Saturday, Stéphanie Balmir Villedrouin, the Minister of Tourism and Creative Industries has chosen to celebrate in the department of South-East, specifically in the city of Jacmel, the World Tourism Day whose theme this year is Tourism and Community Development. On this day of celebration, the Minister issued a message to the population.

Message from the Minister Villedrouin :

"From the outset, the theme for the celebration of World Tourism Day (WTD) this year has a special meaning for us. Defined as a way of working based on the pursuit of equity, social justice, participation and empowerment, allowing people to identify issues of concern and supports them in the action taken in this respect, the community development, associated with tourism, reflects our political actions in recent years in the area.

One of the essential missions of tourism in relation to community development is defined unambiguously in the message of the Secretary-General of the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), Taleb Rifai 'We can not talk about real tourist development if the latter undermines one way or another, the values ​​and culture of the host communities or if socio-economic benefits of tourism are not propagated to the community level.' That's what we understood in the context of the development of our development plans for new tourist destinations in the country by implementing a range of of social infrastructure projects and community capacity building.

The tourist development project of île-à-Vache, is a perfect illustration. In the implementation of it, pride of place is given to the inhabitants of the island. We strive to do everything possible to ensure a better condition of socio-economic life before engaging in tourism development as such. The concept of Community Development associated with tourism demonstrates our commitment, either as part of the development projects ofnew tourist destinations or the accompaniment of creative villages in Noailles (Croix-des-Bouquets), of that in gestation in Milot.

Our tourism industry is revealed in full swing. Our tourism is to be sustainable, conscious and responsible by an approach encouraging the involvement of communities and their socio-economic development.

We take advantage of this celebration to salute the countless efforts of each other for the growth of the tourism industry in recent years. Officials from the Ministry of Tourism, members of the private sector, tourism associations in the country, the media, private sector investors from here and elsewhere, people of the communities that are involved in the development of their respective tourist attractions...

To all of you, Happy World Tourism Day 2014 !

Ayiti, Se la Pou w la !"

Moreover, the Minister took the opportunity to launch the communication campaign "Destination Jacmel".

HL/ HaitiLibre