In a special capacity building event, researchers and marketing professionals from 20 African National Tourism Organizations (NTOs) benefitted from two days of training on themes designed to help them attract visitors and better manage their tourism sectors. As well as insights into data collection, analysis and management, the regional course also focused on digital marketing, with a particular emphasis on how digital content and storytelling can be powerful tools for restarting tourism and supporting recovery in the wake of the pandemic.

To put theory into practice, participants were able to learn more about UNWTO's tools to provide market insights and to support recovery, including the UNWTO Recovery Tracker and its trusted dashboards. Alongside this, the NTOs were also shown how Google's Insights Tools can help guide sustainable recovery.

UNWTO Secretary-General Zurab Pololikashvili said: "The UNWTO Agenda for Africa aims to harness the power of tourism to drive sustainable development across Africa. By partnering with Google, we are ensuring our Member States are able to use data insights and digital marketing to recover from the current crisis, restart their tourism sectors and grow back smarter and better."

Google's Global Destination Marketing Partner Iva Kutle Skrlec added: "As part of our strong commitment to the tourism sector recovery, we are proud to launch this one of a kind digital curriculum designed specifically for Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs), and to do so in Africa for the first time, acknowledging the needs of the region during this pandemic. We are confident that the curriculum will provide tourism organizations with tools and skills to navigate the fast changing environment and expedite industry transformation."

This capacity building event forms part of the wider partnership between UNWTO and Google. The two organizations are cooperating closely on matters of mutual interest in order to achieve common objectives, which include data, market research on consumer trends and forecasting, innovation, education and digital transformation, as well as capacity building.

About UN Tourism

The World Tourism Organization (UN Tourism) is the United Nations agency responsible for the promotion of responsible, sustainable and universally accessible tourism.

As the leading international organization in the field of tourism, UN Tourism promotes tourism as a driver of economic growth, inclusive development and environmental sustainability and offers leadership and support to the sector in advancing knowledge and tourism policies worldwide.

Our Priorities

Mainstreaming tourism in the global agenda: Advocating the value of tourism as a driver of socio-economic growth and development, its inclusion as a priority in national and international policies and the need to create a level playing field for the sector to develop and prosper.

Promoting sustainable tourism development: Supporting sustainable tourism policies and practices: policies which make optimal use of environmental resources, respect the socio-cultural authenticity of host communities and provide socio-economic benefits for all.

Fostering knowledge, education and capacity building: Supporting countries to assess and address their needs in education and training, as well as providing networks for knowledge creation and exchange.

Improving tourism competitiveness: Improving UN Tourism Members' competitiveness through knowledge creation and exchange, human resources development and the promotion of excellence in areas such as policy planning, statistics and market trends, sustainable tourism development, marketing and promotion, product development and risk and crisis management.

Advancing tourism's contribution to poverty reduction and development: Maximizing the contribution of tourism to poverty reduction and achieving the SDGs by making tourism work as a tool for development and promoting the inclusion of tourism in the development agenda.

Building partnerships: Engaging with the private sector, regional and local tourism organizations, academia and research institutions, civil society and the UN system to build a more sustainable, responsible and competitive tourism sector.

Our Structure

Members: An intergovernmental organization, UN Tourism has 160 Member States, 6 Associate Members, 2 Observers and over 500 Affiliate Members.

Organs: The General Assembly is the supreme organ of the Organization. The Executive Council take all measures, in consultation with the Secretary-General, for the implementation of the decisions and recommendations of the General Assembly and reports to the Assembly.

Secretariat: UN Tourism headquarters are based in Madrid, Spain. The Secretariat is led by the Secretary-General and organized into departments covering issues such as sustainability, education, tourism trends and marketing, sustainable development, statistics and the Tourism Satellite Account (TSA), destination management, ethics and risk and crisis management. The Technical Cooperation and Silk Road Department carries out development projects in over 100 countries worldwide, while the Regional Departments for Africa, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific, Europe and the Middle East serve as the link between UN Tourism and its 160 Member States. The Affiliate Members Department represents UN Tourism's 500 plus Affiliate members.

UNWTO Communications Department
+34 91 567 8100
UN Tourism