Hello and welcome to the Independence Daily Travel podcast with me, Simon Calder.

It's Thursday the 6th of March.

I'm at ITB in Berlin, the biggest travel event of the year,

but I'm here very specifically to meet a woman named Gloria Guevara.

She has, for example, been running the World Travel and Tourism Council,

but now she is standing to become Secretary General of the World Tourism Organization.

Why would you ever want that job?

Hi, Simon, thank you for having me.

I think it's very important after 35 years that having in the sector, as you mentioned, not only WTTC, I was also the Minister of Tourism in Mexico,

recently helping the Governor of Saudi Arabia to develop. I was able to be in the private sector and the public sector, and I know the impact that travel tourism has. I had the chance to implement policies

that changed lives, and I think that our sector has an opportunity to grow,

to be more sustainable, to share from different practices,

and also to create more bridges, public and private and among countries.

So I would love to share my experience.

The challenges that we have right now are very different

and the challenges that we have pre-pandemic.

I think the sector has an opportunity to grow even

further and I believe this is a new era that with my expertise I can take the organization to the

next level and also provide more value to the members. I'm going to ask on behalf of the listeners

and also myself, what does the World Tourism Organization actually do? I know it's based in Madrid, but I get a little bit

lost after that. That is a great question. The organization is representing the travel and tourism

sector from the government point of view and is the entity that represents all of us. Currently

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