Over the past half century, Tourism – travel for leisure and for business – has grown into a mainstream global activity.

Today, Tourism is one of the largest, fastest growing industries and the dominant service sector.

It brings pleasure and added value to the lives of hundreds of millions of people.

Tourism is now well recognized as one of the key ways to bring wealth and experience from the richest to the poorest countries, particularly as it increasingly intersects with information technology. –another catalytic sector. In this way it will help to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

This is why we have adopted the theme of “Tourism Enriches” for World Tourism Day 2006. And why we have produced this e-booklet capturing its spirit in terms of economies and enterprises: trade and development: communities and lives: peace and understanding. An accompanying video spot underscores the fact that in the final analysis, tourism enriches our planet and its peoples.

From Lisbon, the capital of host country Portugal and in the 150 member states of the UNWTO we shall be celebrating the joys and the benefits of Tourism. We hope you will join us