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Dubai: The eighth edition of the Global Travel and Tourism Summit drew to a close on Tuesday at the Madinat Jumeirah, capping two-days of deliberations with a unanimous call for reducing the industry's carbon footprint by 80 per cent by 2025.
Experts also emphasised the need for a more conscious and strategic commitment to identifying innovative ways for tackling the complex challenges confronting the travel and tourism sector.
The second day's sessions on "The Industry Is Smart - And It's Getting Smarter" and "We've Always Looked Ahead - Now We're Looking Further" were moderated by Philip Wolf, chief executive of PhoCusWright, and Nik Gowing, chief presenter, BBC World, respectively.
Core theme
Sustainability remained a core theme on the concluding day of the summit, with experts and industry leaders suggesting the current travel and tourism business model cannot be sustained unless innovative approaches are immediately adopted.
"We need to set ambitious targets for effectively mitigating the negative impact of our emissions. Unless we aim big, we have no chance of hitting our targets," Sonu Shivdasani, founder, chairman and CEO of Six Senses Resorts & Spas.
Gerald Lawless, executive chairman of Jumeirah Group, underlined human resources as a critical issue.
"Tourism has always been a labour intensive industry, accounting for 10 per cent of the world's employment. It is important, therefore, that the industry's expansion remains attractive to new human capital," he said.
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