 Hello, and thank you all for joining us today for this morning's press conference on the Travel and Tourism Development Index that was released just this morning by the World Economic Forum. This study looks at 117 economies and benchmarks, how they perform on different factors that are critical to the sustainability and resilience of their travel and tourism sectors long term. Fortunately, today I'm joined with an absolutely excellent group of panelists to discuss the report findings, as well as the topic of sustainable travel as a whole. I have with me today President Luis Abinader of the Dominican Republic. I also have Ms. Lauren Upink, Head of Aviation, Travel and Tourism at the World Economic Forum. And finally I have Ms. Ruzina Bahir, CEO of peak.com. Thank you all so much for joining us today. As I mentioned, just this morning the World Economic Forum released its latest Travel and Tourism Development Index. So Lauren, I think I'll go right to you. And can you tell us a little bit about how your team developed this index and what your findings were? Absolutely. So thank you. And the Travel and Tourism Development Index, it's the first edition of this index this year. It actually has built off 15 years of the Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index, but it has been redeveloped with a new framework, new pillars and indicators to really look at how we can build forward in a more sustainable and resilient manner, making the tourism sector more robust and more able to withstand shocks such as the pandemic and others, whether they be environmental or health related or geopolitical. So we've done that by including a number of new indicators related to sustainability, social economic conditions, and really, as you all have seen, the pandemic has impacted the sector dramatically. We estimate that there's 62 million jobs lost, one in five jobs lost globally are estimated to have come from the travel and tourism sector over the period of the pandemic. And we lost about 4.5 trillion in GDP related to travel and tourism. But we are recovering. So fortunately, in January 2022, the improvement we saw in comparison to January 2021 was more in international arrivals than we saw over the growth of the whole of 2021. So there is promise. We're excited. And some markets are really taking opportunity from that. But the recovery is certainly uneven. It's not a surprise to all of you. And that is reliant on different border closures that still remain, vaccination rates in different economies. It also has been impacted by supply chain challenges, labor shortages, and of course, geopolitical conflict. So that recovery is mixed and more will need to be done by a number of economies to really build forward. I wanted to share the exciting part of who tops the index this year. As Japan, they've come in as the new leader in the top 10. And I think they're an excellent example of what we've tried to build with this tool. They perform really well in air transport infrastructure, ground transport infrastructure, which allows people to visit a number of destinations around the country. Our previous edition of the report of the Competitiveness Index showed the risk of things like overcrowding, the degradation of natural and cultural resources, and their ability to disperse tourists and move them around to different destinations for different reasons is part of their success in topping the index. They also do really well on demand drivers. And what we mean is what do you and I want to visit? And we rank that against cultural drivers, natural attractions, and non-leisure attractions. And non-leisure being universities, Forbes 2000 headquarters. What is bringing business travelers to your country too? And so they perform very well across all three of those. So there's different reasons for attracting visitors. And lastly, they perform well on socioeconomic resilience and conditions, which given the impact of the pandemic and the status of a lot of workers in travel and tourism, often being from marginalized groups or from lower economic environments. Having good social security nets, having good workers' rights, good conditions for supporting those workers in times of crisis gives them more ability to really, in the long run, build a resilient, secure sector. And so with that, I'll hand back to you. Thank you so much, Lauren. Mr. President, I'll turn to you now hearing what we just heard from Lauren and considering the future shocks that might come from COVID-19 or the effects of climate change. How are you looking at the future of travel and tourism in the Dominican Republic? Thank you very much. Thank you for this presentation of the World Economic Foreign Index in tourism. I think it's very important all the statistics in order that we can follow up with the appropriate public policies. I see the tourism in the Dominican Republic in a very optimistic and positive way. Of course, we are in very special circumstances. And we have to be followed every week. We have a tourism cabinet, which I am the head of the tourism cabinet. And the minister of tourism is the executive director. We work in every area of the government. Part of this tourism cabinet, we have the minister of health because of the pandemic, the minister of security, of defense, the interior and security and minister of defense in order that we can have just one voice and one executive policies coordinated with all the government. And we had the tourism, just to put an example, from the United States. It has been growing. Now it's starting to grow again, tourism from Canada, which has been our second country of visiting. We had visitors from Russia, but now you know the situation, even from Ukraine, you know the situation. The last plane that came to Kiev before