Fostering knowledge, education and growth in tourism, is at the centre of a partnership announced at the ITB Berlin travel trade fair between Google and the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO). Google will support UNWTO members in addressing the new digital trends and transformation challenges faced by tourism and needed by the sector, to fully harness its development potential and contribution to sustainability.
Digital skills are crucial for competitiveness in tourism, a sector characterized by technological change and the generation of new business models.
“This agreement with Google coincides with UNWTO’s special focus on education, skills development and jobs, the connecting thread of all our actions this year”, said UNWTO Secretary-General Zurab Pololikashvili. “Google is an affiliate member of UNWTO and this partnership proves the importance of public-private collaboration to advance tourism as a vehicle for sustainable development”, he added.
Lutz Behrendt, Travel Industry Leader, from Google said: “More than half of tourism revenue in the EU is now researched or booked online. By equipping tourism ministries with the skills, tools and programmes they need to market and protect themselves online, we hope it will increase opportunities for jobs and revenue across the industry. Following a similar tourism programme we ran in Greece, 68% of participating businesses confirmed they saw concrete business results following our training, such as more visitors to their website or physical business.”
A High-Level Dialogue on Digital Skills in Tourism set the backdrop for announcing the agreement. Organized by UNWTO with the support of Google during ITB Berlin, the event underscored that digital skills development remain a major priority for destinations around Europe.
More detail on the training and partnership will be announced in due course.
According to the latest UNWTO World Tourism Barometer, international tourism saw a 182% year-on-year increase in January-March 2022, with destinations worldwide welcoming an estimated 117 million international arrivals compared to 41 million in Q1 2021. Of the extra 76 million international arrivals for the first three months, about 47 million were recorded in March, showing that the recovery is gathering pace.
The Secretary General of the UNWTO Zurab Pololikashjvili received an overwhelming endorsement by the General Assembly to lead the UN Specialized Agency for a second term for 2022-2025.
The World Tourism Organization with the contribution of its members and partners developed global guidelines to restart tourism and formulate a sector-wide response to the unprecedented challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic. Action plan includes the most effective manners to make travel safe and seamless to all – workers, companies, destinations and travellers.
1.5 billion international tourist arrivals were recorded by the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) in 2019, globally. A 4% increase on the previous year which is also forecast for 2020, confirming tourism as a leading and resilient economic sector