By Roy Weavers

The Ministry of Tourism of the Republic of South Africa, with the support of UN World Toutism Organisation (UNWTO), will host a Tourism Ministers’ Meeting (T20) under the theme “Travel and tourism: stimuli for the global economy” from 22 to 24 February 2010 in Johannesburg.

Tourism ministers from around the world meeting at the UNWTO General Assembly (October 2009, Astana, Kazakhstan) expressed a strong sentiment that tourism should be further mainstreamed in global economic decision making, with a focus on the sector’s efforts to build resilience, stimulate growth and development and support the transformation to the Green Economy.

Travel and tourism can make a valuable contribution to the economic recovery, and can be an important pillar of the global efforts to unlock enhanced economic growth, infrastructure development, trade promotion, poverty eradication and particularly job creation.

In addition to ministers responsible for tourism and the UNWTO Secretary-General, the meeting will be attended by high-level representatives and experts from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the United Nations Social and Economic Commission for Asia, the International Labour Organization (ILO), the African Union, and the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC).

Editors comments: It's all well and good having these high profile get togethers, I'm sure they are great fun, but shouldn't they generate an action plan rather than just generating a lot more green house gas from the hot air that generally comes out of politicians mouths. Get the airlines on side to provide enough planes to carry the tourists, cut the red tape and make sure the government funded tourism boards are spending the money in the right areas and that isn't necessairly outside their own areas. 

It's time for the destinations themselves to take responsibility for themselves and they can't do that with traditional forms of marketing, which, let's face it are currently not working.  Comments please...