The city tourism runs at its highest level and is continuously increasing, although it wasn’t really given the deserved importance. Therefore the new city tourism trends expressed the need of defining a conceptual framework. The WTO thought appropriate the organization of an international forum where the subject would be analyzed and debated, being present the representatives of the cities of the adherent countries and specialized speakers, and having THR the honor of organizing and managing the event.

In charge of managing the event, designing the program and the selection of speakers for the Forum to take place in Istanbul, THR proposed its celebration in three days, centralizing the management in 4 main axes:

• Market opportunities and city tourism competitiveness

• The “value for effort” concept

• City Tourism Marketing

• Management of a complex system: performance and strategies

The decision was to take as a reference different successful city tourism cases, particularly Barcelona, Athens, Buenos Aires, Turin, Dubrovnik and Istanbul.

A list of speakers was proposed, speakers selected among professionals and specialists of international prestige who, along with the WTO members and WTO General Secretary, representatives fro the city tourism official institutions, including national directors and ministries of tourism, would be in charge of the moderation of discourses and debates, as well as the conclusions to be produced jointly by WTO and THR.

24 speakers, experts in tourism, coming form the following countries: Germany (3), France (1), Great Britain (3), Spain (4), Italy (3), Greece (1), Turkey (2), Croatia (1), China 81), Canada (1), USA (2), Mexico (1) and Argentina (1).

200 participants from 42 countries.

If you wish to find out more see the conclusions in the attached document.