“UNWTO-WTCF City Tourism Performance Research” Was Released at the 6th Global Summit on Urban Tourism

The 6th Global Summit on Urban Tourism, co-organized by MOTAC, and UNWTO, is being held in Kuala Lumpur from December 4-6. During the summit, Ms. Esencan Terzibasoglu, Director of the Destination Management and Quality Programme at the UNWTO, released the UNWTO-WTCF City Tourism Performance Research. Representatives of 5 cities including WTCF city members Buenos Aires, Hangzhou, Cape Town and Turin interpreted the report during the summit.

With the tourism industry transforming to a major driving force for the social and economic development of locals, the UNWTO and World Tourism Cities Federation (WTCF) established the cooperative partnership in 2015 to jointly conduct regional and performance research on cities. This project was named “UNWTO-WTCF City Tourism Performance Research.” The research is an instrument with a set of criteria and a platform for exchange of information that can be used globally to benchmark tourism performance in urban destinations.

The research focuses on 15 cities such as Beijing, Berlin, Bogota, Buenos Aires, Cape Town, Copenhagen,  Hangzhou, Marrakesh, Sapporo, Seoul, Tianjin and Turin, etc. Several participants were included in the UNWTO-WTCF City Tourism Performance Research. Data of the research is collected at the city level by the tourism experts identified by UNWTO and WTCF. Establishing these performance criteria in cities and collecting data from the best-case cities will enable other cities to learn and to help them to improve and evaluate the performance of city tourism in general.

The UNWTO-WTCF City Tourism Performance Research focuses on 5 key performance areas: Destination Management, Economic Perspective, Social and Cultural, Environment Perspective and, Technology & New Business Models. WTCF and UNWTO held phased City Tourism Performance Seminars in Tianjin, China, and Buenos Aires, Argentina. Experts in the tourism industry were invited to the seminar to discuss and provide more comprehensive data for the research result.

Take Berlin as an example, visitors in licensed lodging operations alone have more than quadrupled since the early 1990s to a record breaking 12.73 million annual visitors and more than 31.06 million overnight stays in 2016, making Berlin Europe's third most popular urban tourism destination after Paris and London. There is no single one reason that explains the success of Berlin as a destination, but it appears reasonable to suggest that the effective and professional marketing and representation services provided by the city’s DMO, visitBerlin, have played a major role in making the destination Berlin the success that it is today. Meanwhile Berlin also finds itself confronted with several challenges. Many of them relate to or are linked to the heightened need for tourism management and planning that result from the increases of tourism activity the city has experienced. It requires the government to launch new regulation to face these challenges. Take Hangzhou as another example, this city has always paid attention to the tourism and leisure Industry. In 2016, it has been calculated that the added value of the city's tourism and leisure industry experienced a 13.3% increase to 80.889 billion Yuan. The city’s unique quality is centered with, not like Beijing, Xi’an or other ancient Chinese cities with heavy historical cultural DNA, "relaxing life" atmosphere, such as "poetic leisureliness", "slow life", "peacefulness" and "southern femi-beauty". Following this line, with years of research and studies, in 2014 "the culture of living" was identified as the city’s cultural DNA, the Hangzhou IP. "Hangzhou, Living Poetry" was created as the English promotional slogan of Hangzhou tourism accordingly.

Taking into account the fact that by 2050, 70% of the world’s population is estimated to be living in cities and only by 2025, cities will contribute over 30 trillion US dollars to the world economy annually. Nowadays, tourism has become to a core for developing in economy, social and geography sectors for the cities, it is essential to monitor the tourism performance in urban destinations and clearly address the areas for improvement. Just as Taleb Rifai, Secretary-General of UNWTO, says that city tourism is on a par with sustainable development, it is important to develop local tourism resources, but what is also important is to protect environmental resources, and tangible and non-tangible heritages.

The UNWTO is an international organization between the governments of the United Nations, and an international organization serving as a leader of the tourism industry. It was developed from the IUOTPO. In November 2003, it officially became a department of the United Nations, which has 156 formal member countries and 6 contact members. The objectives of the UNWTO are to promote and develop sustainable tourism so as to contribute to economic development, international understanding, peace, prosperity, and universal respect.

World Tourism Cities Federation (WTCF) is the world’s first international tourism organization focusing on cities. Guided by the core vision of Better City Life through Tourism, WTCF facilitates exchanges and cooperation among members, and contributes to the sustainable development of the tourism industry. WTCF continuously promotes the attraction of tourism cities as international destinations, enhances the service quality and efficiency of different cities, and raises the brand image of tourism cities.