As Asia and Pacific Opens Up, Leaders Look to Innovative and Resilient Tourism

• Asia and the Pacific
• 15 Jun 2022

Tourism leaders from across Asia and the Pacific have placed building resilience and embracing innovation at the heart of the sector’s restart and sustainable future.

The 34th Joint Meeting of the UNWTO Commission for East Asia and the Pacific and the UNWTO Commission for South Asia (34th CAP-CSA), was held as destinations across the region begin welcoming back international tourists. The region was hit first and hit hardest by the pandemic’s impact on tourism as many countries maintained strict restrictions on travel. Now, as UNWTO data confirms a 64% increase in international arrivals in the first quarter of 2022 compared to 2021, the high-level meeting of sector leaders identified the key challenges and opportunities ahead.

UNWTO’s Work in the Region

For many millions of people across Asia and the Pacific, tourism is an essential lifeline

UNWTO Secretary-General Zurab Pololikashvili provided an overview of tourism trends and statistics, both for the region and globally, followed by an update on the Organization’s work in the months since the previous Joint Commission meeting (hosted virtually by Spain in 2021). He stressed the importance of working together to lift travel restrictions, with coordination key to restarting tourism and for restoring confidence in international travel. “For many millions of people across Asia and the Pacific, tourism is an essential lifeline. Its return is vital and must be based around the pillars of inclusion and sustainability, for the benefit of all”, he said.

The meeting was the first in-person gathering of the CAP- CSA for two years and brought together representatives of 19 Member States, as well as from UNWTO’s network of Affiliate Members. Welcoming delegates, Dr. Abdulla Mausoom, Minister of Tourism of the Maldives and Chair of the Joint Meeting, added: “Though the road to recovery is still uncertain and many challenges remain, global coordination through similar platforms will open up the opportunity to build back more comprehensively towards a sustainable, inclusive and resilient tourism sector for the future.”

Resilience through Innovation

The 34th CAP- CSA was held in the Maldives as the country celebrated 50 years as an international tourism destination. Against the backdrop of the Golden Jubilee, the Ministry of Tourism of the Maldives and UNWTO also partnered to host a Ministerial Roundtable on Tourism Resilience through Innovation and Digitalization in Asia and the Pacific. Recognizing the vulnerabilities exposed by the pandemic, the discussion explored ways in which new technology and new ideas can help better protect tourism against shocks including future pandemics as well as extreme weather events.

Concluding the joint meeting, Member States voted to hold the next gathering in Cambodia in the first semester of 2023. On the back of the high-level meeting, UNWTO will host a two-day Global Summit on Community-based Tourism, bringing public and private sector experts together to focus on the potential of gastronomy tourism, agro-tourism and community-based tourism for sustainable and inclusive development.

Related Links

• Download the news release in PDF
• UNWTO Regional Department for Asia and the Pacific
• UNWTO Executive Council Looks Beyond Recovery
• Tourism Product
• 145 key tourism statistics

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UNWTO and ADB Partner for Report on Big Data and Tourism Recovery

• Asia and the Pacific
• 21 Dec 2021

UNWTO and the Asian Development Bank have launched a joint report on the use of big data for better tourism planning and management.

The report features examples from across the Asia and the Pacific region while also showcasing the main trends in the use of big data in tourism at the forefront of technology and innovation. The report also makes clear the the role that big data can play in recovery and the measurement of the economic, social, and environmental dimensions of tourism.

Data to empower decision makers

Tourism suffered the greatest crisis on record in 2020. International arrivals plunged by 73% in 2020. This is likely to followed by a 70% and 75% fall on 2019 levels for 2021. As the sector looks to  recover, data and market intelligence are critical to  empower destinations, businesses, and tourism workers to be better prepared in a rapidly changing landscape. The COVID-19 pandemic has also accelerated the shift toward digitalization and so further highlighted the need for relevant and reliable data and intelligence to manage tourism.

The joint UNWTO and ADB report will assist both governments and the private sector as they look to complement official statistics with big data so as to better understand changes in consumer behavior and to enhance recovery with targeted products, segments, and source markets. Big data will also be key to supporting seamless travel through the implementation of safety protocols, biosecurity technologies, and digital health certificates to enable the safe reopening of borders.
 
