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Natalia Bayona went from being an intern to becoming the Executive Director of the UN Tourism. She has created opportunities through entrepreneurship competitions and innovation firms, and has helped secure financing for disruptive companies. She also established the UN Tourism Online Academy. Natalia studied international relations and did an Executive MBA, not tourism. She played a crucial role in promoting Colombia's tourism internationally and has contributed to its growth. The tourism industry is recovering post-pandemic, with Europe leading in international arrivals and hotel infrastructure investment. Innovation and sustainability are key for attracting foreign direct investment. Natalia emphasizes the importance of economic incentives, tax incentives, and political and legal stability. She believes in creating sustainable and inclusive cities and destinations. Sustainability should be a part of our lives and the tourism sector needs a stronger legal framework. Investors are int Imagine writing the dream of your life on paper when you were 16 and that it becomes a reality during your 30s. That was the case of Natalia Bayona. She jumped from being an intern at the Touristic Promotion of Colombia, her native country, to become the youngest person leading the Global Tourism Administration as the Executive Director of the UN Tourism. Such an inspiring, optimistic and singular is Natalia Bayona's trajectory. Her curiosity made her responsible of creating opportunities through the direction of 10 global entrepreneurship competitions and over 20 innovation and technology firms. She also strengthened an extensive innovation network whose dynamic ecosystem has facilitated the acquisition of over $214 million in financing for disruptive companies. Furthermore, Natalia has been instrumental in establishing the UN Tourism Online Academy, boasting over 30,000 students and offering courses with available scholarships to students worldwide. She challenged the limits of the borders, knowledge fields and languages to create and lead the innovation, education and investment department of the UN Tourism for seven years before becoming its Executive Director. And of course, her path was not easy. She had to leave one of the most affected industries from the pandemic in times of crisis. And she is now recovering the industry with more strategy and holistic sustainable impact than ever before. If all of this was not enough, she is an inspiration for millions of people, including me, that dream of living from building a world full of gratifying, sustainable and high impact experiences. I'm Natalia Correia and for this episode, I interviewed Natalia Bayona. This conversation took place in February 2024. Let's start with a very interesting element that can enrich all of us with ideas. And that is that Natalia studied international relations and then did an Executive MBA in one of the best business universities of the world. But she did not study tourism. This broadens our minds to believe in liberal arts as seeds of knowledge that can grow in different directions, which at a certain moment can connect with another complementary branches of knowledge that can match well with what we may know. This inspires us to learn from many ideas and find disruptive ideas as a product of it. And just as a reminder, Steve Jobs had a strong inclination to this and his path in history was just incredible, as Natalia's is. But now let's dive deeper into her path through the tourism industry. At the beginning of her career, Natalia had a crucial challenge that would mark the path of her future, which was to give a new nuance to Colombia's image internationally through media communication and marketing strategies. Little by little, she gained knowledge about how tourist destinations work and the use of available resources as a potential for good management, which led her to be named the youngest manager in charge of promoting her country's tourism worldwide in 2013. This was key for Colombia to now be one of the countries with the highest tourism growth and even a very interesting case of rebranding that continues to improve more and more in its very visible through Encanto, the beautiful Disney movie. It's amazing to imagine that she is the youngest person to ever occupy the role she has, and of course, also the first woman, something that is valuable to consider in this month of March. And believe me, she deserves that place. So today, we will explore those valuable ideas that she has brought not only to discussion, but also to implementation. Additionally, we will consider the importance and value that taking the initiative has for her as that helps her to create her own position at the UN. I will use a compilation of other interviews and conferences she has had to robustly address this topic. All links and references are in the description box of this episode. Let's start with the current situation of the industry. Returning to 2024, of course, tourism has been booming since the last year. We have achieved 88% of numbers that we had before COVID. And of course, tourism has been crucial in everything that is related to the economy. So I have to say that Europe accounts for 50% of all the international arrivals, with 94% of recovery. And then we have the Americas, with countries like El Salvador, Colombia, Dominican Republic, and Curaçao, which are the most key performing when it comes to tourism arrivals. But of course, tourism is not only about arrivals. It's also, of course, about international foreign direct investment. And I have to say that there was an increase of investments of 3% in the global scope, not only for tourism. And when it comes to tourism, I have to say that 51% of the projects when it comes to investments are focalized in a hotel infrastructure. This figure was 15% lower than in 2021, according to another interview that Natalia gave on that year for the World Tourism Forum. In other words, despite the fact that tourism investments have been diversified by 15% in the last three years, it is essential to increase this differentiation figure to encourage investment in other tourism areas. For example, everything related to technology, smart destinations, and the like. There is a boom when it comes to greenfield projects with an estimated of $179 million invested, with more than 2,500 projects, where Europe by far is leading the way with more than $51 million invested, then Latin America with $30 million invested, then North America $10 million, then Middle East $13 million. I have to say that Asia-Pacific and China as well have a strong performance when it comes to investments with more than $64 million received when it comes to foreign direct investment. At