Cabinet accept With the proposal of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs regarding the withdrawal of the Russian Federation from the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO). The order to this effect was signed by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin on Friday, June 10. The text of the document is published in the official gazette. portal legal information.
“Accept the proposal of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs with the relevant federal executive authorities on the withdrawal of the Russian Federation from the World Tourism Organization in accordance with Article 36 of the Federal Law on International Treaties of the Russian Federation. “The head of government said in a decree.
On April 27, 2022, Russia announced its intention to withdraw from the UNWTO “due to the politicization of its activities”. Special military operation in Ukraine and the imposition of sanctions against the Russian Federation.
On the same day, the UNWTO General Assembly at its extraordinary meeting decided to suspend Russia’s membership “due to the ongoing military offensive in Ukraine”. Russia has been a member of the World Tourism Organization since 1991 as the legal successor to the USSR. TASS.
How was the membership of the Russian Federation suspended?
At the end of April, Lithuania, Poland, Slovenia, Ukraine and Guatemala initiated the suspension of Russia’s UNWTO membership.
The World Tourism Organization later considered that conducting a military special operation in Ukraine could result in lost tourism revenues of up to $14 billion.
In response, the head of Rostourism, Zarina Doğuzova, responded with a call not to politicize tourism and not suspend Russia’s membership. She appealed to the fact that matters of territorial integrity and sovereignty of countries do not fall within the jurisdiction of the UNWTO.
“Russia’s exit will be noticed by the world media”
According to experts in the field of tourism, Russia’s withdrawal from the UNWTO will fundamentally change nothing. “This organization seemed valuable to Russian authorities and businesses, primarily as a platform to promote regions, places and projects. That is, hopes are pinned for making new connections, attracting investments.
Image problems have been resolved, but I do not know about the groundbreaking projects with the participation of UNWTO that affect domestic tourism indicators in our country.
UNWTO is headquartered in Madrid, but the local tourism industry is hardly aware of its usefulness. In Europe, there are much more effective network organizers in the travel industry, ”the CEO Tatyana Dmitrova told Gazeta.ru. TourDom.ru.
The editor-in-chief of the portal agrees with him Prof.Travel Artem Chumak. He reminded that many states once left the organization for one reason or another.
“For example, the USA and Belgium ceased to be members in the 1990s. Withdrawn from UNWTO Singapore, Great Britain, Canada, Australia. Some, like Thailand or Malaysia, went out for a few years and then came back. And the Netherlands and Ireland did not participate at all. The reasons why members of the World Tourism Organization left the ranks were different for everyone, often political, but sometimes it was because the size of the contributions did not justify their hopes of joining.
In fact, the UNWTO does not promote tourism destinations, does not have significant powers and has no influence on governments in the field of tourism.
Simply put, membership in this organization is an image step in general. Therefore, the withdrawal of Russia from the UNWTO will most likely be noticed first of all by the world media, but there will be no real consequences for the tourism market of our country, ”Chumak said in an interview with socialbites.ca.
However, some market participants believe that cutting international ties with the largest tourism organization may still have consequences. UNWTO identifies key concepts used in tourism specifically, and also develops a methodology for worldwide accounting – for example, it has created a data dashboard where you can get information about the number of visitors in different countries. GDP generated by tourism about the number of rooms.
“Cooperation with UNWTO has given us hope for the application of internationally accepted accounting methods and the improvement of local statistics, as there are difficulties with this in Russia, as experts have repeatedly said. However, we could not use these tools. At the meetings and sessions of the UNWTO, contacts were established at the highest level with representatives of the government and business structures of the international tourism and hospitality infrastructure. But very few people from the Russian tourist business circles took advantage of these opportunities, ”said the author. TourDom.ru.