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| Speakers on the Session 4: Growing the Business of Tourism |
After checking the the list of speakers, I
decided to register for the world bank group tourism forum on Dec. 8th. The speakers
of the events are the top leaders of tourism industry, including Ms. Sandra
Howard, Vice-Minister for Tourism, Colombia, Mr. Christopher J. Nassetta, Ms.
Aireen Omar, CEO, Airbnb, Ms Helen Marano, Vice President for industry, WTTC. I
also met some MTA Alumni of GWU here. Let’s talk about the
experience in this forum.
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| The Post of Tourism4Dev |
When I entered the World bank, the security
process was quite serious, as it checked our bags like what we usually do in the
airport, checking every electronic devices and also ID. Beside the name tag for
every registered guests, they gave us the security pass to show each personal identity.
However, they don’t have translators in the entrance. Some Chinese people circled around in front
of the entrance and didn’t know why they cannot enter the venue, as they cannot
speak and understand English very well. I helped them asked about the security
person and found out it was during cleansing so that guests should be entered
15 minutes later. However, there is no signs and no volunteers who speak
Chinese so that the guests were confused. They even wondered whether they were
not qualified to enter! Actually, there
should be guiding person at the entrance to lead the flow.
In contrast, Translation service inside the Preston hall was professional during the meeting, the event provided Chinese, Japanese and Spanish Simultaneous Interpretation. The foreigners guests can use headphone to receive the translation without time-delay.
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| The Speakers on Session 5: Leveraging the Culture & Heritage Assets of Tourism |
As I entered in 3pm in the afternoon, I attend
session 4 and 5, which are also my interested topics, I gain some key thoughts
from them:
Session 4: Growing the business of Tourism
In this session, Mr. Brain Said, Executive
Director, Discover Philadelphia, imposed the importance of “Experience”, saying
that hospitality, sports competitions, conventions are included in the
destination to provide a special experience for tourists, which each of them
can be criticized by the tourists on the internet. He further emphasized that the
business of e-commerce in tourism, is to serve people to have better
experience. The private sector is going to become great part of tourism development, suggesting as a new trend that different from history. A figure is impressive
too, posted by him: 95% of the tourists do reviews online before they set off
the trip.
Session 5: leveraging the Cultural & Heritage
Assets of Tourism
In this session, three speakers are from
three countries, Georgia, Lebanon and China. They shared their own projects and
cases about how their companies or their governments did to maintain promote and
preserve the cultural heritage at the same time. As China owns 48 culture
heritages, Mr. You Ji, Urban Specialist, EAP region, World Bank shared his
project of culture heritage travel in Gansu Province, while protecting the
historical site, triggering the tourism and prospering the economics. I found
the video he shared on the meeting, here is the video:
Further mentioned, on youtube, “World Bank
Group” owns a program to archive the official video, which includes some
interesting video about tourism.
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| The program of "World Bank Group" on the Youtube |
I also appreciate that the forum allowed
guests to write on the yellow sheets for questions during the speech and the
staff continued collecting them, and delivered to the host for quick answer. In
this process, the events do not waste time to deliver microphone and the
questions can be selected by the host, ensuring the valid questions provide
valuable information for guests.
But, the forum arranged each coffee break or
lunch after every two sessions, which was 15 minutes. I went through two coffee time, each one was too shorts in 15 minutes so that people continued talking and the staffs had to
tap on the cup to remind the guest to come back to the Preston Hall. From my
perspective, the break time should be modified into 30 minutes for guest to relax
for a bit while longer.
As a professional forum, the penal discussed serious questions about policy and decision making process, and it was at the afternoon, so it's common that I found that the many people left in the middle of the meeting and attendees became sleepy. Actually, the forum should add some interesting games or videos during the break or add some performance shows in the agenda, so that people can be have a great break. The meeting should make attendees more engaged and also make them more focus on the penal when they return to the seat.
As a professional forum, the penal discussed serious questions about policy and decision making process, and it was at the afternoon, so it's common that I found that the many people left in the middle of the meeting and attendees became sleepy. Actually, the forum should add some interesting games or videos during the break or add some performance shows in the agenda, so that people can be have a great break. The meeting should make attendees more engaged and also make them more focus on the penal when they return to the seat.
I learn a lot about world bank, as I got in
touch with the speakers, knowing that the tourism department in world bank is
linked with culture and heritage issue, helping the sites to protect culture
and develop out of poverty, as the motto shown in the lobby: "Our dream is a world free of poverty". While I talked with the guests, some of them
really appreciated the world bank group to organize this event, to help leaders
in different parts of the world gather together, to share the ideas of sustainable
tourism, business environment, technology and the culture heritage, learning
about how to manage or cooperate with destination management.
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| The motto of World Bank Group at the lobby: OUR DREAM IS A WORLD FREE OF POVERTY |
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