The first activity of UNWTO at this year World Travel Market is the 9th UNWTO/WTM Minister’s Summit to be held on 3rd November. Under the title ‘Destination branding: new challenges in a changing market’, the Summit will focus on the impact of social media and new business models in destination branding.
During the same day, UNWTO will present the first Global Conference on Wine Tourism, in cooperation with the Georgian National Tourism Administration to be held in Georgia in 2016. The activity is part of the UNWTO Gastronomy Network plan of action. The platform was officially presented in September 2015 during the UNWTO General Assembly in Medellin, Colombia and aims to promote information and knowledge to further develop Gastronomic Tourism.
Experiential travel and the booking revolution will also be tackled during the Social Silk Road seminar that will take place on the 4th of November, an activity which will be conducted in partnership with Travel Perspective. The seminar, under the title ‘Is the guidebook dead?’ aims at analyzing how new trends are shaping the booking process and how emerging destinations are transitioning into a digital context.
Finally, UNWTO will join PATA at a side event to discuss ‘How do young Asian travelers step out of the crowd’. As the rise in global tourism will be driven by young travelers, particularly from the Asian continent, the session will try to provide strategies to destinations in order to cope with this phenomenon.
