UNWTO and WTCF aim to measure city tourism

The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) has partnered with the World Tourism Cities Federation (WTCF) to develop a product that effectively measures the performance of a city's tourism.

According to UN Habitat, by 2050, 70 per cent of the world’s population is expected to be living in cities. By 2025, metropolitan areas will contribute over $30 trillion US annually to the world economy.

As stated by UNWTO Secretary General Taleb Rifai, “city tourism should go hand by hand with sustainable development; preserving environmental treasures together with tangible and intangible heritage should be parallel to the importance of engaging local communities”.

The partnership between UNWTO and WTCF to measure city tourism will assist policy makers and all stakeholders in their efforts to take strategic action for better urban tourism governance and sustainable management.

A total of 16 cities located in Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin American participated in the survey. The exercise will allow UNWTO and WTCF to define a set of criteria that can constitute the best possible assessment of city tourism performance at a reasonable cost.

“Cities provide an important vehicle for world tourism development. Launched in 2015, the UNWTO-WTCF City Tourism Performance Research Programme has conducted a comprehensive analysis of 16 tourism cities in the world in the five areas: destination management, economic perspective, social and cultural perspectives, environmental perspective as well as technology & new business models. The findings offer very useful guidance for promoting sustainable development in cities around the world,” said the Secretary General of WTCF, Song Yu.

The results of the research conducted in the Asia-Pacific Region were presented last weekend in Tianjin, China and later this month on Sept. 26 in Buenos Aires, Argentina a second workshop will discuss the results of the Latin American cities, aiming to create a platform to give recommendations to those cities on the selected key performance areas and to give general indications to all cities on recent challenges in urban tourism.

The 16 different city cases will be compiled in a publication free of charge on the UNWTO website which will serve as a guideline on how cities can improve their future implementation of tourism development.