UNWTO

On the occasion of the Youth & Student Travel Conference held in Barcelona on September 20-23 2011, the UNWTO released the second of a series of reports dedicated to the youth travel market. The reports are produced in collaboration with the World Youth Student and Educational Travel Confederation (WYSETC) and include commentaries from specialists, UNWTO Affiliate Members, and other selected organizations on the importance of Youth Travel for economic development, global development, and young travelers themselves.

On November 5 and 6 the 17th World Travel Monitor Forum took place in San Giuliano Terme, Italy. The Meeting is a renowned appointment for tourism practitioners, who annually meet in Tuscany to make the point about the past year and gain insights about the next year development of the industry at a worldwide scope.
The red line throughout the two days of conference was the economic crisis and its impact on the tourism industry.

The Capacity Building Programme in Tourism Statistics has been initiated by the World Tourism Organisation’s (UNWTO) Department of Statistics and Economic Measurement of Tourism to promote the integration of tourism statistics within the sphere of United Nation’s members. The aim of the programme is to foster the worldwide comparability of tourism statistics and the macroeconomic analysis of tourism activities. The further goal is to uphold the relevance of internationally agreed standards and, in particular, those of the Tourism Satellite Account (TSA) framework for the measurement of tourism related activities.

UNWTO World Tourism Barometer2008 will clearly go into the history books as a year of turbulence and contrasts. In the 12 months since UNWTO published its January 2008 edition of the World Tourism Barometer, including forecasts for the year ahead, the growth in international tourist arrivals has slowed drastically worldwide, under the influence of an extremely volatile and unfavourable global economy - due to factors such as the credit crunch, the widening financial crisis, commodity and oil price rises, and massive exchange rate fluctuations. All this has, inevitably, undermined both business and consumer confidence, contributing in turn to the current global recession.

Together with the UN World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), European Travel Commission (ETC) and European Cities Marketing (ECM), MODUL University Vienna promoted a two-days event on tourism statistics and strategic marketing planning, hold on September 11 and 12, 2008.