KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) - The global tourism industry must find ways to deal with environmental changes and promote sustainable tourism that will also help reduce poverty, a top official with the UN's tourism agency said Monday.
Francesco Frangialli, secretary-general of the World Tourism Organization, said the industry faces numerous challenges as it enters a new phase of growth.
"It is increasingly apparent that tourism has become both the victim and the vector of climate change and of the reduction of biodiversity," Frangialli said at an international tourism conference.
"We should propose avenues of research and instruments of action that will allow tourism to transform itself, and in doing so, survive climate change and progressively lessen its contribution to it," he said.