the world was from Punta Cana. The last plane that arrived at the Kiev airport. So that gives you an idea of how tourism was growing in our country. But now it's starting to go to the same level in Latin America, Argentina, Chile, Peru. And Canada is taking the second country for the amount of tourism that goes. We had the best year in the best April ever in terms of tourism. We had the best, we're going to have the best May ever in tourism. We had the best December, and then it came on the ground. And that's why I'm saying that these are times that you have to be on top of the situation in order to take the correct steps and follow up with the correct policies. We were named on the World Tourism Organization as the country that has the best recover in the world. Last year we had approximately more than 75% of pre-COVID. And this year we're going to have, we're going to go to pre-COVID levels. And next year I think we will have the, I don't know if this year, but next year we'll have the best year ever in tourism. So we are very positive, investment has been flowing. This year we'll have the more foreign investment in tourism ever. And speaking about the other and complementary programs for tourism, right now we are building, the private sector is building two theme parks in Punta Cana. One, the Emilia Hotels with Kathmandu and the other, Cap Cana with environmental and special theme park in terms of natural things that we can show in the country. So we are very optimistic, we are very positive. We know we still have at the rest of the year difficulties, but we are prepared to jump on those problems. And as we did with the pandemic, it has public policies that can make the solution. And Dominican Republic has a safety, it's a safety destination, it's in every way, in security, in health. And our people love tourism, and that's I think the most important part. Dominicans love to have a tourist in our country. And because of that and because of the economic climate and incentive for investment, we will continue to grow in a very good way for our economy. Thank you, Mr. President. Ms. Bajir, I wanted to talk to you a little bit about small and local businesses because I know peak.com has worked a lot with that group of companies that does a ton in the travel and tourism sector. How have they adapted to new tourism trends and how might their recovery look different from larger companies in the industry? Yeah, thanks. So with peak.com, just to give folks a little context, we're a platform for experiences. We work with thousands of small businesses to medium-sized businesses in things that range from water sports and zip lining to kind of museum experiences and cooking classes. And so we've had a couple of billion dollars of bookings through the platform. And so we've been really able to work with lots of small businesses and get a sense of what's been going on for them. And I'd say that, first, a record number of SMBs were created during the pandemic in the U.S. And I think that what we do see is entrepreneurs being incredibly creative, especially as you see emerging trends. And I think one of the big emerging trends that certainly that you've seen a strong trend in America has been around more local and domestic travel. In the context of the pandemic, I think that we saw folks were not able to travel, but they were still able to experience new things closer to home. And so what we've seen is people really being very creative and thinking through ways in which they might be able to help a local experience their neighborhood or even travel 50 to 100 miles away and have an adventure. And so whether that's a farm experience going apple picking with your kids, through to things that perhaps might be a little bit more adventurous, we've seen a lot of that happening. I also think that one of the powerful aspects of SMBs is that they're incredibly creative about how they think about what is possible. So for example, we have a partner in London called Unseen Tours, where they provide street tours of the UK in the streets of London and they actually reskill homeless people in order to do that. And so I really think one of the powerful aspects of what SMBs have been doing during this period is taking this opportunity to help educate people about their own cities, but also to be able to create jobs and awareness for those that might not be served very well otherwise. And so I think the rise of local and domestic tourism is gonna bolster the economy in this sector a little bit especially as we kind of come into what is very likely a serious recession. And I think that where tourism may still be decreasing, I think people will still look to do things that connect them. I think experiences drive our joy. We have a lot of, in the US especially, a lot of savings, so even though consumer sentiment is going down, I do think people will still be spending their money on experiences. You've seen that consistently happen as a trend versus spending money on products. And so I think we'll see more of that. I think one of the last things I touch upon is that sustainability does matter to folks. And so one trend that we've seen is that actually a lot of consumers are demanding that. About 80% of people when polled will say actually sustainability matters to me, but about half of them will say I won't change my choices based on it. So what we see is a market and a trend where I think entrepreneurs and SMBs are trying to meet that need and say how can we be more sustainable so that folks are more likely to pick me over anything else. And so I think those are all important trends. The last thing I'd actually speak about is the use of technology. I think that small businesses have tended not to be great at using technology, and yet that empowers