Pakistan up six notches in world tourism index

Pakistan made a big jump on International Travel and Tourism Development Index by moving up six places, the latest report released by the World Economic Forum (WEF) showed on Sunday.

The 2021 edition of the Travel and Tourism Development Index includes 117 countries. The index ranks the countries based on the set of factors and policies that enable the sustainable and resilient development of the travel and tourism industry of each country.

The Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation (PTDC) said that the latest edition of the international travel and tourism competitive index titled “Rebuilding for a Sustainable and Resilient Future,” ranked 83rd, which was up from 89th place in the index’s previous edition of 2019.

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“Six points increase in the ranking of Pakistan on global travel and tourism index is quite a significant progress and now Pakistan is among the countries in the Asia Pacific Region that have improved its ranking the most since 2019,” PTDC Managing Director Aftabur Rehman Rana said.

He added that during the last two years, the federal and provincial governments had made significant progress in improving the performance of tourism sector in Pakistan by taking various steps to upgrade tourism services infrastructure, business environment, safety and security, health and hygiene, and socio-economic resilience.

“Although we have made good progress, we still need to do a lot more to further enhance the performance of tourism sector in Pakistan in coming years, which has huge potential to play a key role in the overall socio-economic development of Pakistan,” he added.

Overall, Japan has occupied the top spot on the latest edition of the index. Japan is followed by the USA, Spain, France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Singapore and Italy which have been ranked in top 10 on the Travel and Tourism Development index, respectively.