On 27th September, the Opening Ceremony of World Tourism Day Celebrations 2016 was held in Bangkok, with the theme of Tourism For All, Promoting Universal Accessibility. The event was jointly sponsored by United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) and Ministry of Tourism and Sports of Thailand. There are around 500 officials and representatives from Southeast Asia, World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), Pacific and Asia Tourism Association (PATA), World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC), and other agencies attended the said celebrations.
Mr. Xu Jing, Director Regional Programme for Asia and the Pacific of UNWTO, and Mr. Pongpanu Svetarundra, Permanent Secretary of Thailand Ministry of Tourism and Sport gave the remarks. The representatives from the Ministries of Thailand, Malaysia, Zimbabwe, Haiti, Kampuchea, and the Philippines took part in the subject seminar. Mme. Yang Xiuping, Secretary-General of ASEAN-China Centre (ACC) attended the ceremony and exchanged views with representatives.
Director Xu expressed his appreciation to the government of Thailand on their efforts, and appreciation on the hard working on tourism accessibility of tourism department of Thailand. He cited that the contribution of tourism to the global GDP reached 10%, It is estimated that 1 personnel in every 11 jobs was engaged in tourism related industries. The relationship between tourism and people's daily life was more and more interrelated. Due to the fact that of the aging phenomenon of global population, tourism development faced new challenges. The governments and tourism practitioners should increase investment in providing the disabled, the aged, children, and other groups equal opportunities to travel as well as developing inclusive tourism in order to ensure all parties of society could enjoy barrier free travel.
Permanent Secretary Pongpanu extended warm welcome to all of the representatives, on behalf of the Thai government. He said that Thailand had rich tourism resourcess, warm and friendly people, unique culinary culture, and great potential for tourism development. Thai government was committed to strengthening the tourism accessibility, and aimed to take this event as an opportunity to enhance the public awareness of the importance of tourism accessibility as well as to make more contributions to different groups of people to enjoy equal rights to travel.
Officials from the Ministries of Malaysia, Cambodia, and the Philippines, and other representatives briefed their own policies and measures in tourism developing promotion, and accessibility enhancement. At present, every country had paid attention to provide the equal rights for the disabled to travel, as well as to provide more facilitations to tourists by issuing new laws and policies, increasing investment, strengthening publicity, upgrading service level, strengthening communication and cooperation , create the environment for mutual learning as well as experiences sharing.
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