Who came up with the theme of this year’s World Tourism Day? Who decided we have to re-think tourism?
The United Nations World Tourism Organization.
They came to the realization that in view of post pandemic-, climate-, inflation-, war- and energy crisis, we have to do things differently.
In Aruba, Tourism Day was celebrated by ATA at a festive gathering at the Marriott Ballroom, with three tiers of guests in attendance, University of Aruba and Colegio EPI students, thirty-plus invited tourism partners from Europe who attended the bi-annual Aruba Meets Europe, and a well-heeled audience of local tourism professional, hoteliers and local partners.
People were happy to see each other over refreshments, in air-condition, Edjean Semeleer was a most charming emcee/entertainer.
Aruba Meets Europe was taking place for the first time, in person, since 2018, and most of the information communicated from stage by the minister of tourism and by the ATA CEO was directed towards their ears, impressing them with how well we are doing, and what a fantastic destination, we are.
All true, we are.
The AME delegates are, after all, in charge of European travel, and we like our continental visitors. Aruba is hopeful that with the new flight from the UK this coming Spring on British Airways from London, we will be seeing more Brits on our shores.
Thus, the presentation was sunny. Not a cloud in the sky, not a worry in the world, not a single word about any of the above challenges – post pandemic employment difficulties, climate change, worrisome carbon foot-prints, almost double digit, worldwide inflation, war in Europe and an energy crisis, with the world torn between coal, oil, LNG, and solar-wind power.
The stage transmitted cheery videos, charts and sound bites. According to our minister, these all prove we operate on a High Value, Low Impact model, driven by Sustainability, Careful Development, Innovation and Data Intelligence.
Some people in the audience started shaking their heads.
The ATA CEO doubled down on the good news, touched very lightly on potential negative external forces such as recession, shortages of goods and capacity in aviation, increased cost and added competition, then went on to praise ATA’s marketing impact and the immense benefits tourism receipts bring to our economy.
From there on money was the main focus. Our tourism machine is going full steam ahead, with the emphasis on income, and more income, in fact for every Awg 1 invested in tourism promotion we get Awg 136 in tourism spending, and that’s a great incentive to expand our activities, to bring more visitors to the island, because more is the goal, and more is better. With 3% increase in stayover visitors, our GDP registers Awg 33 million that trickle down to benefit all partners.
We are money-makers!
The charts of our recovery were impressive, our numbers are almost DOUBLE than all other countries, and much higher than sister-islands.
And that’s ATA’s charter, to make more money for GOA, in spite of the fact that towards the end of her extensive presentation Ronella Croes did mention that according to surveys, locals would value the preservation of culture and nature over economic success. It was mentioned fast, but I distinctly heard it, that we are concerned about our quality of life, and that we wonder how much is too much.
If indeed, the ultimate goal behind tourism development is to positively impact the quality of life of our residents, we are presently NOT, on a good path.
And I apologize in advance if I offended anyone!
World Tourism Day in Aruba did not re-think anything, we’re staying on the same page.
