On 29 May, the “International Mountain Tourism Day 2023” theme events titled “Enjoy the Wonder of Mountains, Share the Beauty of Life, Revitalize the Tourism Industry” kicked off in Vientiane, Laos. The events were jointly organized by Ministry of Information, Culture and Tourism of Lao PDR (MICT), International Mountain Tourism Alliance (IMTA), Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA), and Global Tourism Economy Forum (GTEF), and supported by World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC), ASEAN-China Center (ACC), China NGO Network for International Exchanges (CNIE), Guizhou Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism and Foreign Affairs Office. Over 250 guests from international organizations, IMTA members, and tourism institutions, culture and tourism enterprises, experts and scholars, and global media workers from Laos and other countries, gathered together to discuss the supply, market development, and solutions of mountain tourism facing the new consumer demands, explore the system of mountain tourism cooperation and governance within the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) framework, and jointly facilitate the full recovery, opening and interaction of the tourism market. Guests, from various perspectives, offered constructive and forward-looking insights on the new-stage innovation and regional development of mountain tourism. The events has aroused widespread concern in the international tourism industry.
On the "Enjoy the Wonder of Mountains, Share the Beautify of Life, Revitalize the Tourism Industry" Theme Forum, Francesco Frangialli, IMTA Individual Council, former UNWTO Secretary-General delivered a speech on "Challenges and opportunities for sustainable development of mountain tourismt".
Congratulations to IMTA and its partners for having organized this celebration of the International Mountain Tourism Day. I express my gratitude to the government of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic for hosting this major event. I would like to recall that my last visit to a country member of UNWTO, as its Secretary-general, took place in 2009, when I discovered the gorgeous city of Luang Prabang. I deeply regret that, unwillingly, I have been unable to join you and to meet my friends of mountain tourism in Vientiane.
Over the recent years, mountain tourism has been facing a double challenge: the Covid pandemic and the acceleration of the global warming. The impact of the pandemic has been especially severe for some mountain tourism destinations which have lost their international visitors as borders were closed and travels restricted. The ski industry has been particularly affected since in many resorts, cable cars and ski-lifts, but also bars and restaurants, had to close.
Tourism is both a vector of climate change, since it contributes to some 5 per cent of the emissions of gas with a greenhouse effect, and a victim of the elevation of the temperature of the air and the oceans. The major steps in understanding this interrelation were UNWTO Djerba: 2003; Davos with WEF, and Bali UN 13th COP: 2007.
Both, the pandemic and the climate, go in the same direction. They call for a more sustainable way for developing mountain tourism.
Climate change is an undisputable phenomenon which impacts all the segments of the tourism industry, but not in the same proportions and manner. Mountain tourism and the ski industry are among the first victims of that upheaval. As demonstrated by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the increase in the average temperatures is much higher in altitude.
The IPCC sixth Assessment Report shows unequivocally that global warming is unfolding more quickly than feared. The 2015 Paris agreement target of a rapid limitation to a 1.5 degrees Celsius increase appears now as unreachable.
The trend is irreversible. In high altitude regions, cold seasons will be shrinking; glaciers and permafrost melting; and snow cover depleting. Consequently, fresh water resources will become scarcer at lower altitudes. All these dramatic changes will affect the potential for tourism in these areas. Forests and wetlands, with their remarkable ecosystems and their very specific flora and wildlife, are seriously endangered, reducing their interest for tourism purposes.
In short, constraints and changes resulting from the global warming will force tourism operators and destination management organizations in mountain regions to renounce to some activities, or to implement costly mitigation and adaptation measures. They will have to look for more diversified way of developing tourism.
However, climate disorder is not the only environmental concern. All mountain tourism stakeholders have to be extremely careful: if they try to go too far and too fast, if they intent to accommodate an exaggerated number of visitors overpassing the carrying capacity of the site, the model will not be sustainable. At the end, the strategy will reveal itself as being counter-productive. Villages or hamlets with limited populations cannot accommodate in good conditions thousands of visitors. They are not suitable for mass tourism.
This understanding of the nature of sustainability? was put forward by the Portland Report? for the UN in 1986, then adopted by the UN family in 1992, in the RIO Conference, as submitted with the Agenda 21, and with the Framework Convention on Climate Change. And then, in 2002, ten years later, tourism was put into the picture to WTO in the book submitted. Since that time, UNWTO and UN have been working hands in hands to provide strategical decisions and policies to the policy makers.
Ladies and gentlemen, sustainability is the keyword to maintain tourism. Thank you.
