Tourism minister to participate in high-level panel discussion on COVID-19

Jamaica’s Tourism Minister Edmund Bartlett is now in Évora, Portugal, participating in the highly-anticipated ‘A World for Travel – Évora Forum’, a global sustainable travel industry event scheduled for September 16 and 17.

The event is being organised by Eventiz Media Group, the largest travel media group in France, in partnership with the Global Travel & Tourism Resilience Council. The event is also being hosted with the support of Visit Portugal, the United Nations World Tourism Organization, the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) and the Jamaica-based Global Tourism Resilience and Crisis Management Centre (GTRCMC). 

It will bring global leaders, from both the public and private sectors, together to discuss ways they can transform the travel and tourism industry and examine the way forward in making the tourism industry more sustainable.

Bartlett is set to participate in a high-level panel discussion on ‘COVID-19: A Resilient Sector Drives to a New Deal with New Leadership Demands’, being moderated by Peter Greenberg, travel editor at CBS News.

High-level panel discussion

The session will explore how governments and industry step up with leadership in a congruous manner allowing the sector to influence policy.

Bartlett will be joined on the panel by Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne, France’s secretary of state for tourism; Fernando Valdès Verelst, Spain’s secretary of state for tourism, Spain; and Ghada Shalaby, Egypt’s vice minister of tourism and antiquities.

Other speakers for the event include Professor Hal Vogel, author and professor of travel economics, Columbia University; Julia Simpson, president and CEO, WTTC; Therese Turner-Jones, general manager, Caribbean Country Department, Inter-American Development Bank and Rita Marques, the Portuguese secretary of state for tourism. 

Dr Taleb Rifai, co-chair of the GTRCMC and former secretary general of the UNWTO, and Professor Lloyd Waller, executive firector, GTRCMC, are also confirmed speakers. 

The organisers have noted that the first edition of the event will focus on key components of the industry where change is mandatory, identifying the steps that need to be taken and consolidating solutions to be implemented. The conference will approach themes intrinsic to sustainability such as economic model variations, climate impact, tourism’s environmental impact, coastal and marine shifts as well as agricultural and carbon neutral policies.

The event will have an in-person attendance limitation of 350 attendees but will also be streamed live to thousands of virtual delegates.

Bartlett, who left Jamaica yesterday, is slated to return to the island on September 19.