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| Philippine Department of Tourism Secretary Bernadette Romulo-Puyat, center, speaks at the panel of the 21st World Travel and Tourism Council Global Summit in Manila, Thursday. From left are Global Rescue Companies CEO Dan Richards, Dubai Airports International CEO Paul Griffiths, Secretary Romulo-Puyat, Marriott International Group President Craig Smith and WTTC Ambassador Katheleen Mathews. Courtesy of World Travel and Tourism Council |
One-third of all new jobs worldwide forecast to be within travel and tourism sector: WTTC
By Lee Hae-rin
MANILA, Philippines ― The travel and tourism sector is expected to create nearly 126 million new jobs within the next decade and bring the industry's global GDP back to pre-pandemic levels by 2023, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC).
The forecast was announced by the WTTC President and CEO Julia Simpson in her opening speech of the 21st Global Summit at Marriott Hotel in Newport City, Manila, Thursday.
"Over the next decade, travel and tourism will create 126 million new jobs worldwide. In fact, one in three of every new job created will be related to our sector," Simpson said.
Looking to this year and the next, WTTC forecast a bright future with both GDP and employment set to reach pre-pandemic levels by next year.
"The recovery in 2021 was slower than expected due in part to the impact of the Omicron variant but mainly due to an uncoordinated approach by governments who rejected the advice from the World Health Organization (WHO), which maintained that closing borders would not stop the spread of the virus but would only serve to damage economies and livelihoods," Simpson said.
The sector's contribution to global GDP nearly halved due to the COVID-19 pandemic, dropping from 2019's 10.3 percent ($9.6 trillion) to 5.3 percent ($4.8 trillion) in 2020.
However, the WTTC 2022 Economic Impact Research (EIR) report forecasts the travel industry's GDP to drive ahead by an annual average of 5.8 percent over the next 10 years, higher than the global economy's 2.7 percent growth estimated for the same period.
The WTTC predicts that the hard-hit travel and tourism industry will not only come back to life but also foster employment growth by 3.5 percent in 2022, nearing 2019's 10 percent and thereby taking up 9.1 percent of the global job market, the report says.
Referring to itself as the world's most influential event in the industry, this year's WTTC Global Summit was held under the theme of "Rediscovering Travel" from April 20 to 22 in Manila.
The venue was lively and packed with over 1,200 delegates and stakeholders from more than 50 countries, including 20 ministerial delegations and over 200 international media professionals joined the event in person, surpassing the initial estimate of 600. Over 30,000 registered online for virtual attendance, a WTTC official confirmed.
At this year's summit, WTTC's set of criteria for hotels, "Hotel Sustainability Basics," was launched to provide minimum sustainability requirements and guidelines for hotels to meet certain sustainability requirements and improve their environmental impact.
The summit held panel talks on the following topics: seeking the tourism sector's sustainability in protecting the environment and local life and culture, as well as accomplishing diversity, equality and inclusion in the workforce.
Keynote speakers included: former United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon; 20-year-old Indonesian-Dutch environmental activist Melati Wijsen, who launched a grassroots campaign to reduce plastic waste on Bali; American film producer Lawrence Bender, a political and environmentalist activist, as well as producer of Al Gore's documentary about climate change, "An Inconvenient Truth;" and British adventurer Bear Grylls.
WTTC President and CEO Simpson argued in her farewell address, Friday, that the summit in Manila showed that "nothing beats" face-to-face interaction.
"We still have a lot of work to bring down post-pandemic barriers, open economies and harmonize health data for seamless travel. But the future looks bright, and the next decade is there for the taking," Simpson said.
According to the Philippines' Secretary of the Department of Tourism Bernadette Romulo-Puyat, Friday, the country successfully hosted the summit with zero cases of COVID-19.
The next summit will take place in Riyadh, the capital of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, from Nov. 29 to Dec. 2 of this year.
