Re-engineering UNWTO is the way forward-Rifai

By www.eturbonews.com

Taleb Rifai is the ad interim secretary general of the United Nations World Tourism Organization [UNWTO]. He was recently selected by the organisation’s executive council to become the next secretary general. That decision is to be ratified by the organisation’s general assembly, which is set to take place in Astana, Kazakhstan, this coming October. Mr. Rifai who spoke with our partner www.eturbonews.com during the recently held World Travel and Tourism Council’s 9th Global Travel and Tourism Summit, which was held in Florianopolis, Brazil.

Taleb Rifai who before getting the votes had declared six months earlier in his statement of intent, that outlined a very, very detailed programme, which was shared, discussed, debated with all the members, and that the mandate on which he was elected on.
                     
When he was asked if there is a possibility of his election not being ratified, confident Taleb, said, ‘there is no reason why not’.

Still dwelling on his election, Rifai said, “I would like to see that as a reflection of the importance that this organization has come to attend, so the selection was quite contentious. I must admit, however, that probably the stakes were raised a bit too high in this one, to a level that I think we ought to learn some lessons from in the future”

He however acknowledged that from now on, probably, elections to this particular post, to this particular organization, are going to be heated and highly contested, and there’s a healthy side to that”.

“I think the importance of where this organization heads from now on plays a big role in this”.  Taleb noted that people are beginning to see that they need to ensure that this vehicle, this umbrella organization, heads in the right direction. According to him, tourism itself is at crossroads, so why shouldn’t UNWTO be at crossroads as well? So it’s a state of affairs and the attained importance of this organization, in addition, of course, to the emergence of new players and new challenging ideas and that he would like to see that as healthy, rather than otherwise.
 
Speaking on one of the UNWTO projects, ST-EP Foundation, he said, “we need to start showing results as we move along. “Our ST-EP [Sustainable Tourism – Elimination of Poverty] initiatives, our ST-EP programme, are maybe not impacting the situation on the ground as much as one would have hoped to because of the magnitude of the challenge, and it is not an initiative or two of that size that would change the state of the world or eliminate poverty”.

Knowing the task ahead of him, Taleb admits there is the need to reengineer the United Nations World Tourism Organisation [UNWTO]. He reemphasized that like he said in his statement of intention, he noted there is an urgent need to re-engage with our members with a totally different mindset and explained that the idea of the UNWTO of being primarily owned by its members and only managed day to day by the secretariat has to be re-established.

“Our members have to feel that this is their organization and that they engage with it in a much more meaningful manner and that they see value coming out of this organization, sometimes having years of an institution you lose sight of that”. “This is not just symptomatic of our organization; on the contrary, we're doing much better than others and there is always a need to remind people why we are here after all and what are we doing together” he concluded.
Shifting away from the part of his predecessor, Taleb also noted that there is the need to connect with all stakeholders, whether multi-lateral organizations, lateral organizations or private organization like WTTC, like PATA, like CTO, like ETC, like all of these. This must be an objective that must be judged accordingly not just left for occasional and casual events where we show goodwill. This must be a clear strategy.

On the accountability of the organization, he said that he is aware of a couple of reports that are circulating within the executive council that are now in the public realm. An audit of UNWTO itself and organizations that are connected to UNWTO like ST-EP, Japan, Montreal office is necessary. He however noted that the first report is the Joint Inspection Unit Report, which is usually done on the request of an organization.

“We requested the central inspection unit in the UN to come and do this audit. I must point out the UNWTO became a member of the UN system in 2003. That is the first time we asked for the report. So there is no benchmarking. It's the first time that the UN looks at us. And they basically and they look on know how different and how far are we from the UN standards. No more, no less. They don't say we are neither good nor bad. They say that we need to move this much to become closer to our standards. We welcome this report, and we asked for this report”.

On how will he tackle the ridiculous taxing by some governments on air travel under this economy and with the swine flu threat among others, he said that as aggressively as possible, he said “I will be even clearer. I cannot understand, the United Kingdom, for example, imposing a tax, whatever the pre-text is-- environmental, departure taxes or whatever you want to call it, this is not the time, this is the wrong time”.

On the controversial ST-EP Foundation, he said change is coming because the programme has not succeeded.

Meanwhile, the UNWTO has not fulfilled its promised to Nigeria of its intention to honour a Nigerian, Late Ignatius Amaduwa Atigbi, who proposed the celebration of World Tourism Day [WTD] to UNTWO way back in its days as International Union of Official Travel Organisation [IUOTO].

All Atigbi has got even from Nigerian government or any of its agencies is the naming of the Nigerian Tourism Development Corporation [NTDC] one-room cooperative store after him.

As the world gather in September 2009 in Ghana to mark this year’s World Tourism Day, it would be appropriate that he is dully recognized and honoured.