In recent years, the tourism sector has been undergoing global structural changes due to the emergence of new technologies and the imperative to integrate environmental and climate management into destination management. These factors are giving rise to new governance models and reshaping the rules of the tourism ecosystem.
In response to these phenomena, the foundations of administrative intervention have substantially evolved over the last few decades, progressively expanding the branches of law that directly or indirectly impact the sector.
In addition to the need to preserve the remarkable economic significance of tourism, other reasons have emerged to justify regulation, such as the necessity to safeguard the cultural and natural heritage of destinations, ensure the protection of tourists, and balance the competition rules between digital actors and traditional tourism service providers, among others.
These factors are increasing the complexity of the regulatory framework and continuously expanding the regulatory areas that the tourism sector needs to be aware of. Furthermore, the international tourism crisis resulting from COVID-19 has highlighted the need to rebalance the responsibilities of different sector stakeholders to address the new post-pandemic tourism market conditions. It also underscores the importance of strengthening regional coordination among the legal and regulatory frameworks of various countries in LAC to respond to global challenges.
All these new trends imply changes to the status quo of sector regulation. In the specific case of the LAC region, the complexity of regional tourism governance makes it challenging to meet the necessary criteria for effective sector regulation: there are regulations becoming outdated, leading to high costs, or lacking support from evidence or stakeholder participation throughout the regulatory cycle.
In this context, UN Tourism and IDB have jointly decided to create the Observatory to provide a better response to the need for analyzing the existing tourism regulations in the various countries of LAC. On the one hand, this aims to establish a general guiding framework for achieving harmonized, coherent, and up-to-date regulations for the sector. On the other hand, it aims to optimize the governance models of the tourism regulatory process.
The UN Tourism and IDB Observatory is intended for all stakeholders in the tourism sector of the region, whether they are regulators, regulated entities, or those affected by sector-specific regulations. The Observatory aims to facilitate communication among all these stakeholders and provide the necessary information and knowledge in real-time to promote understanding of Tourism Law and drive proactive actions and the exchange of best regulatory practices. Additionally, the Observatory will promote the progressive harmonization of tourism legislation while respecting the legal and technical concepts unique to each country, in order to facilitate the establishment of effective and participatory legal frameworks and governance models throughout the regulatory process.