Tourism chief urges world 'solidarity' to defend travel

The World Tourism Organization urged the international community on Nov. 12 to pool its resources to protect travel against terrorism fears that have devastated the industry in Tunisia and Egypt.

"The entire international community has the responsibility to help and support," WTO secretary general Taleb Rifai told AFP on the opening day of a conference on tourism in Gammarth, a northern suburb of Tunis.

"We will never allow the forces of darkness to stop us from travelling to Tunis, to Egypt, to all parts of the world," said the head of the WTO, a United Nations agency.

Rifai said "everybody must help everybody else to make sure that they don't win the battle, and they will not win the battle".

The technological means to fend off terrorism were available, he insisted.

"We have the technological means, we have management abilities to be able to control that. We should uplift and upstage our ability to make travel safe," he said.

"We are not utilizing enough technological means, we are not cooperating enough as an international community in terms of intelligence and sharing information."   

The two-day conference, organized by the WTO and Tunisian government, follows jihadist attacks in Tunis and the seaside resort of Sousse that killed 60 people in March and June, all but one of them foreign tourists.

Tunisia's tourism sector, which accounts for almost 10 percent of Gross Domestic Product and employs 400,000 people, has been brought to a standstill.

Elsewhere in North Africa, tourism to Egypt has plunged after the October 31 crash of a Russian plane which took off from its Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
 
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