the end of the day, we are performing correctly well. Our challenge now is to keep growing, of course. This investment figure, let's remember, is $179 million in total, which is 2% more than in 2021. So, the industry is doing quite well, but the challenge now is to keep working and keep growing, of course. In a UN General Assembly conference in 2023, Natalia mentioned that it is very interesting to see an illustrative example of this progress in Saudi Arabia, which in 2022 alone has an 80% growth in foreign direct investment. This means that tourism investment is booming, but this investment must be preserved with security and with a new investment framework to increase these numbers, which will be detailed later. Now, let's explore the million-dollar question. How to become more attractive to foreign direct investment? Innovation is crucial. So, of course, innovation is crucial, and what we have been doing at the end of the day is helping tourism to grow through entrepreneurship and innovation. When it comes to venture capital investment, during the last years, maybe it was the only indicator that maintained a stable with more than $20 billion invested. So, that's key when it comes to infrastructure, in digital infrastructure and, of course, in technology. But, of course, maybe the main challenge that we have today is to increase the number of people that access to digitalization and how artificial intelligence that maybe is the top technology today in tourism, how entrepreneurs can bring forces and can bring new solutions to help on the new structure of tourism where challenges like sustainability, education, formalization of the economy can be held thanks to the power of technology and entrepreneurs. In her interview with the World Tourism Forum, Natalia mentioned that 2.2% of venture capital between 2018 and 2022 has flowed into emerging tourism and technology ventures, and more than $2 billion was raised thanks to the quality of this investment. This means that this is the ideal time to become an entrepreneur in tourism and technology. But there's another important consideration that should be taken into account. During her presentation at the UN General Assembly in 2023, Natalia stressed that if we want investors to return post-pandemic, we will need economic incentives, tax incentives, and everything related to political and legal stability with a serious structure, of course. She emphasized that the capital must come with more sustainable cities, modern cities, inclusive cities, and inclusive destinations. All of this based on a commitment to the environment, technology, and, of course, human beings. With this, Natalia added, we can create value-added jobs focused on the power of tourism. She argued that we can help investors develop a culture of tourism investment through an investment framework based on these values. Natalia said, sustainability means working with communities, working with the most vulnerable people, working for inclusion, using technology for good, and taking care of the environment. The pandemic taught us how sustainability must be part of our lives, and the sector will be transformed to become important and relevant. It is important to create a stronger legal framework, but how to manage and project an investment? Investments usually have a lifeline of at least five years, and Natalia said from the UN General Assembly in 2023 that when tourism faced a very difficult situation during the pandemic, UN Tourism surveyed its investors. 50% of them said they wanted to continue investing in tourism. However, they wanted to invest in subsectors such as climate change, governance, and social impact. In addition to this, she highlighted that UN Tourism's most important priority is to promote green investments. But, of course, this entity cannot promote investments just for the sake of promoting them. A legal framework is necessary to promote sustainable investments. It is crucial to support the private sector because we need their power, especially those who are creating green capital, those who are creating good business structures with solutions to climate change, renewable energy, and renewable materials. They need to be rewarded because it is much more expensive to adopt all of these practices. Only 10 countries in the world, yes, in all the world, have a sustainable framework focused on bringing in green investments. Among them are Colombia, Canada, United States, New Zealand, Australia, Germany, and others. It is important to create a stronger legal framework focused not only on promoting investments. Investors want a legal framework, stability, political commitment, and clearly business. So, Natalia says, you help them. You tell them that you are creating ecological capital, social impact capital. You are helping us to promote a better hotel, a hotel that provides a better experience that includes the community, artisans, rural areas, etc. If a company invests in this, Natalia says, the public sector can, for example, offer a subsidy, help through taxes, or support in other ways. Natalia proposes a very smart way to manage an investment. She says that from the day a company decides to create a tourism infrastructure until the day the project is launched, remember at least five years later, the government can commit to help through government funds to promote and train the future employees of your company. In this way, Natalia adds, you as a government become more sustainable as you avoid importing talent. This type of process Natalia highlights must come in a law or a national public policy. It must be a very ambitious way to change how the tourism sector is investing in talent and infrastructure. In another interview with Duncan O'Rourke, CEO of Auker in the Middle East, Africa, Turkey, and Asia-Pacific, she said, as far as sustainability is concerned, it is thought that it is only linked to climate change, which is not the case. A sustainable economy or a sustainable business, at least from Natalia's point of view, and I share it, must include other pillars. For example, technology to be more efficient, to provide access to, for example, SMEs, to a cloud or CRM or platform to modernize, or give internet to remote communities so that they can have a digital transformation and can promote themselves. Another great example is community involvement. We cannot talk about sustainable tourism if civil society is not included in that climate change. If there is no respective compensation for the communities, the project will always be criticized. In this area, the most vulnerable must always be involved. There must be a personality-oriented teamwork. This can be achieved, for example, by inviting the communities to choose a typical menu in the restaurants or to