 Okay welcome everyone making sure we're active here welcome everyone to the launch the global launch of the global tourism travel and tourism competitiveness reports of the World Economic Forum this is a bi-yearly report and we're very happy to be able to do a launch today here in Argentina in Buenos Aires thank you Minister Santos for allowing us to do that here this is an important report why this is one of our flagship report that talks about the competitiveness of countries when it comes to their travel and tourism industry so we measure in this report all the policies and the factors that contribute to the nation's ability to bring travel and tourism to their country why is this important it's important because travel and tourism contributes globally to about 10% of GDP and about a similar amount of jobs so a very important sector and today we're talking about results of that report of 2017 we have with us today very eminent speakers first of all Minister Santos a Minister of Tourism of Argentina welcome next to him is Demetrios Marantes this senior vice president of Visa company headquartered in the USA and then we have Minister Enrique de la Madrid Cordero who is the counterpart of Mr Santos Minister of Tourism of the Secretary of Tourism of Mexico so welcome to all three of you and when we look at this report there's four things that we find important to note in general before we talk about the specific findings of Mexico and Argentina and Latin America the first is that we see that over time countries get better in attracting travel and tourism so they become more competitive this is a general finding of this year's report the second finding that we see is that in a world where we hear more talk about walls and borders that we actually see in travel and tourism evidence of the opposite we see more international arrivals we see more tourists and we also see more countries making policies that make it easy for tourists to arrive to a country so instead of borders and walls we see bridges a third thing that we also notice is that with the advent of the fourth industrial revolution the technological revolution just reshaping entire industries this also affects to a great extent the tourism industry it's very important for countries to make sure they have connectivity for travelers that they have information for travelers and for tourism is a very important factor and then the final consideration of the report is that and environmental attention or sustainability becomes increasingly important as people travel more and go to more places it becomes increasingly important to be attentive also to the sustainability of tourism those are the general findings of this year's report if we then look at the specific findings in terms of the ranking the index that goes along with it we see that at the very top of the table Spain maintains its number one position that is the number one most competitive nation for tourism the number two and three are also European countries are France and Germany and then we see Japan making a big leap in the top 10 they go from they go to the fourth position we see in general also that Asia is a continent that is increasing a lot is improving a lot and then we see a drop of the United States from four to six position which is quite peculiar and the same is true for Switzerland which has typically been a very very prominent country in terms of its competitiveness fell back from six to ten position if we then turn to let in America which is where we're at then we see that the country of Minister de la Madrid Cordero is leading the ranking for that in America on 22nd position going up also and the same is true directionally for Argentina which is now 16 let in America and for the first time 50th globally in the top 50 globally so these are the findings that we have off this competitiveness report and of course when we're here we're also here to talk about those findings with our guests and so I'd like to turn of course first to our host of today minister Santos and a missus Santos we all got here safely we're travelers to your country and welcome for welcoming is here for me when quite smoothly is that a coincidence could you tell us a little bit more about how important travel and tourism is for Argentina going forward thank you very much for the Argentine Republic tourism is a priority so much so that President Macri has decided that this ministry becomes part of the economic cabinet geared by the number of jobs created by tourism in Argentina more than 1.1 million p jobs direct jobs of course the indirect jobs follow the lead and the show the large percentage of workers is in the travel and tourism industry more than 1 million you said right that's what I was telling you that's why hence the importance of this sector and because it is so important Argentina has also made key decisions for example and deregulating its air traffic Argentina is 15 years behind compared with the countries of the region that we're going to overcome very quickly as many things that we have done over this first year of new government both in domestic flights and connectivity at an international level we are really seeing that in 2016 we increased 9.6 percent and the public audience for new companies to be to come here nine new players a five in the first stage of two or three more in the last stage we also decided to become a reserve of nature of the world Argentina has a national park system which is one of the oldest of the planet but we are working on 14 new national parks preserving this for the tourism in an ecotourism vision not only take advantage of the national situation but thinking about nature with man included and with the development of the people because many of them who live next to these parks or inside the parks are the poorest people in their own population or class I have also decided to make strong facilitation measures facilitation