The report further addresses some of the key challenges standing in the way of fully realizing the potential of big data and digitalization for better tourism policy. These include ongoing concerns over privacy, skills gaps, data reliability, inadequate governance and infrastructure, the digital divide, accessibility barriers. These challenges make clear the need for comprehensive agenda to pave the way for the effective use of big data to assist tourism recovery and its transformation toward a greener, more resilient sector. Together, UNWTO and ADB will work to ensure tourism policies across the region are aimed at establishing measurement, monitoring, and management systems and frameworks, thereby ensuring harmonized, comparable, and reliable data and indicators.

Related Links:

• Download the news release in PDF
• Big Data for Better Tourism Policy, Management, and Sustainable Recovery from COVID-19
• UNWTO World Tourism Barometer
• UNWTO Tourism Data Dashboard

Workshop Explores Power of Statistics for Sustainable Tourism in Asia and the Pacific

• Asia and the Pacific
• 16 Dec 2021

Government policymakers, statisticians and relevant stakeholders from across the Asia and the Pacific region came together for a special workshop focused on Measuring the Sustainability of Tourism.

The workshop was organized by UNWTO in collaboration with the Department of Tourism of the Philippines and with the support of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism of the Republic of Korea. The sessions featured prominent speakers from governments as well as from the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), the United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP), the Pacific Tourism Organisation (SPTO), Auckland University and UNWTO. To further enrich cross-country and interregional learning, guest speakers also came from Fiji, Jamaica, Netherlands, Thailand and the Philippines.  

Participants underscored the importance of implementing the MST Statistical Framework not only for informing national policy and subnational tourism management, but also to ensure aligned action and monitor progress towards regional and global policy ambitions such as climate action and the Paris Agreement, circular economy, the Sustainable Development Goals, the SAMOA Pathway, the Convention on Biological Diversity and others.

The workshop provided a platform to review the MST Statistical Framework and its main concepts, definitions, and tables for producing credible and comparable data on tourism sustainability. Participants discussed the value of a flexible implementation of MST based on priorities and circumstances, best strategies for strengthening data capture capabilities and making the most of available data, and the importance of engaging stakeholders across the board. Other elements raised for successful implementation included a shared communication strategy, education not only in the production of data but also its use, and drawing up a commonly agreed roadmap.

The workshop brought together more than 80 key virtual participants from National Tourism Authorities and National Statistical Offices in the Asia and the Pacific.

 

Related links:

• Download the news release in PDF
• MST Statistical Framework
• Regional Department for Asia and the Pacific
• UNWTO Asia-Pacific Workshop on Measuring the Sustainability of Tourism

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UNWTO in Kuala Lumpur: First Regional Conference on Women’s Empowerment in Tourism

• Asia and the Pacific
• 18 Nov 2021

UNWTO’s Members from across Asia and the Pacific came together to advance the tourism sector’s contribution to gender equality and women’s empowerment.

The UNWTO Regional Conference on the Empowerment of Women in Tourism in Asia and the Pacific – the first event on the topic organized by UNWTO jointly with Malaysia’s Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture – brought together more than 500 key virtual participants in addition to around 100 local in-person stakeholders. Alongside UNWTO experts, government policymakers, UN Women representatives, high-level representatives of women’s associations and NGOs, joined leading academics to address some of the key challenges and opportunities for women in tourism in the region.

In Asia and the Pacific, women make up 53% of the tourism workforce. However, they remain concentrated in lower paid-positions and tens to have poorer working conditions. As in other regions of the world, high-level and leadership positions seem to be the sole prerogative of men. The aim of this conference was to contribute to international efforts to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 5 (SDG5) on gender equality and the empowerment of women, particularly in light of how the pandemic has worsened the socio-economic situation of the female tourism workforce in the region.

In her welcome and opening remarks, H.E. Dato’ Sri Nancy Shukri, Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture of Malaysia reinforced this main objective of the conference and said  “As part of efforts to advance a more inclusive recovery for the tourism sector which is in line with the Sustainable Development Goals and particularly SDG 5 on gender equality, I believe this conference will provide us with deep insights on strategies and the future prospects for women in tourism in the Asia-Pacific region.”

The discussions of the conference focused on the six thematic pillars of UNWTO’s Action Plan on Women in Tourism. These include women’s employment and leadership; entrepreneurship; education and training for the realities of post-COVID19 tourism; and data and statistics for an inclusive recovery. Based on these thematic areas, the conference explored how tourism’s immense potential for advancing women’s economic empowerment can be further enhanced through the implementation of the right recovery policies and strategies.

Related Links

• Download the news release in PDF
• Global Report on Women in Tourism
• Women's empowerment and tourism