UAE gains support for membership of UNWTO's Executive Council

The voting process to ratify candidacy will take place during the UNWTO General Assembly meeting in Morocco next October.

The UAE submitted its nomination while chairing the 47th meeting of the UNWTO Regional Commission for the Middle East, hosted by Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. UNWTO Secretary-General, Zurab Pololikashvili, along with the 13 members of the UNWTO Regional Commission for the Middle East attended the meeting.

The member states have also agreed to work together on core initiatives intended to harmonise travel protocols for safe and responsible travel and reinvigorate regional travel through the following ways: Developing a common framework to reopen international borders; Creating approved Public Health Corridors between destinations to promote specific tourism experiences and relaunch hotspot tourism destinations; Implementing a common digital health solution to facilitate travellers’ experience through interoperability and blockchain as technologies to help develop common standards, and working to implement the IATA-UNWTO destination tracker, a monitoring system to track health data, regulations and movements across borders and to protect the health and welfare of the region’s 450 million inhabitants.

In his keynote address, Dr. Ahmad Belhoul Al Falasi, Minister of State for Entrepreneurship and SMEs and Chairman of the Emirates Tourism Council, said, "The tourism sector is one of the most important vital economic sectors, and today it represents an engine for sustainable development in many countries of the world and contributes about 10 percent of the global gross product, and one out of every ten individuals around the world works in it. Unified to restore tourism and boost recovery efforts in support of the economies of our countries."

He said that in case the UAE wins the membership of the 36-member UNWTO Executive Council – including three from the Middle East – it will be able to entrench its vital role as a favourite global tourist destination and highlight its efforts to bring the sector to its pre-pandemic growth rates.

This region is one of the best tourist destinations in the world, and we need to continue cooperation to promote recovery. "

On the sidelines of the event, Al Falasi also met with several tourism ministers from countries in the Middle East region, with whom he discussed the current situation in the region and the means of cooperation in the tourism sector.

The UAE also participated in the opening ceremony of the launch of the first-ever regional office in the Middle East in Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh. The new office will act as a hub for the UNWTO to coordinate with the region’s 13 member states on a variety of tourist projects, products and initiatives, according to a statement issued by the organisation.