of visas and also a leading to airport taxes and harbor taxes and I measure that we took very soon to return back 21% of VAT to the foreign tourist taking advantage that the visa vice president is here we have generated a Synergic Action with visa visa is telling them that when they pay anything in Argentina 21% will be reimbursed and I really thank him for this and this relates to this new vision of Argentina finally I wanted to talk to a very important decision that is we have decided to create a strategic plan with everyone nobody is left behind all of the Argentine provinces the full private sector the PPP the public private relationship is absolutely of the essence and the sector of the workers the first master plan that was introduced last year in March in Argentina was our tourism plan we found everybody all of the 24 provinces the national the executive the trade unions and the private sector in full as well in all of its fields I repeat for us tourism has to be understood as a place for integration as you very well said and the integration with the others as a development space and as a construction of peace and opening in a country that becomes over and over more hostile Argentina has decided to change that trend the new brand is world friendly open to the world notice that of course and I think for much many of us it was a pleasant experience to come to Argentina including the elements that you mentioned that we can see the taxes that have been reduced for or paid back even for tourists and a country that perhaps is is exemplary for Latin America may be that of your neighbor to your left of the Lavalete Cordero Mexico and so I wanted to ask the Minister of Mexico you're now on the 22nd position globally and could you tell us a bit more about what were the next steps that you took and how you got to that position we've heard from Mr Santos how he improved his competitiveness could you comment on Mexico's yes of course well thank you very much for the opportunity well we're very happy also with it with the achievement and with a trend because in the year 2009 we were precisely number 50 and now we're gonna we're number 22 so that means that we have been dealing with the competitivity issues with productivity as I have been saying connectivity has been very relevant we have been opening also our skies we have been inviting more airlines to fly into Mexico we just assigned last year with President Peña Nieto with the then President Obama we sign an agreement for a bilateral agreement to facilitate more and more trips between Mexico and the US and we have been opening new routes so that is very important second we have been also dealing with a financial system we you need money in order to finance new rooms and new new hotels new marinas new golf courses new infrastructure so the financial system is very relevant for this to happen in promotion I think we have also been more more competitive more more efficient and now we have these new technologies which reduce the cost of production and at the same time are more efficient to where you have you want to reach and I have also been talking about collaboration this is a sector where you have to deal with many other sectors in government federal government states and the local authorities so we're very happy with that and taking a look to the index one of the issues that I have two two comments we know that this is information that is based basically in 2015 but in one of the areas in which it seems that we are not doing that well I think that we're doing very well which is a winning sustainability we recently hosted COP 13 in Cancun and it was a first time because a previous 12 cops never had as we did this time we had the people from agriculture from tourism from fishery from forestry because we all realize that if you want we want to preserve the environment we have to work together so this was the first cop in which not only the ministers from the environment were present but we ourselves from tourism from from agriculture and the idea is to incorporate environmental policies into our own policies so that's something important I just want to stress that in that event President Pena he just informed about new national reserves one was the Mexican Caribbean the other is a forest that we have in Tamaulipas the other is is the islands that we have in Baja California by doing this we already have 91 million hectares of protected areas which has permitted for Mexico to already duplicate what was our goal and our commitment in the IHE agreement we had committed to protect 10% of the seas and we now have 22% of our seas protected so we're more than doubled and in the case of land our commitment was for 17% of the land to be protected area and we already reached 13% so I think that in the next index certainly Mexico will improve because one of the areas where it seems that we hadn't done that well is sustainability and I think we're very working very hard excellent yeah we're also looking forward to the next index of course in two years but it's still today and we're still 2017 but we're looking forward to that one of the things that you mentioned and also Minister Santos mentioned was the provisions that you made for the financial sector or at least to enable payments we have an expert on that of course here the materials senior vice president visa in the United States and we could ask you a lot of questions also about other things because of your country but we're gonna focus on your expertise in terms of travel and tourism and perhaps focusing on Latin America as a whole could you tell us a bit about what you see and how important your contribution to that is sure thank you Peter and first of all Minister Santos thank you so much for hosting Weff here in Buenos Aires I can't think of a better place for Weff to release its travel and tourism report you'll be happy to know that in December by coincidence I