【Record】H.E. Mr. Luis Diego Monsalve, Ambassador of the Republic of Colombia to China, delivers a speech on the forum of New Normal of Tourism amid COVID-19

Moderator: It's my great pleasure to have a talk with you. We have about three simple segments in this section. The first one, can you tell me in one or two minutes about you and your organization and what you expect to be involved in this conference?

H.E. Mr. Luis Diego Monsalve, Ambassador of the Republic of Colombia to China

Luis Monsalve: Thank you very much for this opportunity. I'm Luis Monsalve, Ambassador of Colombia to China. After coming to China, I had a very, very good experience. For the first 10 months, I traveled around China and learned a lot. Our world has changed a lot since January. Over the past few months, I've seen once again how much China has to offer the world. For example, In the past few months, I've been traveling to different provinces, and in the next month or two, I'll also be traveling a lot in China. And the fact that we're able to see this country, and that the rest of the country is indeed recovering from the pandemic, is a great example that China can show the world how to better manage the pandemic. I am also looking forward to hearing from other panelists today.

Not just in my country, but for Latin America as a whole, the situation is difficult. We are not in a very good economic situation, and now the pandemic has made it worse, so of course we are looking forward to recovering from the impact as soon as possible. All the governments, all the institutions, all the businesses, the travel industry, the hotel industry, everybody is working very hard to establish all kinds of codes of conduct and new codes of practice, to prepare for the recovery and the rebound. In the region of Latin America, some countries have fewer cases, while others have a lot. Countries with fewer cases are beginning to welcome international visitors again, but those with a severer situation may not be able to do so for a while. Thank you again for giving me this opportunity, and I look forward to hearing from all of you today.

So let's go to the second round, and you can see, we have a timer here. When each of you is in the second round, I'm going to give each of you two questions, and you will have about five minutes to answer this question. If I run out of time, I might get blamed.

The first question is for our Ambassador. Thank you for joining us today. As far as we know, Colombia is one of the most important tourist countries in Latin America, and tourism also plays an important role in your national economy. As far as we know, Colombia is still at the stage of selective isolation. So what is the impact of the pandemic on tourism in your country?

Secondly, this year marks the 40th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between China and Colombia. As far as I know, when Xi Jinping, then Vice President of China, visited Colombia 11 years ago, he announced that China had listed Colombia as a destination for Chinese tourists. What do you think of the future prospects of China-Colombia tourism cooperation?

Luis Monsalve: Thank you very much. First of all, I would like to say that the current state of tourism, which we have talked about over and over again, has been greatly affected. As we know, tourism is very, very important to our economy. It's important for economies all over the world, but especially for my own country, and in situations like this, with this global pandemic, we're going to see some of these inevitable consequences. People have to be isolated from each other, we can't travel across borders, and of course tourism will be affected. In my country, we have a population of 15 million, and we are the third largest in Latin America following Brazil and Mexico. We have rich and diverse tourism resources in the Caribbean and in many inland places. For example, there are mountains and amazon jungles, and there is a good biodiversity of plants and animals, so many people will come here for tourism, go to the seaside, and go to the mountains to see our plants and animals.

There is a lot of travel experience in Colombia, and at the end of March, we closed our borders, meaning there is no way to fly internationally. From August, we are beginning to lift the lockdown now, and the international flights will resume next month. Maybe in September, October, they will resume. Now many foreign tourists could not come to Colombia. Two million people are out of work right now, in hotels and other catering business. These two million jobs have been severely affected. The unemployment rate has gone from 9 to 10 percent to 15 to 19 percent. What would the future be like? First of all, we believe that the pandemic as a whole will decline, as it does in Latin America as a whole, and that things will get better. There may be a vaccine in the future, and there is a lot of work being done in Colombia to deal with this outbreak as much as possible. For example, we have a lot of guidance on biosecurity. We are now starting to use biosecurity stamps like this. The overall situation is good.

In addition, we have taken a lot of measures, using a great many technical solutions. We also have a lot of outdoor activities, Colombia has a number of tourist attractions, and agri-tourism is quite popular. Actually these are outdoor tourism. It doesn't have to be in the city. It can be in the countryside. I think in the future foreign tourists will be able to learn about Colombia in a new way. They may be looking for a different travel experience.

As for China-Colombia relations, the distance between the two countries is relatively long, and it takes about 20 hours to fly there. In 2013, we began to have a good and improved relationship. We have a lot of tourists coming to China. Now there are 140 million to 150 million Chinese tourists around the world. We have a lot of new projects, and some of the eco-tourism projects are being promoted in the Chinese tourism market. I think in the future when we have vaccines and these biosecurity protocols, there will be a lot of Chinese people traveling abroad again. I think they want to experience something different and might not travel to the city. They may want to travel in nature, like ecotourism. We Colombia have many advantages in this. We also hope that Chinese tourists will come here for our eco-tourism. Thank you!

Moderator: We know that Colombia is a popular destination for Chinese tourists, and I hope that after the pandemic, more Chinese tourists will travel to Colombia.

Moderator: In the final round, can each of you use three key words to summarize the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on us and the response of our industry?

Luis Monsalve: Resilience is the first, hope is the second. The future is filled with potential for us, and we will have a brand new future. The pandemic has an enormous influence, of course, but we humans are resilient. We will find a solution, including vaccines. At the same time, we should coexist with the pandemic. We now can gather here to make a good assembly like this. Life will continue in the world. This is what I hope. I hope in the next few years we will remember, this is a very difficult time, but we still can restore all these.