CED World Centre of Excellence for Destinations

 

ADDRESS BY FRANCESCO FRANGIALLI,

SECRETARY-GENERAL OF THE WORLD TOURISM ORGANIZATION,

AT THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON

“DESTINATION MANAGEMENT AND MARKETING:

TWO STRATEGIC TOOLS TO ENSURE QUALITY TOURISM”

Bordeaux, France, 16 September 2008

Mr. Mayor of Bordeaux,

Mr. Director of Tourism,

Mr. Chairman of the Aquitaine Regional Tourism Committee,

Distinguished Ministers, Ambassadors, Members of Parliament and Local Authorities of the UNWTO member countries,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The World Tourism Organization is holding today and tomorrow, in Bordeaux, its fourth Conference on Destination Management and Marketing. It follows the one we held last year in Budapest. Our Conference is presented as a prelude to the European Forum that will take place here the day after tomorrow. But, in matters of tourism –as in love or food– the appetizers are sometimes more savoury than the main course, except of course if the latter is accompanied by a fine Bordeaux wine! As Brillat-Savarin, a master to us all, wrote: “The table is the only place where one never gets bored during the first hour.” I would add: this is what makes the difference between a good meal and a conference like this one!

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I thank the City of Bordeaux which, through the presence of its Mayor, welcomes us this morning and will offer us a reception this evening, as well as the Director of Tourism, Michel Champon, and the region of Aquitaine, represented by the Chairman of its Regional Tourism Committee, Louis Lucchini, who are participating in this event. I would like to add that at the closing ceremony, we will be joined by Secretary of State Hervé Novelli, the Representative of the European Commission, Pedro Ortún, and the Chairman of the Departmental Tourism Committee of Gironde, Philippe Dorthe.

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Why does the UNWTO devote so much attention to what we call destinations: cities, islands, territories…, which receive tourists?

Because, in the context of increasingly keen global competition in tourism, destinations today play a key role. Visitors choose an attraction, a resort, a city or a region, rather than a country. They place a premium on well-recognized entities: a brand, an image. Strange to say, many people around the world will identify 

Bordeaux thanks to the fame of its wines, without necessarily associating its name with France, or even less, with the Aquitaineregion.

This major new development on the demand side corresponds to a profound transformation in the repartition of competences in the field of tourism in receiving countries. In the countries of the North, democratic aspirations are leading to increasingly marked decentralization. Even here, in France, a long tradition of centralization is waning. But this movement is also gaining momentum in the large countries of the South such as South Africa, China, India or Mexico, where provinces, states, large touristic cities, or convention centres are now major partners of tourism activity.

This decentralization, in itself, is to a large extent positive because it leads to decisions on investment, tourism product development and promotion being made as close as possible to the realities on the ground. The only concern –and it is not a negligible one– is taking care to not push things to the extreme, and maintaining the possibility of creating a national tourism development strategy –the Director of Tourism will agree with me– and at the same time, ensuring that effective tools for dialogue and cooperation are put into place among the different decision-making levels.

Decentralization in tourism enables destinations to better specialize themselves and allows local actors to increase their degree of professionalism. It is also at the regional and local levels that governance can be fine-tuned, and that partnership between public and private actors can be forged. In many respects, partnership in the area of tourism is the key to excellence.

The UNWTO, an intergovernmental organization, has for a long time wrestled with the issue of decentralization and the role that should be accorded to local authorities. At the same time that the governments of large countries, developed or not, were accepting a reduction in their powers at the central level in favour of local public authorities, they strove to maintain their privileges in the field of international relations and representation in multilateral organizations.

Under the current Statutes of the UNWTO, local authorities can be represented in the Organization, whether they be autonomous territories as Associate Members, or local tourism authorities as Affiliate Members. Many of them are with us today in this hall. The existence of this direct relationship between local authorities and an intergovernmental institution has for a long time been difficult to accept for certain States concerned with remaining the exclusive actors in international life.

The UNWTO has overcome this problem. It has taken steps, through an amendment of its Statutes that is in the process of ratification, toward the unification of these two categories. In doing so, it reaffirms the technical nature of the participation within the Organization of tourism institutions representing local authorities, while maintaining and encouraging such participation. These entities are currently grouped together in a Destination Council, which is chaired by André Vallérand.

But, more that the legal approach, it is the technical approach that should be favoured. We believe that it is the mission of the UNWTO to both promote the good governance of destinations, and also, through the latter, foster higher quality in the products they offer.

This is the objective of the World Centre of Excellence for Destinations –the CED– that we have established in partnership with the Federal Government of Canada, the Government of the Province of Quebec, and a group of Affiliate Members, among them, prestigious academic institutions such as the University of Quebec in Montreal and George Washington University. This initiative has received the backing of our General Assembly at its session in Cartagena de Indias last year.

