Mr. Zurab Alavidze, Leader of the Georgian Delegation to the United Nations World Tourism Organization during the recently held Executive Council, which saw the election of its candidate as the new Secretary General is confident the newly elected UNWTO head, will work hard to connect people throughout the world with tourism.

Describing the win as very important for Georgia, Mr. Alavidze who is also the Minister of Regional Development and Infrastructure said: This win is very important to our country. We are all one family and tourism is connecting us to each other and this organization is very important. I am sure our candidate, the elected Secretary General will work very hard to connect people to improve people and tourism all over the world and also help African, Asian and European countries to be more connected to each other.
He added that as a country that relies heavily on tourism, economically, they are happy that they now have a representation at the UNWTO.

‘’ Georgia is a very old country with very big traditions, with centuries of these traditions and tourism is the main contributor to our GDP and tourism is very important. This is a very important win for Georgia, we are a small country and a representation of our citizen in a UN organization is very important to us and so we are very happy and we are very proud. ‘’

The Georgian Candidate H.E. Zurab Pololikashvili fended off competition from four other contenders to clinch the UNWTO Secretary General post, beating his closest contender, Zimbabwe’s Dr. Walter Mzembi by 18 votes to 15 in the May 12th Executive Council elections.

The 105th session of the UNWTO Executive Council, has since recommended H.E. Pololikashvili as nominee for the post of Secretary-General for the four-year-period starting January 2018.
The recommendation of the UNWTO Executive Council will be submitted to the upcoming 22nd UNWTO General Assembly for ratification (11-16 September 2017, Chengdu, China).

touristswatch.com