Getting Tourism Jobs Back Is First Priority of New CEO of WTTC

When the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC), the largest and only organization representing tourism's private sector, announced five months ago the appointment of Julia Simpson as only the organization's second female CEO, the challenges ahead seemed daunting. They are even more so today.

The WTTC and its relevance as an organization faces higher scrutiny at a pivotal time when the travel industry is shrouded with uncertainty. It's being forced to innovate the way it operates and grow post-pandemic if it is to remain competitive and resilient. That means being inclusive, climate ready, collaborative with host communities and transparent in its metrics to determine the true cost and benefit of tourism.

But the question remains: will the WTTC’s new leader manage to steer the group to take on a more activist, can-do role that the industry desperately needs?

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Skift spoke to Simpson in an exclusive first interview since starting her assignment on August 15, about her vision of bringing back tourism and jobs, tackling an evolving industry, whether the impacts of mass tourism can be managed, vaccine equity and her passion points which include a more diverse leadership in travel.

Below is an edited version of the interview.

Skift: Your career has spanned journalism to local government, 10 Downing Street and the private sector in aviation. What is driving you to now tackle the challenge of leading the travel industry’s private sector at this pivotal time?

Julia Simpson: Travel and tourism, as you know, has been turned absolutely upside down. I think it's one of the industries that's been hit the hardest. And I think there's a real role for the WTTC and everybody in our industry, including the journalists, to try and explain to governments that while borders remain closed — obviously, priority everywhere is people's health and their safety — but actually there's enormous damage being done to the economy, and lots of people are losing their jobs.

In 2019, there were about 334 million jobs in the travel and tourism sector and the contribution it made to the global GDP was $9.2 trillion. Now since the pandemic that $9.2 trillion halved. So, that's the money that's not going into the economy, and we've lost about 62 million jobs.

My mission now is to get those jobs back. Before the