Can Minister St Ange become the next UNWTO secretary general? |20 November 2015

Tourism and Culture Minister Alain St Ange is among six personalities who can possibly become the next secretary general of the United Nations World Tourism Organisation.

This is according to an article posted on online news wire www.eturbonews.com.

The article states that the present United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) secretary general Taleb Rifai, who has been in the post since March 2009, disclosed to ministers who were attending the recent World Travel Market in London, that he will be resigning at the next general assembly set to be held in Chengdu, China in 2017.

According to the article, Minister St Ange is one of the candidates for the highest government position in the global travel and tourism world.

A popular speaker at tourism forums and conventions, Mr St Ange has been credited with increasing the visibility of Seychelles in all of the islands’ key markets and having turned the Seychelles tourism industry around since taking office, first as director of tourism and later as chief executive of the Seychelles Tourism Board and then as Tourism and Culture Minister.

“This is good news for Seychelles and it proves that the country is getting a lot of visibility,” said Minister St Ange who has been extremely active in UNWTO recently and brought a lot stronger voice to Africa as a whole.

According to www.eturbonews.com, Minister St Ange is liked in all parts of the world. He is outspoken, approachable, and has helped brought Seychelles to the global map as a world-class island destination.

The other candidates are business executive Gloria Guevara Manzo of Mexico; Carlos Vogeler, the director-executive secretary of Member Relations at the World Tourism Organisation based in Madrid, Spain; the executive director for operational programmes and institutional relations at UNWTO Favilla Lucca de Paula; Xu Jing the regional director for Asia and the Pacific at UNWTO; and Walter Mzembi, a Zimbabwean politician.