Between 9 and 13 September, St Petersburg hosted the main event of the tourism industry, the 23rd session of the UNWTO General Assembly. It was attended by over 2,000 participants, including some 1,100 delegates from 140 member states with about 100 of them representing tourism ministries. The SCO Secretariat was represented by SCO Deputy Secretary-General Vladimir Potapenko.
The main events of the 23rd session were a High-Level Forum on Medical and Health Tourism held at the Tavrichesky (Tauride) Palace, three plenaries that covered 15 topics, including a report by UNWTO Secretary-General Zurab Pololikashvili, held at the ExpoForum, Ministerial Debates on Education and Employment in Tourism, as well as a High-Level Summit on Innovation and Sustainable Development in Tourism. The hosts also offered an impressive cultural programme.
The 23rd session focused on the responsible management of the continued growth in global tourism, the use of modern technology and innovation to increase the number of jobs and tourism's positive potential, the humanitarian and social role of tourism which can bring people together, help strengthen historical and cultural ties between nations and also fight poverty, xenophobia, climate change and other problems.
The 24th session of the UNWTO General Assembly will be held in Marrakech, Morocco, in 2021. The other two countries that hoped to host the next session were Kenya and the Philippines. For the first time in the history of the UNWTO, the member states used an electronic voting system, with one vote per member state, to choose the next host country.
The World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) is a specialised UN agency working in the field of tourism with the headquarters based in Madrid. The supreme body of the UNWTO is its General Assembly, which convenes every two years.
The UNWTO was established in The Hague in 1925 as the International Congress of Official Tourist Organisations (ICOTT). Following WWII, it was renamed as the International Union of Official Travel Organizations (IUOTO) headquartered in Geneva. In 1967, the IUOTO received the status of an intergovernmental organisation that cooperated with the WHO, UNESCO and other international bodies. In 1974, the IUOTO general assembly voted in favour of forming the World Tourism Organisation (WTO). The first WTO General Assembly was held in Madrid in May 1975. In 2003, the WTO was approved as a specialised UN agency known as the UNWTO.
A Memorandum of Understanding was signed between the SCO Secretariat and the WTO by the decision of the SCO Heads of State Council taken in Bishkek on 14 June 2019.