Travel and tourism is one of the fastest growing sectors of the global economy, yet is typically underestimated as a tool for development and growth. With its enormous potential to protect places, improve lives and generate economic growth, the industry needs a cohesive and reliable means of monitoring and tracking our impact so that collectively we can demonstrate progress.
There are constant calls from both the private sector and governments to better measure and report on the full impacts derived from the tourism sector. In both cases the need is focused around the requirement to provide credible evidence of the role that the sector is playing at the economic, social and environmental levels in order to support better policy formulation, improve interventions and programs, and secure funding and commitment from a multitude of actors.
The World Bank Group, as a funder of travel and tourism related projects worldwide, and with its goal to end extreme poverty within a generation and boost shared prosperity, has a responsibility to fully capture and report the range of tourism’s impacts on people and places, and define, through evidence, interventions that create maximum impact.
The purpose of this forum, which will be the first of a series of events, is to bring together a focused group of specialists and experts to define our common challenge, identify priorities, objectives and possible next steps to improve our ability to effectively and transparently monitor the sector’s diverse impacts worldwide. A position paper summarizing the outcomes of the event will be made publicly available.