With more and more countries progressively lifting their lockdowns, opening borders, and reopening businesses, tourism enters a phase of recovery, and EFFAT is convinced that it is now time to rethink tourism and to promote the sector with an innovative sustainable vision.
For the future, we must strive for a sustainable and socially responsible tourism model, based e.g. on the quality of services, employment stability, investments in human capital, qualification and training, economic sustainability, reinvestment of profits to ensure sustainable growth, visitor loyalty, diversification of the offer, reduction of seasonality, innovation around a fair digital transition, minimisation of the impact on the environment, generation of greater added value for the society as a whole, and a better share of benefits between tourism businesses, tourists, destinations, local communities and workers.
To be prepared for EFFAT’s involvement in the upcoming initiatives at European level, such as the “European Tourism Convention” planned for autumn 2020, or the elaboration of the roadmap “European Agenda for Tourism 2050”, EFFAT issued the Orientation Paper “Relaunching and rethinking tourism with a more sustainable and socially responsible vision” at the beginning of July 2020 and shared it widely with EU institutions and other stakeholders. Please find the various language versions here EN | FR | DE | HR | ES
The paper proposes a wide range of actions for a more sustainable and socially responsible tourism, e.g. in the fields of economic support for the tourism sector, of employment, of health & safety, and of qualification & training.
In all messages, EFFAT emphasises the importance of involving trade unions and social partners at every level in the elaboration and implementation of policies to relaunch the sector, to ensure a more socially responsible tourism model in future.
EFFAT member organisations are invited to use this orientation paper for their activities at national level and are called upon to continue keeping EFFAT informed about the situation in their countries and their activities.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, EFFAT has undertaken / was involved in a series of initiatives to make our voices heard at European level when it comes to mitigating the impact of COVID-19 on tourism workers’ health, jobs and income, and to preparing for the recovery of the sector, e.g.:
- EFFAT-HOTREC: Social partners of the European Horeca sector recommend companies and employees to act responsibly, and call upon public authorities for support measures during and after the COVID-19 outbreak, 11 March 2020
- European Tourism Manifesto Alliance: European Tourism Sector demand measures to mitigate COVID-19 impact, 17 March 2020
- EFFAT-HOTREC: Recommendations of the Social Partners of the European Horeca sector: Roadmap towards lifting COVID-19 containment measures, 27 April 2020
- EFFAT: Letter to EU institutions: Recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic – time to prepare for a more sustainable and socially responsible tourism, 30 April 2020
- EFFAT, FoodDrinkEurope, FoodServiceEurope, HOTREC: Joint Statement of EU Social Partners in Food Industry and Hospitality Sector: Urgent support needed for hospitality-tourism sector in COVID-19 crisis, 12 May 2020
- EFFAT: EFFAT preliminary reaction to the European Commission’s Tourism & Transport Package, 14 May 2020
- European Tourism Manifesto Alliance: Commission Guidelines are paving the way to recovery for the European Tourism Sector from the COVID-19 crisis, 20 May 2020
In all this, EFFAT has been closely cooperating with the IUF who issued excellent information and guidance, and we discussed common initiatives with the other European and global trade union federations representing workers in the tourism value chain, ETF, UNI Europa, IUF and ITF, with whom EFFAT has been cooperating in the European Trade Union Liaison Committee on Tourism (ETLC) for many years.
