The inaugral Tourise Summit opened in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, last night with a bold ambition to rewrite the rules of travel.

Nearly 8000 delegates have registered to take part in the event, with over 140 speakers taking part in the three-day event.

The event aims to unite governments, businesses, investors, and innovators under one roof to reshape the trillion dollar tourism industry.

The Summit is being held immediately following the 50th United Nations Tourism General Assembly.

Minister of Tourism of Saudi Arabia and Chair of TOURISE, Ahmed Al Khateeb

In his keynote address, Minister of Tourism of Saudi Arabia and Chair of TOURISE, Ahmed Al Khateeb stressed that the event aims to turn bold ideas into real-world solutions and catalyze transformative initiatives that will shape the next 50 years of the global tourism sector.

Al Khateeb states that while there is a lot of uncertainty on the global stage, this event aims to find decisive solutions through interactions.

He adds that last year alone, 1.5 billion people travelled around the world.

Of this, Fiji, which relies heavily on this sector for economic growth, was able to attract around one million of them.

Al Khateeb says based on the report published by Tourise in the last few weeks, there are 357 million people,  working worldwide in this sector and this sector is expected to add another 90 million jobs by 2034.

The report further forecasts that there will be an expected 40 million job gaps in the industry by 2034.

“We discussed in the United Nations General Assembly yesterday and the day before the ideas on how to fill this gap.”

The Minister encouraged participants, especially the private sector, to deliberate on solutions over the next three days to overcome this new challenge.

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