Dr Mario De Marco, Parliamentary Secretary for Tourism meets UNWTO Secretary-General H.E. Dr Taleb Rifai at the Organisation’s Headquarters in Madrid, Spain

Parliamentary Secretary for Tourism meets UNWTO Secretary-general

The prospects of recovery in the world tourism industry was one of the themes discussed by the Parliamentary Secretary for Tourism, the Hon. Mario de Marco during a meeting with the Secretary-General of the United Nations’ World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO), H.E. Dr Taleb Rifai at the Organisation’s Headquarters in Madrid, Spain. H.E. Rifai was appointed Secretary-General to the UNWTO in December 2009.

In his meeting with H.E. Rifai, Dr de Marco updated the Secretary-General on the various initiatives taken by Government to assist the tourism industry in Malta face the challenges brought about by the recession in 2008 and 2009.

The Secretary-General, whilst expressing concern at the fact that unemployment figures remained high throughout most of Europe, and these could take long to drop, stated the UNWTO was cautiously predicting a return to growth this year in the global tourism industry of between 2 to 4 %.

Dr de Marco and H.E. Dr Rifai proceeded to discuss ways of further cooperation between the Government of Malta and the UNWTO. To this effect, the UNWTO offered to hold in Malta, a number of workshops on specialised subjects, such as e-marketing.

For the meeting with Dr Rifai, Dr de Marco was accompanied by Malta’s Ambassador in Spain, Dr Tanya Vella, and the CEO of the Malta Tourism Authority, Mr Josef Formosa Gauci.

In Madrid, Dr de Marco also attended FITUR 2010, which is Spain’s leading tourism trade fair. He visited the Malta stand where the MTA, together with other private industry operators, promotes Malta with the Spanish tourism trade. The number of tourists from Spain to Malta increased from over 20,000 in 2006 to around 43,000 in 2009