Competitiveness: Europe primacy as a destination is not assured. Competitive pressure comes from other destinations, regulatory load, visa requirements and cost inflation. To maintain competiveness, industry and policy makers must work towards:

Tourism is highly complex, multi-sectoral industry where no single organisation provides or has control over the entire tourism product. Successful delivery of the wider tourism product is dependent on close working relationship, interdependencies and interactions with numer­ous other stakeholders, enabling the tourism organisation to provide a seamless experience for its customers.

Tourism destinations need public relations professionals that can manage media relationships, news coverage, crisis management, and more. As most leisure travel is consumer-driven, it is critical that your destination emerge as a top choice that comes to mind when consumers are making their travel decisions. Public relations activity is a powerful and cost effective way to promote a destination to targeted worldwide audiences. Editorial coverage generated by public relations activity is a valuable mechanism. It can position a destination as a desirable, not-to-be missed experience.

Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs) or Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB) are organizations that promotes a town, city, region, or country in order to increase the number of visitors. It promotes the development and marketing of a destination, focusing on convention sales, tourism marketing, and services. DMOs are the most important tourism marketing organizations in their respective tourist destinations, as they are directly responsible for the long term development and marketing the destination brand through travel and tourism "product awareness" to visitors.

Mission

ECTAA is the voice of European travel agents and tour operators. It aims to:

Definition

International arrivals by city includes visitors from abroad who arrive at the city as their first point of entry, and also includes those visitors to the city who arrived in the country via a different point of entry, but then go on to visit the city in question during their trip.

One of the most cost-effective ways of promoting a destination brand and product offering is through effective media communication, i.e. providing the various printed and electronic media with interesting and newsworthy stories about the destination, which can then be included as editorial content in the various media. In addition to the obvious cost advantages associated with editorial coverage, stories about the destination in editorial format carries more credibility as it is the objective view of the writer and not advertising that is designed to influence.

Source: Jubilee Debt Campaign (July 2015)

Countries already in debt crisis

Global tourism is now generally recognized as one of the largest industries in the world and one of the most significant sources of employment and Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Tourism particularly benefits the economies of developing countries, where most of the sector’s tourism jobs and businesses are being created. When done sustainably, tourism development can be an effective tool for stimulating economic growth, alleviating poverty, conserving biodiversity, preserving culture and traditions, and creating employment opportunities for local communities.

The UNWTO Affiliate Member Programme offers a wide range of opportunities in terms of public-private collaboration between member states and private sector

• An international platform to interact with governments from all over the world
• A framework to connect interest groups
• An opportunity to join the UN effort
• A space to generate innovative ideas.

 Why Join?