Conflict, Climate Change And Creation Of Wealth Discussed At 20th Anniversary WTM Ministers’ Summit

Strengthening Tourism for a Resilient and Regenerative Future was the theme of the 20th anniversary WTM Ministers’ Summit, held on day two of World Travel Market, London 2026, part of RX Global.

The summit, held in association with UN Tourism and the World Travel & Tourism Council [WTTC], is one of the largest annual gatherings of tourism ministers, with 50 present this year.

War, climate change and the dissemination of wealth from tourism were addressed under the headline theme.

Speaking on the fallout from this year’s Iran conflict, the UAE minister praised his destination’s private sector for holding its nerve and maintaining moderate prices. “If you go down more than cost price, it takes about three or four years to build that back up,” he remarked.

Tourism companies had instead been helped by the government with incentives such as fee postponements.

Qatar, meanwhile, saw its airline load factors back to February levels by August. “If it happened again, we wouldn’t go back to airspace fully closed,” the minister commented. The WTTC has forecast a swift recovery for the Middle East region’s tourism.

Sustainable tourism

African countries acknowledged the environment was their most immediate challenge and requires resilience strategies. Zimbabwe’s minister urged governments to work together, saying: “Climate change knows no boundaries. Different, it brings us together.”

Deep bores and dam building are among the measures the country is taking to build drought resilience. “Besides saving the people, we want to save the animals because they are the cornerstone of our tourism,” the minister pointed out.

Meanwhile, addressing the tragic floods in his country this year, Nepal’s tourism minister said it was not only its mountains but flora and fauna that were at risk from climate change.

The panel also considered how tourism could be more fairly dispersed to both combat overtourism and spread financial benefits.

The government minister representing the UK said: “devolution is a really big part of this,” and outlined new plans to increase the spending power of the country’s city mayors. She also touched on the importance of transport connectivity.

Croatia is utilising survey data to understand which projects to support and has identified health tourism among its new focuses. Its minister pointed out that 70% of tourism grants which the government was awarding were for projects in the less-visited inland regions, while those for coast-based projects were mostly helping raise standards in existing businesses.

The country is also involved in a pioneering project to track the environmental cost of tourism in terms of energy use and waste, besides the regional benefits of its contribution to GDP. Results so far have positively changed perceptions, the minister noted

The economics debate moved on to return on investment. The UAE minister pointed out: “It’s not the airlines that come in and how many tourists we receive; it’s about the value the tourist leaves in your city.”

Bulgaria is putting emphasis on tourism research by teaming it with education. Its minister said the country wanted to be “a world leader” in universities that study tourism.

The destination is identifying 200 universities to be involved in a major new programme, the second stage of which will be to establish an ‘observatory’ to start charting tourism KPIs. “We cannot manage any more with only a feeling,” the minister stressed.

A UN Tourism project is helping Zimbabwe better understand the value of the sector in the country after it helped sustain the economy through mining and agriculture crises in 2024.

Sierra Leone’s minister said her priority was linking businesses to supply chains. The destination is using gastronomy as a platform for growth, which, she said, meant even women who cooked in a local community hub may now also help supply tourism projects.

A chatbot supported by UN Tourism is meanwhile helping domestic travellers in Sierra Leone to map their journeys to inspire other visitors.

India’s minister called tourism a “self-resilient sector” and acknowledged this was due to the resilience of the various stakeholders.

A new format at the summit this year saw such tourism stakeholders included in the debate. The gathering heard, for instance, from an entrepreneur, who pointed out Africa punched above its weight as a source market for Middle East tourism, while a representative from MSC Cruises said the private sector needed to be involved at an early stage of government tourism planning.

A stakeholder from Visa explained that the company had supplied various governments with data on where travellers spent their money.

Gloria Guevara, interim CEO at the WTTC, which co-hosted the summit, reminded the gathering that one in nine jobs globally depend on tourism, adding: “We need the public sector, we need the policies, we need the right support and to work as one voice with the private sector.”

Khanh Linh Vu, Principal Advisor to the Secretary-General of another co-host, UN Tourism, highlighted the need for cross-border collaboration, saying: “No one can build a resilient tourism sector alone.”

By Dr. Lucky Onoriode George, Excel, London.