Arthur Oberascher, President of the European Travel Commission (ETC), announced the launch of the Vienna Declaration…
Arthur Oberascher, President of the European Travel Commission (ETC), announced the launch of the Vienna Declaration on the Future of European Tourism at ETC`s First Executive Summit which is being held in Vienna. The Declaration is due to be adopted by the members of the European Travel Commission – 33 National Tourist Offices (NTOs) in Europe – at their general meeting.
The aim of the Summit is to highlight the need for concerted action to secure the future of Europe`s tourism industry, to examine the economic environment in which tourism and NTOs operate, and to examine the role of e-marketing in this scenario. The particular focus of this year`s event is e-marketing, and Oberascher stressed the need for Europe`s tourism industry to grasp the opportunities that e-marketing presents. Oberascher called attention to an impending shift in international tourism flows with the emergence of new markets in China, India, Russia and Brazil. He underscored that this put high demands on Europe’s “cultural intelligence”, which he went on to describe as the greatest challenge to Europe’s tourism industry.
The Vienna Declaration supports policy statements on tourism adopted by the European institutions, the Council, the Commission and the Parliament, and the Lisbon Strategy, which aims to make the European Union the most dynamic and competitive economy by 2010. ETC members are convinced that tourism can spearhead the Lisbon Strategy, and that the success of the tourism sector is a yardstick of the success of a service and knowledge-based economy.
Mr Paulo Costa, MEP and Chairman of the European Parliament`s Transport & Tourism Committee, will also lend his support to the ETC’s aims in a video message to be shown at an international press conference.
At the Summit Press Conference which will be moderated by the executive director of the ETC, Mr Robert Franklin, OBE, Oberascher will draw attention to a “paradigm change” facing Europe’s tourism from an “industrialized branch to a ‘high-touch’ branch in which providing guests with excellent service is the central growth factor”. Oberascher together with ETC Vice Presidents, Mrs Petra Hedorfer, chairman of the German National Tourist Board, and Mr Jaako Lehtonen, director of the Finnish Tourist Board, discuss the role of e-marketing, market intelligence and cultural intelligence in marketing Europe.
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