Cruise & Ferry Review - Autumn/Winter 2020

COVER STORY 2 0 4 T he World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) represents the global travel and tourism private sector – which contributes 10 per cent of the world’s GDP and supports 330 million jobs – and speaks as one voice for its members through advocacy work with governments around the world. WTTC is led by the former Minister of Tourism for Mexico, Gloria Guevera, who has also been a special advisor to Harvard University and part of the Future for Travel, Tourism and Aviation Global Agenda Council of the World Economic Forum. Cruise & Ferry Review spoke with Guevera to find out how WTTC is supporting the sector’s recovery. How is WTTC supporting members as they toil in search of better times ahead? Unfortunately, we are living in the worst crisis of our generation – it is completely unprecedented. WTTC has worked tirelessly with our members and governments in two areas. The first phase was during the crisis, where we made sure governments understood the impact to our sector. We quantified the impact and found that 121 million jobs have been affected. The second phase, in our advocacy work, was to ask governments to support our members and our entire sector to protect our workers, and also provide fiscal relief and help us with liquidity to survive. The first phase was for dealing with the crisis, and in the second phase we have been working with our members CFR speaks with Gloria Guevera to find out how WTTC is helping to drive the recovery of the travel tourism sector “We will come out stronger” WTTC gathers leaders in global tourism to debate key issues that affect the sector