa policies in 2016 than it did before the global economic crisis. Let's hope temporary setbacks from terror attacks and security fears don't cause governments to send us backwards.