JEDDAH, 20 February 2006 — A three-day sustainable tourism seminar and site visits hosted by the Supreme Commission for Tourism (SCT) got down to business yesterday.
Speakers from the World Tourism Organization and Middle East and North African nations will share their expertise and experience with the SCT and businessmen and women from the private sector with a view to developing the Kingdom’s tourism infrastructure.
“Tourism accounts for seven percent of international trade,” said Dr. Khaled Al-Dakhil, assistant to the secretary-general of the SCT, while launching the first session. “That is about the same as revenue from crude oil.”
The sector was an energetic one, accounting for 11 percent of all revenue and with a healthy six percent growth rate. It accounts worldwide for 33 percent of all service sector transactions.
Dr. Al-Dakhil said that tourism had positive spin-offs especially jobs, inward investment, construction, cultural and educational benefits.
Since 1999 world tourism has expanded at about four percent per year. The Middle East has seen more than double that rate showing 10 percent growth.
“That is largely a result of efforts in improving airports, cooperation between tourist commissions and simplifying procedures at border points,” said Dr. Al-Dakhil. In the MENA region, he said, tourism was expected to triple over the next 20 years.
Opening the way for tourism brought with it potentials for export, job creation and “vast changes in economic and cultural aspects.” The government took the biggest share of responsibility for this, and the SCT had developed procedures and plans for the private sector to follow up.
Dr. Al-Dakhil sounded a note of caution when he pointed out that there had to be a sustainable balance maintained between the future benefits and “the cultural heritage of society.”
The theme of sustainability was taken up by Euginio Yunis, the head of Sustainable Development of Tourism for the WTO. “Tourism, besides being a main generator of employment has both positive and negative impact on environment and culture,” he said. The WTO put socially responsible sustainable development at the center of its activities and acted as a resource for managers and governments.
The sociocultural and environmental aspects of tourism were not given a high priority until 1980 but since then this had changed with the production of the WTO Global Code of Ethics for Tourism in 1999.
“The development and implementation of environment-friendly policies is the greatest challenge (sustainable tourism) faces,” Yunis said.
The government role was to take a holistic and long-term view of the industry and coordinate what could develop into a fragmented sector. With the tools of legislation, they were able to encourage the private sector and all the stakeholders — businesses and the people whom tourism would affect — alike.
Over the last five years, Dr. Richard Denman of the United Nations World Tourist Organization said management tools to help governments achieve sustainable development had been developed. Reviewing the management techniques for the delegates, he agreed with the holistic approach to tourism. “It is important that environment and tourism ministries should liaise and that a tourism forum should embrace all the stakeholders.”
