WTTC summit focus on partnerships to energise economies

The Ninth Global Travel & Tourism Summit saw members of the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) meeting with Brazil’s Minister of Tourism, Luiz Barretto and the President of Embratur, Jeanine Pires, as well as a number of high-level representatives from Brazil’s Santa Catarina state and other key members of the business community in introducing the Summit’s theme this year: ‘Real Partnerships - Energising Economies’.

Speaking at the launch of the event, the President and CEO of the WTTC, Jean-Claude Baumgarten, revealed the council’s provisional estimates of the economic impact of the travel and tourism industry in both 2008 and 2009.

Baumgarten noted: “The deterioration in the macroeconomic environment and the marked slowdown in the monthly indicators of tourism activity in the last months of 2008 resulted in a much more pronounced cycle in Travel & Tourism Economy GDP than envisaged in January 2008.”

He added: “The relatively resilient first-half 2008 performance, plus the lead time between holiday bookings and actual vacations, suggest the impact on growth in 2008 will have been limited, although our preliminary estimates indicate that Travel & Tourism Economy GDP increased by just 1% last year - two percentage points below our January 2008 forecast.”

Experts predict that the impact of the global economic downturn on travel and tourism will be greater in 2009 than it was in 2008.

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