Award for member of the World Tourism Forum Lucerne Advisory Board

Vijay Poonoosamy, Vice President International & Public Affairs of Etihad Airways, Chairman of the IATA Industry Affairs Committee and Member of the Advisory Board of the World Tourism Forum, received the International Intellectuals Award “The Great Son of the Soil” from the All-India Conference of Intellectuals during a ceremony at the India International Centre in New Delhi on Saturday 26 February 2011.

The All-India Conference of Intellectuals stated that the Award was “in recognition of the distinguished services rendered by Shri Vijay Poonoosamy to the Society at Large and to international civil aviation in particular.”

The Award was presented to Mr Poonoosamy by Dr B.P. Singh, Governor of Sikkim and former Home Secretary of India and Dr Busham Narain Singh (photo), President of the All-India Conference of Intellectuals and former Governor of 7 States in India, in the presence of Dr AR Kidwai, President of the Union Public Service Commission of India and former Governor of Harayana and Bihar.

All India Conference of Intellectuals was inaugurated in 1980 by late Srimati Indira Gandhi.

World Tourism Forum Lucerne relies on the support of an international advisory council whose members include Samih Sawiris (Chairman & CEO Orascom Development Holding), Thea Chiesa (Head of Aviation, Travel and Tourism World Economic Forum), Andreas Meyer (CEO of Swiss Federal Railways), Sir David Michels (Deputy Chairman Marks & Spencer Plc., former CEO of Hilton Group) and Geoffrey Lipman (Special Advisor to the Secretary General of UNWTO, Director of greenearth.travel). 

Sabine Biedermann, Primus Communications

Second World Tourism Forum Lucerne, 13–15 April 2011

The World Tourism Forum Lucerne is scheduled to take place for the second time at the Swiss Museum of Transport in Lucerne from 13–15 April 2011. Since its successful start in 2009, the Forum has gained the status of a major summit of the international tourism industry. Several prominent speakers from Switzerland and abroad have already agreed to participate in the event, where they will engage in a solution-oriented dialogue on the challenges facing the tourism industry in the coming decade.

Tourism continues to be the world's largest and fastest growing industry, one that has a gigantic influence on economies around the globe. Based on estimates by the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), the number of international arrivals is set to virtually double from 880 million in 2009 to 1.6 billion in 2020. At the same time, tourism is facing a number of major challenges, such as globalization, demographic shifts, sustainability, price pressures and social media, to mention only a few. Today, such issues can no longer be solved by the tourism industry alone but call for a joint effort among all players in fields of business, government, science and finance.

The World Tourism Forum Lucerne is a platform aimed at facilitating joint action at the executive level. During regular meetings in Lucerne, CEOs will have the opportunity to discuss and arrive at viable solutions to the challenges that lie ahead.

World Tourism Forum Lucerne 2011 will be dedicated to the topic “Sustainability in tourism: Challenges, pathways and intelligent business models”, and small groups are tasked with discussing the sustainability aspects of the ecological, economic and social dimensions of tourism and with developing new business models. Tim Jackson, Economics Commissioner of the Sustainable Development Commission in the UK, and James Hogan, the CEO of Etihad Airways, will start off by posing the question: Is prosperity possible without growth?

Sabine Biedermann, Primus Communications