Marking yesterday’s World Tourism Day, a UNWTO think tank has called for local communities to be more involved in tourism development. At the World Tourism Day celebrations in Aswan, Egypt, the think tank on the 2011 theme, ‘Tourism – Linking Cultures’ saw industry leaders, ministers of tourism and academics debate the role of tourism in fostering understanding, tolerance and peace.
“Cultural heritage is ultimately an expression of the people,” said UNESCO representative, Peter Debrine. “This expression is shared with tourists and it is this interaction which makes tourism such an important vehicle for promoting cross-cultural understanding.”
During the debate, moderated by CNN’s Anita Mendiratta, the importance of involving local communities in tourism development was repeatedly highlighted. Greece’s Minister of Culture & Tourism, Pavlos Yeroulanos, warned that without local community involvement, destinations run the risk of manufactured cultural representations.
This was echoed by the Founder and Head of the Centre for Peace Research and Peace Education at the University of Klagenfurt in Austria, Werner Wintersteiner, who argued that people should consciously decide how they want to present themselves to tourists, and by the Founder and Managing Director of Songa Africa, Rosette Rugamba, who spoke of making tourism “personal and relevant” not just for visitors, but also for hosts.
“We need public-private-community partnerships in order to maximise tourism’s role in intercultural understanding,” said the former Minister of Tourism of Indonesia, I Gde Ardika.
Representing the business community, the Chief Executive of TUI, Michael Frenzel, agreed with Ardika’s appeal for collaboration and called for open dialogue at all stages and all levels of tourism development.
UNWTO Secretary-General, Taleb Rifai, pointed to the relevance of holding the event in Egypt. “Egypt has played an extraordinary role in bringing peoples, cultures and religions together through tourism over thousands of years and it is this process that is at the heart of today’s celebrations,” he said.
Emerging from the Think Tank debate were the ‘Aswan Recommendations on Maximizing Tourism’s Role in Linking Cultures’. The Recommendations set out six key actions to be taken by tourism stakeholders and include ensuring that all those supplying tourism services have the appropriate local knowledge in order to serve as mediators between visitors and local communities, and that all involved in tourism commit to the Global Code of Ethics for Tourism.
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