G20 Tourism Working Group and Ministerial Meeting

All Regions
30 Sep 2023

One Earth, One Family, One Future

A roadmap for people and planet

As the knowledge partner of India's G20 Presidency, UN Tourism delivered the Goa Roadmap for Tourism as a Vehicle for Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals at the meeting of the Ministers of Tourism of the world's leading economies.

Halfway between the 2015 launch of the 2030 Agenda and the deadline to accomplish it, UN Tourism called on G20 Tourism Ministers to lead the sector's contribution to accelerating progress towards achieving the 17 SDGs. The Goa Roadmap, developed with the Tourism Working Group, builds upon the five priority areas of India's G20 Presidency:

Green Tourism: Recognizing the critical need to work towards climate action and environmental protection, including through greater international cooperation, the Goa Roadmap incorporates recommended actions and good practices from G20 economies and guest countries. These focus on issues such as financing, sustainable infrastructure and resource management, integrating circular approaches in the tourism value chain and engaging visitors as key actors in sustainability.
Digitalization: The Roadmap makes clear the wide-ranging benefits of supporting businesses and destinations as they embrace digitalization, including enhanced productivity, improved infrastructure management and delivering a safer and more efficient visitor experience.
Skills: Reflecting one of UN Tourism's core priorities for the sector, the Roadmap emphasizes the need to provide tourism workers, particularly youth and women, with the skills employers need, to future-proof tourism jobs and to make the sector a more attractive career path.
Tourism MSMEs: With Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) accounting for 80% of all tourism businesses worldwide, the Roadmap emphasizes the importance of public policies and public-private partnerships in addressing key challenges, including financing, marketing and skills gaps and market access to support MSMEs through the digital and sustainable transitions.
Destination Management: The Roadmap presents a set of recommended actions to create a holistic approach to destination management that strengthens public-private-community partnerships and enhances a whole-of-government approach. It also shares further examples of innovative programmes among G20 and invited countries.

The Goa Roadmap for Tourism as a Vehicle for Achieving the SDGs offers the G20 economies a proposed plan of action to lead the way forward towards a better future for all

UN Tourism Secretary-General Zurab Pololikashvili says: "As tourism bounces back close to pre-pandemic levels, we must ensure that recovery is sustainable, inclusive and resilient. The Goa Roadmap for Tourism as a Vehicle for Achieving the SDGs offers the G20 economies a proposed plan of action to lead the way forward towards a better future for all."

Shri G. Kishan Reddy, Minister of Tourism, Culture and Development of North Eastern Region, Government of India, added: "Tourism can be instrumental in addressing many of the challenges faced by our societies while transforming itself to address its socio-economic impacts. Working together on a common roadmap for recovery and long-term sustainability will unlock its immense potential to deliver on the SDGs."

G20 Tourism and SDGs Dashboard

UN Tourism and India’s G20 Presidency joined hands to launch a new tool to advance the contribution of tourism policies and initiatives towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Ahead of the G20 Leaders' Summit (9-10 September), UN Tourism worked with the Presidency through India's Ministry of Tourism on the G20 Tourism and SDGs Dashboard. This tool will help to promote the sector's contribution to accelerating progress towards achieving the 17 SDGs.

The Dashboard showcases the pillars of the Goa Roadmap for Tourism as a Vehicle for Achieving the SDGs around the five priority areas set for the Tourism Working Group, which are: 1. Green Tourism; 2. Digitalization; 3. Skills; 4. Tourism MSMEs and 5. Destination Management.

The UN Tourism-G20 Dashboard includes over 20 case studies under these five areas and will be updated on a regular basis over the coming years, providing a unique reference for tourism policies and initiatives in their contribution to the SDGs

The G20 Tourism and SDGs Dashboard is included in the UN Tourism-led Tourism for SDGs Platform.

UN Tourism, tourism and the G20

The G20 economies represent around 85% of the global GDP, over 75% of the global trade, and about two-thirds of the world population.
In 2022, the G20 welcomed 74% of all international tourists and accounted for 73% of tourism exports worldwide. In 2019, pre COVID-19 pandemic the Tourism Direct GDP reached 3.7% of the G20 economies.