The World Bank and IMF Annual Meetings were held in Washington, DC this past weekend. While solutions to many of the world’s economic and social problems and issues were on the table, it does not appear that tourism was discussed much, if at all. Drops in tourism, however, were cited as causes of some of the problems — in Egypt and Tunisia, for example — so trying to recover from these losses should be a solution.

The only references to tourism we could find were the Minister of Finance from Gambia recognizing that it is important to his country (12% of GDP) and Shanta Devarajan, the World Bank’s Economist for Sub-Saharan Africa stating that drops in European tourism to Africa need to have policy safety nets.

Has anyone heard of other references to tourism at the meetings?

Although tourism was not on the agenda at the meetings, it is an important sector for the World B