The importance of digital technologies in tourism, providing opportunities for innovation and preparing the sector for the future of work, is at the centre of World Tourism Day 2018, to be celebrated in Budapest, Hungary [27 September 2018].
World Tourism Day, celebrated every 27 September around the world, is a unique opportunity to raise awareness on tourism’s actual and potential contribution to sustainable development.
This year’s World Tourism Day [WTD] will help to put the opportunities provided to tourism, by technological advances including big data, artificial intelligence and digital platforms, on the map of sustainable development. The World Tourism Organization [UNWTO] sees digital advances and innovation as part of the solution to the challenge of marrying continued growth with a more sustainable and responsible tourism sector.
“Harnessing innovation and digital advances provides tourism with opportunities to improve inclusiveness, local community empowerment and efficient resource management, amongst other objectives within the wider sustainable development agenda”, said UNWTO Secretary-General Zurab Pololikashvili.
The WTD official celebration will be held in Budapest, Hungary, a country enjoying steady growth of tourism backed by consistent policy support and a commitment to the digital future. Other celebrations will take place worldwide.
The official celebration will also see the announcement of the semi-finalists of the 1st UNWTO Tourism Startup Competition, launched by UNWTO and Globalia to give visibility to startups with innovative ideas capable of revolutionizing the way we travel and enjoy tourism.
Since 1980, the United Nations World Tourism Organization [UNWTO] has celebrated World Tourism Day on September 27. This date was chosen as on that day in 1970, the Statutes of the UNWTO were adopted. The adoption of these Statutes is considered a milestone in global tourism.
The purpose of this day is to raise awareness on the role of tourism within the international community and to demonstrate how it affects social, cultural, political and economic values worldwide.
At its 12th Session in Istanbul, Turkey, in October 1997, the UNWTO General Assembly decided to designate a host country each year to act as the Organization’s partner in the celebration of World Tourism Day.
At its 15th Session in Beijing, China, in October 2003, the Assembly decided the following geographic order to be followed for World Tourism Day celebrations: 2006 in Europe; 2007 in South Asia; 2008 in the Americas; 2009 in Africa and 2011 in the Middle East.
The late Ignatius Amaduwa Atigbi, a Nigerian national, was the one who proposed the idea of marking September 27 of every year as World Tourism Day.
Following a final push by a letter written by the Nigerian Federal Ministry of Tourism, Culture and National Orientation, orchestrated by a Nigerian travel and tourism journalist, Lucky Onoriode George to the United Nations World Tourism Organisation [UNWTO], on the need to honour late Ignatius Amaduwa Atigbi, a Nigerian who proposed the idea of marking September 27 of every year as World Tourism Day, the UNWTO has finally honoured Atigbi.
The ministry in a letter dated August 11, 2009, read, “I write to remind the authority of the United Nations World Tourism Organisation [UNWTO], under the leadership of Mr. Taleb Rifai of its earlier promise to honour the late Nigerian tourism czar “.
Following this persistent, Atigbi was finally honoured through the federal government, of which the plague was eventually passed on to Late Ignatius Amaduwa Atigbi.
Meanwhile, the finding and the letter came as a result of this writer then with a Nigeria based media, BusinessDay Newspaper who travelled to Madrid where his investigations brought out Atigbi’s contributions to the notice of the UNWTO.
The man Atigbi Ignatius Amaduwa was born on May 24, 1930 in Warri, Delta State, Nigeria. After his primary and post-primary education, he preceded to the Literary then the Ibadan campus of the University of London, now fully University of Ibadan, where he graduated in Applied Mathematics and English Language in 1955.
Shortly after graduation, his first formal job was teaching at Ibadan Grammar School from where he played a part in the formation of lives of distinguished Nigerians.
It was from this bus that he later moved to become the pioneer Lagos Desk Head of the French News Agency, Reuters.
While in England, he was quite a sight on Fleet Street, and once told of how the cream of English and international journalists, mostly white, would come to the bar, an after hour’s tradition on Fleet Street.
He was a marvel. And he took himself seriously. He was to become the first African manager and editor at Reuters and the youngest all over the world at that time. In fact, Atigbi’s role as West African manager for Reuters enabled him to cover and report the constitutional conference in London in 1958 leading to Nigeria’s independence constitution.
From here it was a quick rise with the Reuters Organization as at the end of the conference, the barely 29-year-old Atigbi had his responsibilities expanded to over-all of West Africa.
Success in journalism for the young Atigbi was not with his Parisian bosses, he was also esteemed among his Nigerian colleagues. At the formation of the Nigeria pioneer press organization, the precursor of today’s Nigeria Union of Journalists [NUJ] in 1960. He was unanimously elected secretary general of that body.
One final example of his resourcefulness and excellence came in a 1964 letter from the then president of Nigeria, the late Nnamdi Azikwe, to the Nigerian High Commission in Sierra Leone where he was then serving as head of the chancery.
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