Our General Assembly highlighted two important elements of this policy. The first lies in the constitution of a group of pilot countries in which the major regions of the world are represented, which now belong to the Consultative Council of the Centre of Excellence. These countries are Andorra, Canada, China, France, Mexico, Monaco, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Spain. I would like to acknowledge the presence of the delegations of several of them in this hall.

Secondly, the Assembly expressed its interest in the establishment of a System for Measuring the Excellence of Destinations (SMED).

The SMED is not the first endeavour of its kind. The UNWTO, for example, cooperates with the World Economic Forum to evaluate the competitiveness of 130 touristic countries. But this exercise has its methodological limitations, because if the country under consideration –due to its small size and its nature– in itself constitutes a destination with a well-defined product, the evaluation is easy; but it is an entirely different matter in the case of a large country with a range of diversified products and with destinations of very different nature.

In the methodology that is currently being refined, the SMED is considering utilizing other work carried out by the UNWTO itself (the SBEST system of our Education Council, or the methodology developed to assist China in its “best tourism cities” policy), as well as by other actors such as, for example, National Geographic, which is, incidentally, one of the partners of the Centre of Excellence.

We are in the experimentation stage in this area. The idea is to put into place a guaranteed evaluation (as opposed to a certification or a label), that is quantifiable (in eleven precisely defined fields), that is based on objective criteria, and that is applied to a circumscribed and homogenous territory. A presentation of the SMED and of the activities of the Centre in Montreal will be given to you in the course of this Conference.

The SMED is intended to be used in the following ways: as a diagnostic tool providing a tourism destination’s decision-makers and tourism operators with the most faithful and comprehensive possible snapshot of the situation of a tourism destination at a given point in time; a tool that shows the strengths and weaknesses of the destination evaluated, thus facilitating steps for the improvement of its management; a tool for the management of the destination in order to maintain the level of quality attained; a tool for cooperation, by bringing actors together and mobilizing the various operators with a view to common objectives; a marketing tool to establish the market positioning and branding of the destination; a tool for comparative analysis enabling a destination to determine where it stands relative to others; and lastly, a communication tool vis-à-vis the destination’s clientele, in order to benefit from the image of quality accredited by the evaluation.

The trial phase, which is in progress, is aimed at validating the system so as to ensure irreproachable rigour and a sufficiently broad scope in order to make it possible to consider all possible specific cases. The credibility of the future system of measurement depends on this. The SMED must be transparent in order to inspire confidence, and the findings of the evaluation must be indisputable.

The SMED must be based on a graduated measurement mechanism, with grades for each field of excellence considered, and will not seek to establish a single overall grade, or a fortiori, a ranking.

Politically speaking, a judicious approach of this type is undoubtedly the most acceptable one for the majority of the members of the UNWTO; this is why it has encouraged such an approach and does not wish to go in the direction of the presentation of a world ranking of destinations of the sort represented by the Human Development Index of the United Nations Development Programme, or, in our own field, the kind proposed by the World Economic Forum. In tourism, competition is keen and there is a high level of sensitivity regarding these matters…

Ladies and Gentlemen,

As you can see, the World Tourism Organization has placed high hopes on the establishment of the World Centre of Excellence for Destinations and the development of the System for Measuring the Excellence of Destinations.

The challenges are great. Countries remain divided with regard to an initiative that they do not yet understand very well. Educational efforts are necessary in order to make its benefits known to all, and I hope that this Conference contributes to this aim. The CED must demonstrate that, through the sale of services to enable the destinations evaluated to advance along the path of quality, it can achieve financial independence and even become profitable within a period of three years, at which time contributions from the Canadian public sector will be ending.

The UNWTO does not want, generally speaking, to finance the CED –it is up to the destinations who benefit from it to do so–but starting in 2010, it should include in its budget the necessary allocations to make it possible for the destinations of the poorest countries, if they wish, to participate in the system without running into the obstacle of the cost of the evaluation. Saint-Tropez will pay to have itself evaluated; Saint-Louis in Senegal will not!

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The CED and the SMED are major areas of work. Encouraging transparent and active competition among destinations that are competing in a globalized market is a lofty aim. Especially so when this global market is poised to grow in considerable proportions, going from 900 million arrivals last year to the 1.6 billion that we forecast for 2020. The effort is well worth it. If the system proves itself, the entire tourism chain will be the better for it; and beyond this, gains will also be felt by tourists, who 

will be provided with better services, as well as by the territories, which will advance on the path to tourism that is of higher quality and more sustainable, to the benefit of the people who live in them.

It is my hope that many of the destinations represented in this hall will join this quality initiative tomorrow, most especially, the City of Bordeaux, the Region of Aquitaine and the Gironde Department, that are hosting us today. I cannot help but think that if you have come here today from just about everywhere, it is for this reason, and not only for the pleasure of visiting a city and a region that provide the best that French tourism has to offer!

Thank you.