In Vienna, UN Tourism Secretary-General Zurab Pololikashvili held high-level meetings, reaffirming Austria’s important role in advancing sustainable tourism, including through having six of its villages as members of UN Tourism´s Best Tourism Village Programme and the region of Tyrol as one of the latest members of the International Network of Sustainable Tourism Observatories (INSTO).

In a meeting with Susanne Kraus-Winkler, State Secretary for Tourism (Federal Ministry of Labour and Economy), discussions highlighted Austria’s critical leadership as Co-Chair of the Committee on Statistics. The focus was on implementing the Statistical Framework for Measuring the Sustainability of Tourism (MST), endorsed by the United Nations Statistical Commission earlier this year. Austria’s leadership has been instrumental in developing this internationally agreed framework, which provides essential concepts, definitions, and structures to measure tourism’s economic, social, and environmental impacts and dependencies.

A leading tourism destination like Austria can play an important role in advancing global tourism issues, such as the SF-MST, while at the same time to ensure that through such measurement instruments tourism remains a key driver of sustainable and inclusive development. UN Tourism commends Austria’s clear commitment to shaping a sustainable and resilient tourism future, and its leadership at both the regional and global level in this regard that also is highlighted through a comparatively big number of Best Tourism Villages and one of the leading destinations as a member in the INSTO Network. Secretary-General Pololikashvili

During talks with Ambassador Harald Stranzl, Director for Foreign Economic Relations (Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs), discussions centered on leveraging Austrian expertise to advance development cooperation in tourism. Both sides emphasized Austria’s potential to share its wealth of knowledge and technical capacity to drive sustainable tourism initiatives worldwide.

According to UN Tourism’s latest data, Austria ranks 10th globally in international tourist arrivals, welcoming 30.9 million international arrivals in 2023. It also ranks at 19th in international tourism receipts, with the sector generating 22.8 billion EUR, last year, around 11% higher than in 2019.

About UN Tourism

The World Tourism Organization (UN Tourism) is the United Nations agency responsible for the promotion of responsible, sustainable and universally accessible tourism.

As the leading international organization in the field of tourism, UN Tourism promotes tourism as a driver of economic growth, inclusive development and environmental sustainability and offers leadership and support to the sector in advancing knowledge and tourism policies worldwide.

Our Priorities

Mainstreaming tourism in the global agenda: Advocating the value of tourism as a driver of socio-economic growth and development, its inclusion as a priority in national and international policies and the need to create a level playing field for the sector to develop and prosper.

Promoting sustainable tourism development: Supporting sustainable tourism policies and practices: policies which make optimal use of environmental resources, respect the socio-cultural authenticity of host communities and provide socio-economic benefits for all.

Fostering knowledge, education and capacity building: Supporting countries to assess and address their needs in education and training, as well as providing networks for knowledge creation and exchange.

Improving tourism competitiveness: Improving UN Tourism Members' competitiveness through knowledge creation and exchange, human resources development and the promotion of excellence in areas such as policy planning, statistics and market trends, sustainable tourism development, marketing and promotion, product development and risk and crisis management.

Advancing tourism's contribution to poverty reduction and development: Maximizing the contribution of tourism to poverty reduction and achieving the SDGs by making tourism work as a tool for development and promoting the inclusion of tourism in the development agenda.

Building partnerships: Engaging with the private sector, regional and local tourism organizations, academia and research institutions, civil society and the UN system to build a more sustainable, responsible and competitive tourism sector.

Our Structure

Members: An intergovernmental organization, UN Tourism has 160 Member States, 6 Associate Members, 2 Observers and over 500 Affiliate Members.

Organs: The General Assembly is the supreme organ of the Organization. The Executive Council take all measures, in consultation with the Secretary-General, for the implementation of the decisions and recommendations of the General Assembly and reports to the Assembly.

Secretariat: UN Tourism headquarters are based in Madrid, Spain. The Secretariat is led by the Secretary-General and organized into departments covering issues such as sustainability, education, tourism trends and marketing, sustainable development, statistics and the Tourism Satellite Account (TSA), destination management, ethics and risk and crisis management. The Technical Cooperation and Silk Road Department carries out development projects in over 100 countries worldwide, while the Regional Departments for Africa, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific, Europe and the Middle East serve as the link between UN Tourism and its 160 Member States. The Affiliate Members Department represents UN Tourism's 500 plus Affiliate members.

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