Kazakhstan delegation, headed by Kairbek Uskenbayev - the Chairman of the Committee for Tourism Industry of the Ministry of Tourism and Sports of the Republic of Kazakhstan, participated in the 46th Meeting of the Regional Commission for Europe of the World Tourism Organization and Technical seminar “Innovations in Tourism : Adapting to Changes”, 23-25 May, Bled city, Slovenia.
In the framework of the second plenary meeting in the afternoon Mr. Uskenbayev addressed to the audience with a view to provide the support by the member-states of the organization the initiatives of the Republic of Kazakhstan concerning membership of Kazakhstan in the UNWTO Executive Council, and hosting the Session of the UNWTO General Assembly in 2009 in Astana.
In the course of the meeting discussed issues concerning regional activity and coordination with other regional representations of the organization. Member-states considered the intention of the Secretary-General to unite the regional representations for Europe and Middle East. The question will be solved on the coming meeting of the Commissions in November in Colombia, where candidatures for membership in the executive Council also will be elected.
At present 4 countries applied as candidatures of the Europe regional Commission – Kazakhstan, Croatia, Russian Federation and Romania.
Issues of the General Program of Work for 2006-2007 and draft of the Program of Work for 2008-200 were discussed.
During three days delegation negotiated with representatives of the National Tourism Administrations of Azerbaijan, Croatia, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal, Russian Federation, Slovenia, Serbia, Turkey, Poland, France concerning further development of the cooperation and support of Kazakhstan initiatives during the next meeting of Commission in November.
Most of the members of the meeting adhered to the position to support Kazakhstan in its efforts to enter the Executive Council of the World Tourism Organization.
In the framework of the Technical Seminar were discussed Innovations in tourism, in particular a new approach to investments to tourism, new academic programs, potential of a space tourism, expansion of tour package sales through Internet. A particular attention was devoted to the research in tourism. A representative from Croatia reported about seasonality reduction in tourism destination. Seminar in general awoke a great interest among the participants and conclusions are available on the UNWTO site www.world-tourism.org
