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Marriott CEO in plea for travel freedom
DUBAI – The world’s growing travel and tourism industry is a powerful engine building global opportunity, but governments need to work with business to promote the freedom of travel, the head of one of the world’s largest hotel management companies said this week.
J.W. “Bill” Marriott, Jr.chairman and CEO of Marriott International, told the World Travel and Tourism Council summit, “Globalisation is about movement, mobility, opportunity… and it has been a rising tide lifting 500 million people into better living conditions.â€
But he said governments, such as the US, “need to do more to put out the welcome mat at our airports and borders, such as streamlining visa and entry processes.”
Marriott said that in the US international trade contributes $1 trillion to the national economy, and that jobs connected to international activity pay between 13 and 18 percent more than jobs overall in the economy.
And, he asserted, “Bottom line, travel is trade.”
He said the WTTC reports that travel and tourism made up 12 percent of worldwide exports last year.
“Every time an international visitor visits Palm Island (Dubai), or shops on New York’s Fifth Avenue or Tokyo’s Ginza, it’s the same as exporting a Caterpillar tractor, an Airbus jet, a Sony Playstation or … oil.
“I think that a world full of travellers is a world humming with opportunity,” he said.
“Travel facilitates public diplomacy. That’s why we need to encourage people to move around the planet.”
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