was down here as a tourist spending my you know tourist money and in Buenos Aires and in Puerto Iguazu so Argentina has so much to share and so thank you very much for hosting us and thank you Peter and Tiffany for producing such an amazing report it's extremely insightful and we will rely on it in our analytics you all know who what visa is you know we're a leading global payments company we have three billion plus issued cards around the world and obviously tourism is something that's very near and dear to our hearts and we contribute to tourism in a whole variety of ways so for example first as you know electronic payments provides a tourist a very safe efficient convenient and secure way to pay for tourist services whether that's at home before he or she embarks on a trip during the trip in a in a international destination or when that person comes back gone are the days where tourists have to be very unfashionable and have those belts around their waist with wads of cash in it because now there really is a very safe and secure alternative to that in the form of electronic payments the second way that we try to contribute to tourism and minister Santos mentioned it is we try to connect tourists supply with card holder demand and so for example when a country like Argentina does something amazing for tourists which is provide a VAT rebate for the 21% VAT on lodging we want to make sure that our card holders know that so we've embarked on a global marketing campaign together with with the minister and his team to focus on the eight corridors of tourism from Argentina the US Brazil Chile Uruguay Brazil etc and you know spread the news about what Argentina is doing if you walk up and down the streets here in Puerto Madero you'll see advertisements for visa that show what the government of Argentina is doing likewise in Mexico you know we have social media campaigns where if it's snowing in Washington DC for example we will target card holders and show them a picture of a beach in Tulum to give them kind of an idea that maybe they want to go be a tourist tourist there so again so we try to connect tourist supply with card holder demand the third thing that we try to do is we have an enormous amount of insights and analytics just based on aggregate card holder data and so we know that for example here in Argentina you know the largest spend comes from card holders in the United States who constitute 28% of card holder spend here in Argentina interestingly 53% of that spend is in Buenos Aires the next largest city of card holder spend is Bariloche but with only 4% so those are the kinds of insights that could be useful to a government as it tries to think about oh do we need to develop increased acceptance infrastructure in Bariloche or elsewhere in the country to help you know drive tourism spend in that way so and there are also lots of other interesting insights that that you know that we have you know something I shared on the panel this morning interestingly the the cities in the region that are growing the most from a year to year hotel stay are in Argentina Colombia and Brazil I think Bariloche had 34% year-on-year growth which is which is interesting so analytics are obviously very important the last thing that I'll point to is we work very hard to try to improve the payments infrastructure around the world because if you're in a city that has high acceptance of cards the likelihood that you're going to drive tourism spend is much higher in fact the data shows that the higher the acceptance infrastructure is in a particular location the more tourism spend there is so for example we're working with Mexico right now on trying to help improve the acceptance infrastructure for merchants in in Mexico's pueblos mágicos like tequila for example and that you know the idea of that is we'll work to help improve the infrastructure and then that will increase the merchants that accept cards and that will drive tourists to spend money there so there's a lot that is happening in the payments space with respect to tourism and it's been a real pleasure for us to be able to contribute whether it's in Argentina Mexico or elsewhere yeah and thank you the materials for for being here and giving those insights I think is indeed very interesting well of course what you say is that we can learn a lot from data we can learn a lot from the ICT insights so to speak that come from for example your company and so I want to bring that back to Mr. Santos what we've seen in Argentina is also in terms of the ranking that you've made some improvement in terms of education in terms of ICT we hear from the materials that understanding the data behind tourism is also very important and so because that will help you to increase your competitiveness going forward and to provide a better environment for tourists could you tell us a little bit more about how you talked about how economy you're integrated in the Minister of Ministry of Economy could you tell us a bit more about how you're working together also on education and ICT which seem to be two indicators in which you're improving let me clarify something we are not part of the Ministry of the economy but together with the Ministry of Finance production and transport we are part of an economic area of the government that's been the criterion chosen by President Macri to lead the economy our relation with education and innovation is basic one of our first measures was to create an area of innovation that did not exist in the Ministry of Tourism today we have an undersecretariat specialized in innovation which is the one that's moving into this direction this dimension which is essential because the trend is to increasingly solve trade transactions on the internet that's why it's so important to have digital proactive digital policies and that's why it's so important to have a relation with the means of payment because that's a link that