EDITOR'S NOTE: On May 29 2021, the main activity of the third International Mountain Tourism Day—the World Heritage Famous Mountain (Jinfo Mountain) Summit kicked off in Nanchuan District, Chongqing Municipality, China successfully. Themed with “World Heritage Protection and Green Development of Mountain Tourism”, the Summit got strong support from the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC), the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA), the Global Tourism Economy Forum (GTEF), the Internationale Organisation Für Volkskunst (IOV) and the China Association of National Parks and Scenic Sites. The theme forum presented wonderful contents with high-level opinions, frontier observations and dialogues on trends. The speeches will be released in succession to share with industry colleagues.
Sandra Carvao, Chief of Tourism Market Intelligence and Competitiveness of UNWTO delivered an online speech at the summit:
It's a great pleasure to join you on this occasion to celebrate International Mountain Tourism Day.
Allow me to share a few thoughts with you as we recover from this immense crisis that has impacted on the tourism sector, how we can drive towards mountain tourism in a way that's more inclusive and more sustainable for the well-being of all. I'll just share my screen to have a little bit of a vision of where we are but also where we can go in terms of mountain tourism and the creation of a future agenda for mountain tourism.
2020 has been as you know one of the most challenging years in terms of international tourism. International tourist arrivals went down by a staggering 73% worldwide. This is an immense impact if you compare with what the tourism sector suffered in the Economic Crisis of 2009 which was only 4% decline.
2021 unfortunately, the signs in the first months are also challenging. UNWTO data shows that arrivals were down 87% worldwide. As since October of last year, many countries have stepped up their travel restrictions. What we have lost is as I mentioned, something we haven't seen before. International tourism was down into levels of 30 years ago. We lost more than 1.3 trillion in exports, 2.5 trillion in global GDP, and most importantly, millions of jobs have been risked by the crisis in the tourism sector.
For this year, UNWTO expects to see a rebound particularly since July, as countries start advance the roll-out of vaccination and does also lifting travel restrictions. If we see a significant improvement in travel restrictions in July, we can recover as much as 55% as what we lost. If we see down the line in September, we will still be down around 67% as compared to 2019. This is obviously a very challenging situation for our sector.
Although we might see recovery, we also know that we will still be for some time below levels of 2019 in terms of international travel. We also know that domestic travel particularly in countries like China has been recovering very fast and opens a very good opportunity. So as we move forward and unfortunately as I mentioned, we're still below. We need to have into account as we plan for the recovery of the sector that it might take 2.5 years to 4 years to come back to the previous levels that we have seen in 2019.
So how do we transform this opportunity into a driver for a more sustainable and more inclusive mountain tourist? I'd like to leave you with 7 ideas to share and to think about.
The first is if it was challenging before to work with market segment, understanding consumers, this pandemic has brought a bigger challenge in terms of knowing customers. We need to invest in technology. We need to know what our clients want. And we need to be able to respond to their needs. Market segmentation will be more important than ever, particularly understanding what are the needs of those who are willing to rebound travel at this point.
The second important idea is we need to empower local communities. We need to develop skills among local communities that allow them to support tourism in various aspects in product development, in marketing, and in communication. We need to invest in communities that can be good hosts and good communicators of mountain tourism.
The third, we need to ensure that we have a strong governance for the development of mountain tourism. What does this mean? It means we need to have the players, the communities, the private sector, the local governments, and the central governments working together in the development of mountain tourism. Mountain tourism occurs in very fragile, natural environment. We need to make sure that there is guidance, that need to have a planning that is in accordance with the nature that is around us.
The fourth point is the importance of investing in destination management. For local destinations, it is increasingly important to set up a structure that can take care of tourism development. So if a city or a province is importantly engaged in mountain tourism development, it is critical to have a specific area that deals with tourism destination management.
The fifth point is identify local leaders. People who know specifically about the biodiversity in the area, the local products, the local traditions that can on one side, help to empower the community and on the other side, be the leaders for future tourism development.
The sixth point is innovation, including product and marketing. There is an increasing demand for products which are connected to nature, which are connected to local experiences, which are connected to gastronomy and food. So it is a moment to bring all those pieces together when we think about product development in the mountains. You arrive at the destination, you need to have information about activities that you can have. If you doing hiking, if you're doing biking, if you are enjoying just nature around you, you need to have information but you also need to be able to access local gastronomy and other traditions and naturally you need to communicate about those experiences.
Finally, the important point is the measurement of success in mountain tourism destinations. How do you measure success? More than growing in numbers, it is important to grow in quality and quality does not necessarily mean only high spending. It means that we need tourists that are responsible, that respect the communities they visit, that respect the nature around them. So we need to make sure that we put mountain tourism success indicators in the 3 pillars of sustainability, economic, social, and environmental.
This year, we will decide on the topic of sustainable tourism. So this is a huge opportunity to work closer together at the international but also at the local and national level on advancing sustainable mountain. UNWTO will be working with FAO, the Food and Agriculture Organization and the Mountain Tourism Partnership will promote mountain tourism but also to promote good practices around the world that can be an example of how tourism in mountains can contribute to the communities and the preservation of nature.
We will hold the Snow and Mountain Conference in Andorra in 2022. And we do hope from UNWTO that by then, it will be possible to host some of you listening to me today in this important conference that takes place every 2 years in Andorra in one of the locations which is well known for the development since many many years ago, Snow and Mountain Tourism.
I would like to leave you with some of the UNWTO resources which might help you guide in understanding what is happening in terms of tourism and the impact of COVID. UNWTO has created several dashboards which are available online which make you available anytime you want information on what our country's doing to recover their tourism sector and what are the main points that we see in terms of data. How our booking’s performing? How our issues such as capacity overall in air travel available? So also this is at the top of your fingertips in our UNWTO website. And finally, to understand a little bit better, I also invite you to discover our destination tracker where you can actually see what each country is requiring in terms of travel procedures, in terms of requirements, with asking for a PCR test, just already accepting other means of travel restrictions. So we do invite you to explore further. As I said in the beginning, it is clearly one of the most challenging moments we’re living and information and data have become more and more important, not only at the global level but also at the local level.
With that said, it's been a pleasure to join you today once again to celebrate this important event.
