Tourism Investments Trends and Challenges during COVID-19
Webinar, 16th March 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic has hit hard investments in the tourism sector. Announced foreign investment in the tourism sector fell from $48.5bn in 2019 to $12.6bn in 2020 according to fDi intelligence from the Financial Times. This represents foreign direct investment (FDI) into tourism plummeted by 73.2% in the first half of 2020 compared with the same period of 2019. The drop in the tourism sector is among the highest, especially when comparing with the Global FDI that collapsed by 42% in 2020 according to UNCTAD. As a result, the sector has lost around $910bn to $1.2trn in export revenues in 2020 compared with 2019 which suggests around 100–120 million direct tourism jobs at risk as the global FDI remains weak in 2021, experiencing a further decline of 5–10%.
In this context, the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) has prioritized Investments as one of our key areas as we move forward towards the economic recovery. We believe that sustainable investments and its cross-sectorial impact has a multiplier power to strengthen strategic large regional projects, but also the promotion of investments that stimulates entrepreneurship and innovation of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs), which along with tech startups are an important driver of innovation and jobs creation.
For this purpose, we joined forces with the fDi Intelligence from the Financial Times one of our key collaborators to provide you practical digital tools to improve your competitiveness in regards the attraction and promotion of foreign direct investment (FDI) to your region and country as we recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Purpose Webinar
This webinar series will focus on “Tourism Investments Trends and Challenges post COVID-19” with the purpose to provide a relevant data insights and practical strategies concerned with the use of digital platforms to attract and promote investments for a faster recovery of the tourism sector.
Audience
The UNWTO webinars will invite government officials related with attraction and promotion of investments, IPA managers, traditional, non-traditional investors with a forward-looking vision to attract more FDI for tourism development.
UNWTO Investments will be delivering the SAME webinar via Zoom on the following dates, depending the region:
09:00 AM Ciudad de Mexico
04:00 PM Madrid
08:30 AM Ciudad de Mexico
03:30 PM Madrid
04:00 PM Bangkok
10:00 AM Madrid
04:00 PM Bangkok
10:00 AM Madrid
Panelists
Natalia Bayona leads the innovation, digital transformation and investments strategy of the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), the United Nations specialized agency for the promotion of responsible, sustainable and accessible tourism worldwide.
With a diverse background on politics, destination management and business, she has become the first innovation director at UNWTO and has introduced entrepreneurship as key factor for tourism and development. Her work consists on identifying the most disruptive startups and investment projects and matching them with Member States and leading corporations. As an advocate of youth and technology, she seeks to make entrepreneurs grow for a promising future in all regions.
For 2 and a half years, Natalia has developed 7 UNWTO Startup Competitions and 4 Innovation Challenges, including the Healing Solutions for Tourism edition, with outcomes such as more than 45 million Euros in support for entrepreneurs and pilots for safe travel. Moreover, she has designed the Tourism Tech Adventures innovation forums and co-created the UNWTO Tourism Online Academy for advancing skill development in the sector in collaboration with the most pretigious universities. She has also opened the Multilateral Investment Cooperation area for tourism and is currently working on high-impact projects to #RestartTourism.
Natalia graduated in Government and International Relations from Universidad Externado de Colombia and holds an Executive MBA from the IE Business School. Nowadays, she is part of the World Economic Forum network as a European Digital Leader and is an Eisenhower Fellow as the first Colombian on the Women Leadership Program for creating the first Tourism for Tomorrow Alliance Fund: a high-level network focused on joining public-private efforts for high-impact investments in digital education and innovation for tourism’s sustainable development and post Covid-19 recovery.
In 2017, she served as the Vice President of International Development for the Spain Startup - South Summit and organized the first South Summit Pacific Alliance, connecting the main stakeholders of the entrepreneurship ecosystem of Colombia, Chile, Mexico and Peru.
Having worked in ProColombia for ten years, she has lived in six countries where has developed strategies to boost exports, foreign investment and tourism for Colombia. Her career started in 2006 as part of the team that created the first international tourism campaign for Colombia: “Colombia, the risk is wanting to stay”, which sought to change the image of the country abroad. The successful execution of this campaign in more than 15 countries was possible thanks to her work.
