The Tourism and Creative Economy Ministry will discuss strengthening people’s role as agents of change for quality and sustainable tourism transformation at the 1st Tourism Working Group (TWG 1) meeting under Indonesia's G20 Presidency.
In a statement released on Monday, the ministry's resources and institutions acting deputy, Frans Teguh, said that COVID-19 has provided a lesson for the global tourism and creative economy, specifically, it has highlighted the importance of people's role in sustainable tourism.
G20 is an international forum comprising 19 nations who work together to handle major issues. Indonesia is chairing the forum this year.
Indonesia’s G20 Presidency has two meeting tracks, one of which is the sherpa track, which discusses non-financial issues. The TWG meeting will be part of the sherpa track.
According to Teguh, the COVID-19 pandemic has underlined the importance of the people's role in realizing sustainable tourism.
Sustainable tourism is a mid-term as well as a long-term tourism management strategy, he added.
During the TWG meeting, G20 delegates will outline concrete steps or strategies based on best practices that member nations can cooperate on within the activity.
"(This aims) to ensure that tourism human resources are optimally educated and have their skills improved along with advances in digitalization flow by still considering aspects of sustainable tourism," he informed.
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Moreover, at the TWG 1 forum, the effort to strengthen the role of the people in tourism will focus on five lines of action.
The first will be involving human capital with the goal of observing market demand, talent management, education, and the development of skills, policies, and practices to create new jobs with added value.
The second will be spurring local innovations, creating the infrastructure and skills necessary for digitalization, and connecting cities and villages by making the creative economy the driver to improve the tourism value chain.
Moreover, attention will also be paid to the competitiveness of micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and the appeal of tourism.
The third action will be empowering women and youths in the local community as vanguards of policy or business formulation and innovation creation.
In addition, delegates will also focus on the importance of education and skills to promote full inclusion for the two groups.
The fourth action will be developing a new model that transforms tourism activities.
This is aimed at expediting advancement toward sustainability, net-zero growth, energy, land, water, and food resource utilization for the tourism industry, and reducing carbon emissions along the value chain components.
The last line of action will involve focusing on the need to create holistic tourism policies and adequate investment conditions as well as management models.
"Breaking out of this pandemic cannot be done individually," Teguh remarked.
“The G20 nations need good collaboration to show that the tourism sector is a resilient sector, a sector that can be the engine of economic change and creating as much jobs as possible," he said.
The TWG 1 will be held in a hybrid format on May 10–11, 2022, at Sudamala Resort, Komodo, Labuan Bajo, East Nusa Tenggara.
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