Associations to cooperate in cultural heritage preservation, tourism training

Press release from “Good Tour­ism” Insight Part­ner the World Tour­ism Asso­ci­ation for Cul­ture & Her­it­age (WTACH):

Two glob­al tour­ism asso­ci­ations are join­ing forces to dove­tail key object­ives in their fields of cul­tur­al her­it­age pro­tec­tion and voca­tion­al training.

A new part­ner­ship agree­ment between the World Tour­ism Asso­ci­ation for Cul­ture & Her­it­age (WTACH) and the World Asso­ci­ation for Hos­pit­al­ity & Tour­ism Edu­ca­tion & Train­ing (AMFORHT) cov­ers wide ran­ging activ­it­ies such as events, sem­inars, vlogs and know­ledge exchange.

The two organ­isa­tions have agreed to seek out areas and oppor­tun­it­ies of mutu­al bene­fit that will raise aware­ness, attract new mem­bers and help to achieve pos­it­ive long-term res­ults for the broad spec­trum of travel, tour­ism and hos­pit­al­ity. Recip­roc­al com­pli­ment­ary mem­ber­ship for the dur­a­tion of the agree­ment is also part of the agreement.

WTACH Pres­id­ent Chris Flynn (pic­tured above, left) believes that the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic has cre­ated an oppor­tun­ity for cul­tur­al attrac­tions and her­it­age sites to rebal­ance the import­ance of pre­serving and pro­tect­ing these assets with an ever-grow­ing demand from loc­al and inter­na­tion­al tourists.

“Work­ing with AMFORHT will cre­ate a wealth of oppor­tun­it­ies for our most treas­ured tour­ism attrac­tions,” said Flynn.

AMFORHT Pres­id­ent, Phil­ippe Fran­cois (pic­tured above, right) believes that the tour­ism industry will rebound in the upcom­ing months. “Tour­ism has always been a resi­li­ent industry that over­comes crises due to the thirst that we all have of enrich­ing ourselves from all cultures.”

He added: “As we share com­mon object­ives, human val­ues, and stra­tegic ori­ent­a­tions with WTACH, we’ll work togeth­er to strengthen human resource exchanges and edu­ca­tion with­in des­tin­a­tions around the planet.”

AMFORHT was cre­ated by the UNWTO over 50 years ago to study and pro­mote, inter­na­tion­ally, the devel­op­ment of voca­tion­al train­ing in the tour­ism sec­tor at large (includ­ing hotels, res­taur­ants, trans­port & recre­ation) to bet­ter match train­ing to new con­di­tions in the work­place. The Asso­ci­ation is headquartered in France. 

WTACH seeks to estab­lish clear goals, object­ives and strategies for the pro­tec­tion of cul­tur­al her­it­age through respons­ible and sus­tain­able tour­ism prac­tices. Work­ing in col­lab­or­a­tion with pub­lic, private and spe­cial­ist aca­dem­ic sec­tor organ­isa­tions, WTACH determ­ines best prac­tice eth­ic­al prin­ciples and stand­ards in line with the most robust glob­al research avail­able. WTACH was estab­lished in 2018 by Chris Flynn, formerly Dir­ect­or – Pacific at the Pacific Asia Travel Asso­ci­ation. The Asso­ci­ation is based in New South Wales, Australia.

Fea­tured image (top of post): Chris Flynn of WTACH (left) and Phil­ippe Fran­cois of AMFORHT