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Travel and tourism experts invited to join World Heritage advisory panel
UNESCO World Heritage is inviting experts from the travel and tourism industry to join a new advisory panel.
The panel will help it meet the new challenges it faces on its mission to protect and preserve cultural and natural heritage around the world.
The organisation says it faces intense pressure in its work due to the continued growth in tourism, wealth and knowledge gap, ecological damage and dilution of cultural heritage.
The new panel will be made up of individuals with expertise across a wide range of sectors.
“This will include players from government, travel and tourism, finance, academia, commerce and trade, facilities and infrastructure development, IT and communications, and national government organisations,” said Charles Kao, publisher of TravelMole and CEO of OmniTourism, who is coordinating this project.
“We are seeking volunteers who have insight, are forward thinking, problem solvers and leaders in their sectors to help evaluate and make recommendation for the World Heritage program in terms of policies, strategies, and action models.”
“One area we are focusing on is to create the infrastructure which will enable all stakeholder players to have accessibility to expert and financial resources, successful models, education, marketing and distribution, etc.”
Currently, there are over 1,200 sites around the world that hold UNESCO’s World Heritage and Biosphere Reserves designation.
“Our mission is clear,” said a spokesperson for World Heritage. “Our challenge is how we get the stakeholders to understand each other’s objectives are and try to sort out ‘win-win’ scenarios which translate into their future plans and investments.”
Nominations and applications to be a member of the panel, or any interested corporate and government sponsors, should contact [email protected] for further details.
By Bev Fearis
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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