2023-03-20
UJHELYI István
Member of European Parliament
Vice-Chair, TRAN Committee
Chairman, EU-China One Belt One Road Culture & Tourism Development Committee
Full text:
Distinguish guests, dear friends, Da Jia Hao!
As all we know, Tourism industry was deeply damaged three years ago world widely. The entire international travel dropped by back the numbers of 20 years ago. However, it grows as vigorous as in the ruins, the industry is recovering in a very fast tempo. After the difficult years, the sentiment for travelling From China to Europe between January and April has shown a significant improvement compared to the same periods in 2022 and 2021. According to the Long-haul barometer published by ETC, of Chinese respondent wishing to travel overseas in early 2023, 63% have a European destination in mind.
In 2020, 62 million jobs were lost, representing a drop of 18.6%, leaving just 271 million employed across the sector globally, compared to 333 million in 2019. That’s why Pansy Ho discussed how can they support the education in the tourism industry, to give better skills and good education systems to the future of the tourism. For example, they established one UNWTO academic center and one university institute in Switzerland where I am the president of the board, so if here in the meeting room somebody would like to cooperate with the education institution please contact me.
Ten years ago, The One Belt One Road Initiative was published, I realized that the initiative is not just about strengthening trade relations, it is a new dream, initiated by China that calls the countries of a restless world for a common purpose: development and peace. It aims to bring more stability to the Eurasian region and connect its nations on a previously unprecedented scale, and in my opinion, tourism industry can be a perfect part of the initiative.
Between 2013 and 2015, during those meetings with Chinese high level officials, I always talked with them about the importance of tourism industry, that how it can help the relationship development between regions, how it can promote people to people dialogue, how it can bring peace and prosperity to the world. That’s why I founded the EU-China One Belt One Road Culture and Tourism Development Committee back in 2016, to promote a deep cooperation in this area between EU and China. Now after ten years, we are all happy to see that tourism cooperation becomes a strategic pillar part of one belt one road project. The EU-China One Belt One Road Culture and Tourism Development Committee played a key role since its creation in order to further develop the cooperation and strengthen the diplomatic ties between China and the European Union.
Let me take this opportunity and share with you one of our greatest achievements, which I am really proud of. The EU-China Year of Tourism back in 2018 that I initiated as Member of the European Parliament on the one hand and as President of the EU-China One Belt One Road Culture and Tourism Development Committee on the other hand was an outstandingly successful initiative. It was an essential summary of my belief and conviction that cooperation on areas such as tourism and culture can have a spill-over effect on more sensitive issues between the European Union and China.
As I always emphasized, tourism is the industry of peace and mutual understanding. All over the world, we had to rebuild tourism but on a sustainable way, where we focus more destinations which are not well-known but could be a smart destination in the future. Digitalisation, facilitation of travel, make easy access and transparent, quick control at the airports facilitate the travel. Connectivity is crucial and investment in transport infrastructure is one of the main elements of a successful tourism.
WTA event is really important today to give a clear sign that the tourism cooperation gets a new start between China and Europe. I want to say thank you to the organizer of the event. As a family member of WTA, my OBOR committee will continue to support WTA and cooperate with them, we will try our best to bring Tourism back to track.
Thank you very much!