President of Malta appointed special ambassador of UN World Tourism Organisation

The United Nations World Tourism Organisation appointed President Marie Louise Coleiro Preca as a special ambassador for the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development.

During a meeting with at the United Nations World Tourism Organisation headquarters in Madrid, Coleiro Preca and secretary general ambassador Taleb Rifai spoke about the importance of sustainable and responsible tourism, as a means to build peace, social cohesion, and prosperity for all humanity.

During her working visit in Spain, the President is leading a delegation made up of Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association President, Tony Zahra, and CEO, Andrew Agius Muscat, as well as high-level representatives from the Mediterranean Tourism Foundation, and the director for strategy and planning within the Ministry for Tourism.

Zahra and Agius Muscat spoke about the initiatives being taken by the Mediterranean Tourism Foundation to turn the Mediterranean and Malta into a hub of educational, cultural, technological innovation, and environmental sustainability, for the tourism industry.

As patron of the Mediterranean Tourism Foundation, Coleiro Preca formally asked the World Tourism Organisation to affiliate the foundation within this global organisation. Through this affiliation, which was accepted, in principle, the Mediterranean Tourism Foundation will be in a position to share good practices and initiatives which it is spearheading to other regions of the world.

This is the second time that President Coleiro Preca has been given recognition by the United Nations, following the “Agent of Change Award”, awarded in September 2016 in New York.