10 Feb, 2025
Time for Travel & Tourism Leaders to do their job
By Imtiaz Muqbil, Executive Editor, Travel Impact Newswire
Notice how loudly the volume has been turned up on the topic of Peace and Tourism?
Like the debate on sustainability, it may turn out to be too little too late.
The relationship between tourism and sustainability has been on the industry agenda since the 1980s. Warnings about mass tourism, congestion and over-crowding were being sounded ever since the age of the wide-body “jumbo jets” dawned.
Ditto with the tourism and peace agenda.
The Institute of Peace Through Tourism was set up in 1986. It held numerous conferences and events over the years, including one in Pattaya, Thailand, in 2005 which I covered.
Having lived in both the Middle East and now Southeast Asia, both regions which have borne witness to the devastation and suffering of war as well as the benefits and prosperity of peace, the topic has been of considerable personal and professional interest.
In 1999, after the PATA HQ moved from San Francisco to Bangkok, I was appointed the first Asia-based Editor of Issues & Trends, the monthly publication of the PATA Strategic Intelligence Centre.
In the first year of my assignment, I published an edition devoted to the theme of building a “Culture of Peace”. I repeated this theme in 2006, the final year of my assignment.
In February 2016, I produced another special edition for PATA, clearly proving via statistical evidence from both South and Southeast Asian countries, how peace and tourism flows are closely interlinked.
All these editions can be downloaded by clicking on the images.
Let the record show that the PATA leadership never took it seriously.
In spite of the violence and conflicts that followed the Sept 2001 attacks, which affected tourism flows worldwide, not a single PATA conference nor forum addressed the growing threat.
PATA has never attempted to build a “Culture of Peace” nor make Travel & Tourism a “Real Force for Peace.”
Over the years, PATA has shrunk drastically in influence and importance. Much of that decline is attributed to its loss of relevance — an inability to deal honestly with core issues, especially those which extend beyond its comfort zones.
Today, the spiral of global violence and conflicts is an onrushing threat, even as the Travel & Tourism has just barely recovered from the Covid-19 catastrophe.
Just as the industry paid little or scant attention to the cancerous threat of environmental degradation when it was in its early stages, so too, is it now paying the price of ignoring the negative impact of violence and conflict.
All forms of crises impact jobs and livelihoods, hurting the very people decision-makers, corporate and political leaders are supposedly trying to help.
Crises also impact perceptions of job security, driving young people away from Travel & Tourism into other economic sectors with higher levels of stability and better career prospects.
Hence, the foremost responsibility of all Travel & Tourism leaders is no longer to create jobs, but to save them.
As an editor and journalist, I am proud to have done my job.
I am waiting for the PATA leaders to do theirs. Hopefully the current American chairman will step up to lead from the front.
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