Tenerife will host an annual international academic-professional summit endorsed by UN Tourism

22-06-24

• The CEO of Turismo de Tenerife, Dimple Melwani, stated that this summit "will promote Tenerife as a hub for tourism innovation within its Tenerife Smart Destination strategy".

Tenerife will host an annual international summit between academics and tourism professionals as from 2025. This was announced by the CEO of Turismo de Tenerife, Dimple Melwani, during the closing ceremony of the Tenerife Global Summit 2024, considered one of the most important tourism knowledge meetings in the world. The event, which has been held from Wednesday, 19 June until today, was organised by the University of La Laguna with the participation of the Island Council, through Turismo de Tenerife, and the Scottish University of Strathclyde (Glasgow), and was endorsed by the UN World Tourism Organization.

Dimple Melwani stated that this annual summit on the island "will allow us to continue working on various actions to maintain our leadership in tourism, promote changes and solutions to achieve greater well-being for our residents and offer the best experience to tourists, and thus turn Tenerife into a true hub of tourism innovation, as set out in our Tenerife Smart Destination Strategy, approved last year by the Island Council at the proposal of Turismo de Tenerife".  

The CEO also referred to sustainability, one of the central themes of the Tenerife Global Summit 2024, and its practical application at the summit, "We have calculated and will offset the carbon footprint of the event with the Tenerife Renace project, which includes environmental actions in the area affected by last year's forest fire on the island, which we announced to the Foresta Foundation yesterday. In addition, we have selected responsible suppliers for the summit committed to reuse and recycling, along with zero-kilometre products, and we have disseminated the objectives and best practices that should be taken into account at any event held". Lastly, Dimple Melwani added that "the conclusions of the different workshops held will be analysed and compiled in a declaration of destination outlining the challenges we face in tourism over the next decade".

18 countries and 31 universities present

The closing ceremony also involved the participation of two of the members of the organising committee: Professor Tom Baum from the University of Strathclyde (Scotland) and his counterpart from the University of La Laguna, Eduardo Parra.

Eduardo Parra, who thanked all the participants for having made such an event possible, summarised the figures for the Tenerife Global Summit 2024. "This summit has involved 214 participants from 18 countries, and 31 universities from such countries as Belgium, Canada, China, Colombia, Czech Republic, France, Italy, Mexico, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, Türkiye, the United Kingdom, the United States and Spain, along with 26 companies and 14 organisations and associations".

Tom Baum also expressed his gratitude, and stressed "the connection between universities and the real world. This is not easy to achieve in tourism; theory is important, but so is practice". 

Tenerife Global Summit 2024

The renowned experts who took part in the event included Natalia Bayona, Executive Director of Tourism at the UN, and the President of the Tourism and Society Think Tank, Antonio Santos del Valle. Other leading academics, tourism experts, entrepreneurs, analysts, government officials, universities, R&D+I centres and tourism associations and organisations, such as Dimitrios Buhalis (Bournemouth University), Ion Vilcu (UNWTO), Youcheng Wang (University of Florida) and Sara Dolnicar (the University of Queensland, Australia), to name but a few, also took part.

The summit, in a new and innovative format, was divided into six areas: collaborative governance and smart tourism; new leadership and sustainable and inclusive growth of tourism; the labour market and competitive transformation of destinations; tourism space, companies and people; tourism products, marketing and intelligence; and digital transformation and digitisation of tourism. The sessions were divided into thematic presentations, professional versus academic working sessions, virtual meetings, vertical forums and workshops.