and allows them access to a much broader range of customers, distribution opportunities, and even just the automation, an opportunity it provides to reduce costs. And so we've definitely seen peak provides software. We've seen a huge adoption of that as you've seen almost a 10 year leap forward on digitization among small and medium sized businesses. And I think that will continue, especially in a recessionary environment where people have to be a little more cautious about what they're doing and have to find new sources of demand. And that demand is both local, but I think as companies come back, you will see that that demand gets into more of the remote working and offsite component. We've seen that there's a lot of talk about pleasure, business and leisure being put together, but I actually think one of the emerging trends we're gonna see is around companies that have gone remote, which we see a lot of in the US, needing to kind of find ways to connect their team and their workforce, whether that's in regular offsite kind of occasions or virtual experiences that are happening online regularly. That's where I'll wrap. Thank you so much. I think on that note, we'll open the room up for questions from the floor. A couple of my colleagues will be walking around with hand mics. So yes, sir. Chris Sormack from Monaco. Maybe a question to Mr. President as well, but I think I wonder how the, I guess how when you looked at sort of adjusting this index as a result of the pandemic with Japan also coming out on top, how did the pandemic itself impact that and how you thought about Japan? Was it in a way, some of the things you're describing that sort of infrastructure within a country becomes more important because of what happened in the pandemic and that was important to spread it out. Was that related, I suppose? And a question to you, Mr. President, similar, I suppose, did the pandemic make you think differently about tourism, the kind of infrastructure that you need within your country in order to be successful? All right, so thank you. That's a really good question. We actually started to review the index prior to the pandemic starting. When we published the last edition of the report, we really looked at the possibility of travel and tourism really degrading all of the assets and the attractions that it depends upon through over-demand, over-competitivist mass tourism. So we were already seeing some trains necessary to spread tourism, more mature markets have a bit more difficulty in doing that, but being able to diversify the tourism opportunities in a country spread the economic benefit to communities and different components of the industry. And so that was really the framework with which we went into it. We also worked with an advisory council that included, for example, the UN World Tourism Organization looking at what other things we need to prioritize or encourage countries to prioritize as they move forward. So that was the intent with which we went into it. And of course, when the pandemic hit, and we saw the major impact of a health crisis, but we had in our minds the impact of climate change, the potential for over-tourism, we looked at how do we measure the indicators that would help us to recognize the interconnectedness of the different parts of an economy that relate to travel and tourism? And how can we demonstrate countries that are starting to achieve this more and more or thinking of this integrated approach? And so we brought in, we really had some health and safety conditions in the original index, but we brought in more. We created an entire sustainability pillar where it's not just environmental sustainability but socioeconomic resilience and conditions. And so the pandemic really only exacerbated the need for this change because we didn't want to encourage countries to just, we were seeing unprecedented growth in the travel and tourism industry before the pandemic. We wanted to ensure that for us to continue to see benefit out of that, we did it in a sustainable and resilient manner. Well, I think that the pandemic changed our viewing everything and in every public policy that you address from now on. But in tourism, in our economy and in Latin America, you have to think that in terms of the GDP impact, apart from the small countries of the Caribbean, the small island and we are, we were the biggest country in terms of the tourism impact on our economy. You see other countries as even Brazil, some people think about tourism but Brazil, the part of tourism in the economy is very small and it's a very close economy. Or even Chile, Chile doesn't have an impact in tourism. Argentina, very small. No matter why it has, and it was one of the, I think it was the second or the third country that had the most recovered. President Lacalle did a very good job on that. But we had the biggest impact on our GDP. So to recover my economy was to recover tourism. And I have been saying that because that was our main objective. So we have to meet every week with the tourism cabinet to do all the necessary measures for that. And you have to think that this was a change every week from every country. So United States had one specific requirement and then Canada had another one and then Europe changed another one. So we had to be, when we went into the cabinet meeting we said what is the change of the day? What is the crisis of the day? How we have to adapt to that? And then they changed that they had to do PCR tests. So we had to look for all the PCR tests and to buy and to rent a plane and to go right to the Dominican Republic in order to be prepared for that. But we had to do it because we had thousands of Dominicans who depends on the job on tourism. So we were on top of that and we were trying to, as far