UN Tourism and the Global Tourism Alliance are working to make the sector a key driver of inclusive development

A new report from UN Tourism and the World Tourism Alliance (WTA) highlights that specific policies, regulatory frameworks, and governance models are crucial to ensuring that tourism's benefits are shared among all community members, thus promoting social equity and inclusion. The report clarifies tourism's multifaceted role in achieving this goal, through job creation, gender empowerment, community development, natural and cultural heritage conservation, sustainable environmental practices, education, and infrastructure development.

UN Secretary-General for Tourism Zurab Pololikashvili said: “Five years after the 2030 deadline for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, it is clear that progress is lagging and many targets are at risk. Tourism, as one of the world’s largest socioeconomic sectors, can help turn this tide, but only if we harness its full potential.”

To achieve this, we need to place communities at the center of tourism development and implement specific policies that transform our sector into a true catalyst for more inclusive and sustainable development. UN Tourism is committed to leading this transformation and ensuring that the benefits of tourism are widely shared: socially, economically, and environmentally.

Five years before the 2030 deadline for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, it is clear that progress is lagging and many goals are at risk.

WTA Chairman Zhang Xu said: "Countries and regions that have emerged from poverty aspire to return to stable and sustainable growth. To support them, we must ensure that the collective fruits of social progress are distributed more fairly and effectively."

Recommendation for action

Specific examples include poverty reduction in China through tourism policies and six village-level cases from China, developed in collaboration with WTA, as well as cases from Albania, Indonesia, Jordan, Peru, Rwanda, and Vanuatu, focusing on how national policies work to make tourism support shared prosperity.

Recommended actions

Position tourism as a pillar of policies aimed at promoting shared prosperity, poverty reduction, development, and socioeconomic inclusion.

Ensure that tourism policies, regulatory frameworks, investment, and governance create the right conditions for shared prosperity for all stakeholders and for host communities at large.

Use tourism-generated revenues to reinvest in tourism sustainability and support factors that facilitate broader shared prosperity, such as education, healthcare, and infrastructure in host communities, while minimizing the sector's negative impacts.

Source: UN Tourism.