Tourism industry has a low profile on the political agenda
Categories:
Government,
Leadership
Tags:
government,
minister of tourism,
union
The tourism industry lacks a united voice. There also appears to be little government focus on the industry, as
Reto Wittwer suggests in this TV show.
Tourism industry and government
Even in countries where tourism is the number one income source, the minister of tourism is rarely known.
You ask any European, “Do you know you’re British, do you know the minister of tourism or secretary of tourism in England?”
Nobody knows, so it’s never the inner circle, people know the minister of finance, minister of interior and foreign minister. But then it stops, maybe defence, depending what country.
But even in countries where 90% of the income is from the tourist ministry, the minister of tourism is rarely close to the president, the first problem.
The second problem is that we have not learned, even though we’re the number one employer in the world, to speak as one voice, because between the one star hotel and the five star hotel and restaurants and the ships, and the crew ships and the trains and God knows what, there are too many different interests.
They cannot, you know, people don’t have the intelligence to bring them on the same line, which is very sad.
So even though we should be the most powerful lobby and actually get our point heard, we’re not because we don’t speak as one voice.
We don’t have the political anchor in governments, and we don’t make our voice heard because we haven’t learned to speak as one voice.
I found this video about the tourism industry's position in the political agenda interesting, please browse more TV shows on
The Hospitality TV Channel.