India foils attempt to rank tourist destinations
NEW DELHI - India — along with France, Brazil and Iran — has foiled an attempt to rank tourist destinations across the world.
Allowing the Montreal-based World Centre of Excellence for Destinations (CED) to certify and grade tourist destinations was a key agenda of the two-day meeting of the executive council of the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) in Madrid last week.
Articulating India’s reservations, Union Minister for Culture and Tourism Ambika Soni — who chaired the meeting — said this would lead to standardising of cultures, heritage and biodiversity of nations, and could seriously undermine the concept of diversity that drives global tourism.
Technical help
The Indian contention was also supported by Costa Rica, Ghana and Spain. The nations which backed Ms. Soni are, along with India, members of the Working Group set up by UNWTO to examine the by-laws and procedures for running the CED.
Instead of assuming the role of a certification agency, it was decided that the CED would extend technical assistance to destinations in developing countries to achieve excellence and attract more tourists.
Resilience Committee
The executive council also agreed to create a Resilience Committee to support its members with accurate economic analyses and response mechanisms to combat challenges arising out of global uncertainties due to the financial crisis.
Tourism businesses are already feeling the credit crunch and it is estimated that consumers will cut down further on travel expenses in the days ahead when the impact of the economic slowdown will be more widely felt.
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Comments
This article is misleading, this Ced institution has always stated that they are not a grading or ranking system but a way to help destinations around the world please visit their website to clarify this complete lack of information, it is surprising that some members of the tourism community are not informed at all and that the media take a part to create more confusion.
Since CED has decided to extend technical assistance to destinations in developing countries to achieve excellence and attract more tourists, we hope that they would consider that facilities for travelers with disabilities should also be provided. That will really attract more tourists since 10% of the world population has some kind of disability and provide excellence.
One of SATH's mission is to help with destination development for an inclusive tourism site. We will be more than happy to work with them on this issue. Contact us at info@sath.org and /or sathtravel@aol.com.
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