UNWTO Regional Director for the Americas

The UNWTO has said tourism could be a great driving force for development. What are the elements that you view as contributors for both entities and governments to make this assertion unleash its full-fledged potentials? What is the UNWTO doing in that respect? Figures speak all by themselves. Tourism is no doubt one of the socio-economic and cultural phenomena that go hand in hand with globalization, as in the uptick in the number of international travel and revenue over the past six decades. Governments –Latin America and the Caribbean are increasingly providing good examples in this sense- are precisely giving that kind of political support to tourism, which is so necessary to push its political significance up a notch and make its recognition as a sustainable growth and development agent accrue. The UNWTO is restlessly advocating for the sector to make both the political sector –which is supposed to provide an ideal framework for entrepreneurial action- and the private sector –the one that at the end of the day “makes tourism happen”- collaborate and join hands for the benefit of all, being fully aware of the sector’s potentials and making sure that the actions are lasting. What do you make of Latin America and the Caribbean as regions that could still make major headway in the travel industry to lure far more visitors? Nobody can doubt the immense array of tourist attractions this region has to offer: nature, culture, cuisine and an immensely diverse historic legacy. There’s consciousness, but what actually lacks, in some cases more than in others, is a set of actions to make that potential flourish in full bloom. Let’s just mention an instance: airlift. Traveling inside the Latin American region is quite challenging every so often. It’s right there where political leaders must be called to account because they should provide the necessary legislation and the right standards to work this out. At the UNWTO we feel the region needs these kinds of actions in order to articulate all of its potentials. There are some encouraging examples in term of subregional cooperation, like in Central America or the easing of travel restrictions across MERCOSUR member nations. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. The UNWTO is time and again stressing on a simple and mighty truth: tourism means jobs and growth, international trade and development. Tourism unites people and supports the international projection of travel destinations, with revenues that reaches out beyond the sector itself. To make that happen, the UNWTO continues mustering up the political will and encouraging business creativeness. For our team, the 100th issue of the Excelencias magazine is a special occasion we are pleased to share with everyone. What can you tell us about this? Mass media are indispensable allies for an organization like ours to get the job done. It’s all about the last stage of a sensitization effort. I just mentioned the political sector and the tour operators, but tourism embraces just about everybody. It’s in that particular field in which world-class magazines like Excelencias play a role of their own. This magazine’s team acts like an agglutinating force of our own endeavors to make tourism speak with a voice of itself. I want to congratulate the magazine on its 100th issue on behalf of the UNWTO.