World Tourism Network Statement on Global Tourism Resilience Day

Global Tourism Resilience Day this year is officially taking place in Jamaica in a big celebration with heads of State and the UN Tourism Secretary-General to honor this country’s achievement in adding this important day to the official United Nations Calendar.

The Global Resilience Day will be an annual event hosted bi-annually by Jamaica as of 2024. In 2025, the Conference will be held in another country.
Countries on the waiting list for Resilience Centres include Japan, and Barbados.

Why Jamaica’s Minister is a WTN Tourism Hero?

Because of Jamaica, and because of this achievement by WTN Hero Award recipient Hon. Edmund Bartlett, the minister of tourism for Jamaica, the entire world is celebrating resilience in tourism.

This has also a special meaning for the World Tourism Network, where Tourism Resilience launched within this organization in a lot smaller way in Berlin in 2020.

The World Tourism Network is a young initiative that just started because tourism showed resilience and 100+ related Zoom discussions with tourism leaders from every corner of the globe.

On the sideline of a canceled ITB trade show in 2020 when COVID-19 took over the world the rebuilding.travel discussion was started by eTurboNews at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Berlin together with PATA and the African Tourism Board.

Rebuilding Travel turned into the World Tourism Network

This discussion led to renaming the rebuilding tourism initiative to be called the World Tourism Network.

Four years later and with 19,000+ supporters in 133 countries, WTN members today stay committed to tourism resilience. Resilience is why WTN started the first rebuilding discussion in 2020 on COVID-19 at a time when no one knew how bad COVID-19 would become.

With ITB 2024 next month World Tourism Network is celebrating its 4th birthday in the city where it all began in 2020 – Berlin, Germany.