Mouhamed Faouzou Dème is a 60-year-old Senegalese tourism expert. He has 36 years of experience in different tourism subsectors. He holds diplomas in tourism, hospitality, air transport, and airport management. He worked for more than thirty years as managing director of travel agencies and hotel establishments and Technical Advisor to several tourism ministers of Senegal until 2022. After this, he devoted his time to coaching and training young tourism professionals.
Mouhamed is a team player, which may be essential for this critical election for the World Tourism Organization.
His career has spanned the private and public sectors, where he has held various positions as a business leader and investor in the tourism industry.
He is president and member of several tourism associations in Senegal and other parts of the world.
At the same time, he shares his expertise as a lecturer in numerous universities and institutes in Senegal. He remains an influential leader in the field of tourism, holding key positions such as President of the African Francophone Tourism Council, President of the “Parlons Tourisme” group in Senegal, and President of the National Observatory for the Development of Tourism of Senegal. He is also an Ambassador of the African Tourism Board and a World Tourism Hero. Mouhamed has been decorated with the highest distinctions by the government of Senegal.
Summary of his policy statement
The candidate must present a roadmap of his management policy for the 2026/2030 mandate.
Mouhamed presented his declaration today with a strong focus on Africa, but he is ready to work with experts worldwide to make his policies relevant to everyone.
Mouhamed Faouzou Dème explains: These are broad outlines and priorities to which I commit myself with determination.
I want to assist in bringing peace and consolidating it in the world’s tourist territories. My goal is to bring back the countries that have left UN Tourism and attract new member countries to join this global body.
I want to enhance the human capital of all tourism sector workers and create wealth for Member States through smart tourism.
As an African, I would like to assist African governments in training, building capacity, and improving their achievements.
I strive for transparency in the decision-making, management, and governance bodies of Member States in general and, in particular, insist on the sober and virtuous governance of UN Tourism.
It’s important to clean up and rationalize UN Tourism’s finances so that the organization can be more effective in responding to member states’ concerns and promoting equity, equality, and sustainability.
Give space, merit, and respect befitting each Member State and ensure solidarity and overtourism to preserve the environment and social equity in tourist areas.
My priorities:
My team will centralize security, investments, wealth creation, peace, culture, heritage, populations, training, and promotion in our actions by methodically and pragmatically aligning ourselves with the 2030 agenda linked to the Sustainable Development Goals. This is a United Nations benchmark par excellence for tourism and the environment.
Next comes the restructuring and reorganization of the UN Tourism bodies. We must redesign and approve a new map of the world’s tourism potential based on specifications that give priority to heritage, culture, and the history of indigenous territories and peoples.
My Goal
- 1 Optimize the organization’s management to make the directives and resolutions issued by the various decision-making bodies more operational.
- 2. Make tourism and travel services more democratic and accessible to a greater number of visitors worldwide.
- 3 Strengthen security and the personal data of travelers, as well as their well-being and respect for the environment.
- 4 Create more wealth and opportunities for populations and investors.
- 5 Improve our contributions to member countries’ tourism development strategy and policy.
- 6 Increase the number of member countries, affiliated members, and professional organizations, particularly tourism communication and promotion agencies and tourism research students.
- 7 Reexamining the governance of UN Tourism to make it more inclusive, fairer, balanced, and equitable is essential.
My development policy
Its focus is supporting effective local leadership in member countries and listening attentively to concerns.
It’s necessary to audit the current governance of UN Tourism, which shows a democratic decline. Specific continents appear marginalized, very little is listened to, and the secretary-general’s mandate is limited to ensure his re-election. We want to adopt a code on tourism investment and cleanliness.
We will pass a resolution making the tourism code obligatory in each member country and requiring its update every five years. We will also organize World Cuisines Day and tourist circuits around the world to promote local consumption and the promotion of local culinary art.
From now on, we will place particular emphasis on tourist resorts, which will have to focus more on sustainable practices, such as using renewable energies, responsible water resource management, and reducing waste to benefit from support and technical assistance from UN Tourism.
We will scrupulously ensure through a directive the balance between consumption and the lack of seriousness of certain companies regarding CSR, the control of which escapes the authorities of the member countries. We will favor and encourage local, integrated rural tourism, tourism of value, and experiences to give a particular character to the new tourism vision in villages, outskirts, historic sites, etc., to retain populations and create a dynamic, thriving economy.
We have observed that investment is one of the primary keys to developing the tourism economy. The sector’s multidimensional and multisectoral nature, combined with the dynamics of sources of investment capital, offers a complex understanding of the control and knowledge of investments in tourism.
This is enough reason for us to develop an investment code to help tourism destinations capture significant financial flows needed for their growth, and we are considering creating a global tourism investment bank.
My new management policy for destinations
The new Secretary General must be a conductor who knows how to read, listen, hear, and understand the sounds coming from all the devices and authorities of tourism. This means that we are and must remain at the exclusive service of member countries and tourism, with a single dashboard working to achieve the 2030 goals.
This agenda is made for the populations, the planet, prosperity, and peace, and it is achieved through partnerships that respond to the concerns of the sector and tourism stakeholders around the world. For this reason, UN Tourism must play a greater role, both prospective and decisive, in promoting the development of tourism and territories.
I will work for broad consultation, large-scale promotion, and inclusive management of integrated rural tourism, called responsible or sustainable tourism, accessible to all without forgetting the cultural, traditional, and religion.
The elegance of words and the beauty of policy declarations cannot supplant the nobility of the right and duty to serve global tourism with rigor, self-sacrifice, courtesy, and firmness when it comes to respecting the rights and benefits of each member country.
I will highlight the concept of intelligent intercultural destinations with more coherence and share technological solutions with a view to new solutions for better support for destination accessibility, as well as the possibilities associated with geo-referenced data, big data, and mutual data platforms.
Enormous challenges await us with Artificial Intelligence, which allows better management and protection of the environment.
Yes, my project for Africa is that this vast, very rich, unusual, and less known continent, which has long been on the sidelines for UN Tourism, must be recognized as a major destination because it conceals enormous potential on the socio-cultural, economic, and environmental levels.
This Africa must find its place prominently in UN Tourism programs and projects, without forgetting certain parts of Europe and Asia. Priority must be given to disadvantaged areas threatened by insecurity, climate change, population exodus, and tourism decline.
I am committed to working in close collaboration with the bodies dedicated to raising member countries’ awareness of the importance of the quality of equipment and materials in tourist accommodation, the diversification of the ranges and capacities of beds offered, and approval in terms of standard of camps, sites, eco-lodges, and homestays, and a proposal aimed at reducing intermediaries in the tourism value chain by individuals to reduce the high cost of African destinations
That, dear stakeholders in the world of tourism, wherever you are, summarizes my presentation and my declaration of policy and management 2026/2023 for UN Tourism, of course, with the support and participation of all for a resounding success.
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