The Secretary of State for Tourism and Culture Madam Angela Colley, returned to Banjul from London on Friday 16 November, where she led a delegation comprising staff of the Department of State for Tourism and Culture, the Gambia Tourism Authority and other stakeholders in the tourism trade, to this year’s World Travel Market (WTM). WTM is the second largest tourism and travel exhibition in the world.

The event provides a unique opportunity for the global travel industry to network, negotiate, conduct business and stay abreast of the latest trends in the tourism and travel business. A number of activities and events were held during the four-day meeting, including a ministerial conference on climate change and tourism, which was organized by the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) and a meeting of West African Tourism Ministers. The latter was organized with a view to harmonizing tourist activities within the ECOWAS sub-region, and was attended by Nigeria, Ghana and The Gambia. Participants unanimously agreed to look at ways and means of jointly promoting and marketing the West African sub-region, and to promote leisure travel in each other countries. The technical departments of the respective countries were charged with the responsibility of coming up with a plan of action, which will be presented to the Ministers for review and adoption at a meeting to be organized later in the year.

The UNWTO ministerial meeting on climate change and tourism was a follow up to a previous meeting held in Davos Switzerland, which brought together international organizations, governments, public and private sector stakeholders in tourism and the academic community to examine the linkages between climate change factors and tourism operators. The outcome of this conference was the Davos Declaration, which challenges policy makers and all other stakeholders in tourism to, among other things, introduce education and awareness programmes for all tourism stakeholders as well as consumers. It also calls for the promotion of investments in energy-efficiency tourism programmes and the use of renewable energy resources, with the aim of reducing the carbon footprint of the entire tourism sector. The declaration was presented at the Ministers meeting for discussion and adoption. After a lengthy discussion the declaration was adopted and will be presented to the UNWTO General Assembly in Cartagena de Indias, Columbia later this month.

The Gambian delegation also has meetings with tour operators and other potential tourism and travel operators.