as we could do to make a solution for that. And it helped us and I think also in a lot of countries that our health infrastructure and not just the public health infrastructure it had to became a reality. So we had to have at least a second rate hospital second, we're calling it Spanish hospital the Segundo Nivel where you can have surgery and special surgery and sometimes even a hospital of a third level in every tourist destination. And we did. And as I said yesterday, we also created ourselves and we said with the statistic that we have that people want to travel and I just want to say something at the end about the crisis and economic crisis. People want to travel but they don't want to get sick where they travel and that's what they were afraid of. So we created the first COVID insurance in the world. So we gave a free COVID insurance to every tourist that came to our country. And that gave trust and confidence for people to travel to our country and that's in terms of relative terms. We were the country who most recovered in the world from the COVID crisis. Concerning, and I want to finalize with this, concerning the economic crisis that could come, actually in the first trimester it came to United States, they had a economy had a decrease of I think 1.4. My, I am an economist. So I believe that every crisis is different. So this crisis is very different from the other economic crisis that we had before. And because they, and it was said here, the sector that was, that had the more impact and the more negative impact on the pandemic economic crisis was the tourism sector. And now it's starting to recover all over the world with exception in some countries, especially in China. I believe that even it can come a recession that I think it could be a mild recession. I think that the tourism part will not be part of that recession. It will continue to grow. I think the economic recession will come in other parts of the economy because it can, the recession cannot come from so low that it comes the tourism part. I don't know if you, I can explain very well. So I believe that it could be an economic recession, but I think that they still, the recovery of tourism will continue. Are there any other questions? We probably have time for one more, if there are. Okay, if anyone has any other final thoughts to offer before we close out that you want to share with those gathered here in Davos today, please. Please do. We'd love to hear. It was mentioned by both of my colleagues around the sustainability and the opportunity for natural tourism and experiences, local experiences. As we start to see many more people traveling to those destinations, we will need to be careful that we don't see the same challenge again, that those places become oversubscribed. And so putting in the right policies now, learning from the pandemic will be crucial for the travel and tourism industry. And we hope that the index can be used as a tool to do that, enabling both businesses and policymakers to really think carefully. And I really appreciate what you're saying about your tourism cabinet, because we've seen some of the countries that have recovered quicker have been those that have really put tourism as a whole of government approach, looking at all of the different components like healthcare, like policy, and making sure that those pieces interconnect and can depend on each other. And so we're excited about the recovery and look forward to supporting both country partners and industry to see that grow. I completely agree with that as well. I think it's incredibly important that policymakers are involved as well as private entrepreneurs to do this. And I think the big opportunity here is to diversify. We used to go to a specific place. We might first off only have a subset of places that we might visit, and then we had three or four major attractions that everybody wanted to go to. I think we are within the context of those building sites for consumers, we're beginning to realize that people have different preferences. So if I'm a foodie or I'm a musician or I love adventure with mountain biking or fishing, there's an opportunity to actually help you redefine what your three or four biggest kind of attractions might be. And that diversity as you empower entrepreneurs to be able to meet that demand creates a lot of opportunity. And I think where folks are flexible and agile enough to create those businesses, to serve those needs, that's helpful, but it also creates an opportunity for us to go to new places, but also expand our horizon and what might be possible to do in a way that allows us to meet the consumer demands and needs, but also helps diversify the opportunity in that local economy. I just want to add that when you mentioned the private sector, when we speak about cabinet tourism, our expanded cabinet tourism, it's also had a big part of the private sector. We have the association of hotel, the association of restaurants, the unions, especially on the transport part. So we, involving our decision, it's not just a government decision, it's a part of the whole tourism sector. When you make sometimes during the pandemic, very harsh decisions, you have to count on every part then. And for us, our philosophy as a government is always to have consensus, is always to speak with the social sector and the private sector. And I think a big part of our success has been those consensus and those unified criteria to execute in our country as a public policy, as a policy for all. Thank you so much. I think that's a good note to close out the panel on. Thank you to all the panelists for joining us. I think we all really benefited from your insights. And thank you to all of you who joined today in the room and also watching on the live stream.