allows us to do the business in the virtual space in that sense we are developing techniques on a permanent basis aimed at developing innovation because as I said this is useful not only for the transaction as such but it's the next post database it's data that can be used text post that allows us to make almost real-time adjustments this was not possible with the traditional means or traditional marketing today being able to receive this information that our friend was referring to and information from social media as well all that allows us to know customers behavior how they act what they are comparing us against what they consume when they consume this big data information available which is essential today for any tourism public policy and our relation with education is basic because it is essential because in Argentina we understand tourism to be a routine factor we want to prevent what's happened for a long time that is our youth leaving their places of birth to move to big cities and what they do is lose cultural values and they end up with degraded lives and on the contrary in a very small village in the north of Argentina in the province of Hohue for example in the village of Puma Marca with those colorful hills which are so beautiful you'll find those magical towns and villages very poor people selling their produce but you don't see any misery or violence there and there's almost full employment in those small villages that's why we work so much with education and what we do is adapt our communication to contexts a country like ours is five six seven countries at the same time with different climates different cultures and we adapt our curricula to the contexts of all those countries that we have within our country and and and it's nice to hear from you also how you use education and innovation you said big data to improve your tourism competitiveness ultimately that will have an impact hopefully and it will we notice from the data on on the arrivals on tourism and and ultimately on GDP growth and on work on jobs and I wanted to ask also to your colleague of Mexico who of course there's a lot of we know Mexico also from having a lot of manufacturing jobs this is a story that we've heard a lot now we see that all around the world manufacturing jobs are under pressure and so is tourism then a space where we can create extra jobs if we have the right education in place if we have the right it and innovation in place could you comment a little bit about the role of that yes of course well first I think that we are living in a world where many many sectors of the economy increase in terms of value but not in terms of employment and that is that is due in part because a way to reduce cost is to go through automatization for more technology and in a way job elimination and though that that is one of the threats that we're facing now around the world and I think that tourism has exactly the opposite characteristics there is no way that you cannot hire more people if you're having more hotels more rooms again more marinas it comes directly there's little space for automatization there's a lot of space for innovation there's a lot of space for technology but fortunately it is not so much it's not so clear for automatization so yes in Mexico we estimate that around 9 million people 9 million Mexicans work around the tourism sector so it is one of the sectors that has more employment according to our statistics last year the the the value of the GDP of tourism grew at twice the rate of the average of the economy and also the the increase of employment also is growing at one and a half times the rest of the economy so it is very intensive in labor and that is something that is very positive in a population of 123 million Mexicans now the we always say that we want to have new more jobs but better pay jobs and this is where I think competitivity plays a huge role in productivity Mexicans work a lot we work more than for example people from the US in terms of the average hour but if you see the value of how much we earn or produce per hour it is significantly lower so that is why we're really working on productivity because at the end of the day we want well paid jobs and in Mexico we have in the Ministry of Tourism we're working on 44 agendas a competitivity agendas in 44 destinations and the idea is basically to do what I think you put in your index to pay attention and what are the issues that we should be solving to improve competitivity and productivity and that is just to raise the issue that I think that this index is very useful because if we want to continue to improve in the index then we have to tackle those issues in which there are areas of opportunity so I think it's a very a very positive and useful instrument for us countries to pay attention in the areas of opportunity and to perhaps keep on growing I want to give now the chance if there's any questions from the audience we've got a few minutes left before we're going to close the press conference so I don't know if anyone wants to contribute I should also note by the way the materials just for the records the report was authored the main authors were Tiffany Misrahi and Roberto Crotti both here in the audience with us I'm merely doing the moderation of this of this press conference and there's a lot of success stories from this competitiveness report I'd like to encourage everyone that's here to read the full report which you can find for those who are here we still have print copies that's not very sustainable of us and those that are following us online you can also find the report on the World Economic Forum website we form org is the travel and tourism competitiveness ranking of 2017 with that I would like to thank all of the panelists here and thank you again Minister Santos for welcoming us here in Argentina thank you all for coming and thank you for all of you watching at home thank you