Juan C. Barrios is the fDi Intelligence representative for Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal. With a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration at Universidad Centroamericana UCA, Nicaragua and an MBA at Universitat de Valencia, Spain.
He has been working with universities, research institutions and multinationals in Europe and the LAC region for more than eight years.
Currently Juan provides guidance, insights and training to IPAs and EDOs on topics related to investment attraction and promotions through data tools and digital platforms such as fDi Markets (leading FDI monitor) and fDi Benchmark (competitive analysis between locations) and GIS Planning, all services of the Financial Times.
Juan is actively supporting activities and events related to economic development, country and city branding and competitiveness for economic development organizations and governments.
Welcome address
Natalia Bayona, Director Innovation, Education and Investments at UNWTO
Presentation Keynote: Tourism Investments Trends and Challenges
Natalia Bayona, Director Innovation, Education and Investments at UNWTO
Guiding questions:
- What are the trends and guidelines for Tourism Foreign Direct Investment?
- What themes will define the tourism investment recovery post COVID-19?
Presentation Keynote by fDi Intelligence on Digital Platforms for Tourism FDI
Sarah Russis, Head of Global Sales at fDi Intelligence, Financial Times
Guiding questions:
- What are the best practices and digitals platforms available to enhance tourism investments recovery?
- How could governments use technology to promote Tourism Foreign Direct Investment during pandemic travel restrictions?
Q&A and Closing remarks
Natalia Bayona, Director Innovation, Education and Investments at UNWTO
Frequently Asked Questions
The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO)has prioritized Investments as one of our key areas as we move forward towards the economic recovery. For this purpose, we joined forces with the fDi Intelligence from the Financial Times one of our key collaborators to provide you limited access to world class digital investment platforms to improve your competitiveness regarding the attraction and promotion of foreign direct investment (FDI) to your region and country as we recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The access will depend on the needs and goals of each Member States. However, for this call and considering previous assessments, we suggest two main platforms:
- P1: FDI market Intelligence (benchmark platform) This tool is one of the most comprehensive online databases of crossborder greenfield investments available, covering several countries and the tourism sector worldwide. It provides access to real-time monitoring of investment projects, capital investment and job creation. It also tracks and profile companies investing overseas, as well as conduct in-depth analysis to uncover trends.
You can find more information here. - P2: Zoom Tours (Virtual Tours)
This is a new cloud-based software that allows to create themed virtual tours to focus attention on a territory's most important features. This tool is also a smart marketing for virtual tours to showcase economic development to tourism projects. The ZoomTour is a relevant tool to create compelling online promotions for all the important features a community has to offer during the travel restrictions. - You can find more information here
The best target audience for this program are people directly involve with tourism investment attraction, and promotion. People who oversee the strategies or investment plans for a given territory or geography, and need quality information to improve the competitiveness in their region.
The Tiers classifications depends on several factors such as: International Tourist arrivals, Contribution of Tourism to GDP, Tourism FDI Greenfield Investments, among others. Nevertheless, we suggest the follow classification for the territories to be promoted e.g. countries, cities, areas.
- Tier 1: More than 30M population and/or high tourism investment readiness score
- Tier 2: Between 5M and 30M population and/or medium tourism investment readiness score
- Tier 3: Under 5M population and/or medium tourism investment readiness score
For the sake of clarity, the UNWTO is not able to provide any cost or commercial information about a third party. Furthermore, there is not an obligation to purchase any product or service under this program.
Any further commercial conversation regarding costs or financial implications should be requested to the Financial Times directly since they are providing the limited access to its planforms.
This program does not require to make any additional commitments.
This program does not provide any additional services. Any other specific needs or requirements should be requested to UNWTO investment services which will asset the needs to provide technical assistance. For more information, please contact to Mr. Miguel Angel Figueroa.
This program does not require to make any additional commitments.
This program does not provide any additional services. Any other specific needs or requirements should be requested to UNWTO investment services which will asset the needs to provide technical assistance. For more information, please contact to Mr. Miguel Angel Figueroa.
