On Wednesday the 28th of February 2018, the Presidency of NECSTouR participated with all the other members of the  Tourism Manifesto for Growth & Jobs into a series of high-level meetings at the European Parliament, deepening cooperation and commitment with the leading World and European Tourism Institutions.

Meeting of the Tourism Manifesto for Growth & Jobs with UNWTO

A Meeting of the 41 Manifesto stakeholders - hosted by Mr. István Ujhelyi, Vice-Chair of the Committee for Transport and Tourism - has been the occasion for the main European Tourism stakeholders organisations - and NECSTouR among them - to meet with Mr. Pololikashvili, the new Secretary-General of World Tourism Organization.

For the all the members of the Tourism Manifesto for Growth & Jobs, it has been the opportunity also to agree and to present to the UNWTO secretary General their priorities for the upcoming period.

Smart Destination. NECSTouR President called for a concrete EU-UNWTO cooperation programme, to ensure the legacy of the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development  and to jointly work towards the 2030 agenda objectives, where tourism is a driver: from the environmental, the economic and socio-cultural perspective.

NECSTouR and UNWTO already developed a strong cooperation on that two points last year and NECSTouR is ready to further collaborate to put systems, technology and infrastructure at the service of sustainable tourism development in order to achieve resilience of tourism business and resilience of destination Europe as a mosaic of sustainable destinations.

Year China Tourism Year Parliamentary Day - EU-China Tourism & Culture Cooperation Summit.

The EU-China Tourism Year. Intervening about the role and activities of the EU-China Tourism Year, NECSTouR President underlined how "this year will establish the pathway to a better cooperation between the EU and the Chinese tourism stakeholders to foster sustainable growth, innovation and intercultural exchanges".

The role of NECSTouR. 8 NECSTouR regions have committed themselves to take part of the Joint Promotion Platform initiative leaded by the European Travel Commission and "The goal of NECSTouR - stated NECSTouR President - is to encourage the exchange of experiences of regions in working with the Chinese tourism market to learn from each other and adapt our tourism services and offer accordingly".

Exchanging experiences among EU Regions on China. Aside the participation of some of them to the Joint Promotion Platform, NECSTouR Regions are also invited to exchange experiences in the EU-China promotion. Two examples have already been presented on that occasion:

-          The “Regional Committee of Tourism of Île-de-France Region” and “Atout France”  (the National Tourism Organisation) launched in 2017 the Tourism France and China initiative in Ningbo, to reinforce the B2B cooperation between the French and Chines tourism professionals

-          The Memorandum of Understanding between Catalonia and  Guangdong Province from 2008 resulted with 3000 Chinese travel agents becoming  “Catalonia Tourism Experts”

Photo by UNWTO