find local designers for anything you might be looking for, says Natalia. Because it is not about buying the most expensive, but to supply the most unique experiences. Then, as local as you can be, no matter the size of your company, you will provide something incredible because the tourists will be able to feel the origin of the place. And everything will have an essence and a history, so you can contribute to a holistic improvement by including SMEs and local communities within your value chain. And most of the time, this should be connected to education, because when you are opening a new destination or working in a young destination, the ones who can help those SMEs and communities are the big companies. Because they are the ones who have been doing this business for hundreds of years and have the know-how. All of these ideas are very valuable and very enlightening. And all of this connects with what Natalia said in an RCN interview in the beginning of 2024, which is, the countries that have been a world tourism power are so because they have had clarity to accept tourism as a state policy, as a value-added economic sector. It is not only about vacations. Tourism is more than 100 subsectors of the economy, so we have to take that into account. Natalia emphasized the importance of breaking schemes, since the system cannot be slow. This argument is very visible in the case of the implementation of a legal framework. Also, when she was talking to Zumaira Isaacs, the CEO of the Global Tourism Forum, she mentioned that in any country in the world, tourism is a mandatory skill in the path of education, as it touches figures of education, employment, equity, inclusion, welfare, health, and coexistence with different stakeholders in their different activities. And in her conversation with Duncan Arrue, she highlighted the importance of training teachers and updating the way tourism is being taught so that they can break through and lead the way in helping and creating a strong workforce. She also said that most curricula do not have innovation and entrepreneurship as part of the educational core, at least the basic knowledge, given that SMEs are the backbone of the sector. Understand the differences, she says, for example, between virtual reality and augmented reality is essential. And when I asked her what she considered to be the most important barriers with respect to technology, she said, I feel that the most important thing that we need to understand with tourism is that tourism needs a lot of education when it comes to technology. People need to understand that technology is really easy to use. Of course, it's not only a point for tourism, for top companies. Tourism is the top employer of youth, of women, and tourism, 80% of the tourist chain is related to medium and small enterprises. So, at the end of the day, it's very important to understand how education can come, digital education can come in order to support ideas and in order to support the way people are engaged with new technology. So, I would say the first challenge that we have is education. And the second challenge that we have is to structure very well how digital skills can come to digitize the small and medium enterprises that are the backbone of the private sector. Because technology can be very profitable, she added in another interview, and innovation is the key driver to sustainability. Thanks to technology, it is possible to articulate business and profitability in a different way. For example, in the case of overtourism, through artificial intelligence and big data management, companies and governments can create dashboards where predictive models can be run to avoid being unsustainable. You can predict the capacity of hospitality companies and in destination in general. And with that, you can create different alternatives related to marketing, pricing, loyalty, among others. But Natalia always highlights that without security, there is no trust, and without trust, there is no tourism, because tourism is the most human economic sector of all. And this is very true, not only in security related to our physical integrity, but also in our digital security. So it is essential for companies to have ethical considerations for data management. Let's remember the SMEs we mentioned above. In 2021, according to the interview Natalia gave to the Global Tourism Forum, in the tourism sector, 50% of these companies only invested less than $5,000 in digital transformation. So now, the question turns out to be, how can entrepreneurs learn to use technology, understand it, use it to their advantage, and adopt a lifelong learning model? Natalia founded the UN Tourism Online Academy, which has 20 plus courses related to innovative and structural industry topics, including technology. And they give you a professional certificate from the best universities in the world. So I encourage you to explore the link to the website that says UN Online Tourism Academy in the description box. But let's explore some details that Natalia gave us in our interview. She said, What I see is that the Tourism Online Academy was created with the aim of having a strong impact on the way people were educated. Today, we have almost 30,000 people from more than 100 nationalities. And I have to say that the most important thing is that we have there 57% of the students are women. And the top five countries that have been enrolling the courses are India, Spain, Chile, Colombia, and Saudi Arabia. So that's incredible, because at the end of the day, you are joining courses with the top universities from all around the world. From IE University, Hong Kong, PolyU, Cornell, Vasculinary Center, to hospitality groups like Somat Education, where basically you're giving massive online offering courses to measure and to help to create impact in every single thing that we do. So to me, that's incredible. And that's the way we need to move forward in order to assure that we are creating opportunities for everyone. In the interview with Duncan O'Rourke mentioned above, Natalia said that she feels that the younger generations have the power with self-confidence when they go out into the market. And that is why it is necessary to help them redefine their confidence. As we mentioned before, tourism is based on confidence. If you don't have confidence in a destination, you simply don't travel. And the same thing happens in these cases. If we don't push for the trust that people want to have, young people will enter into the sector flooded by informality. Natalia says that when she travels to the youngest destinations in the world, she sees a lot of brilliant knights out there, full of talent, who are really committed to working for tourism and have the talent to do so. And the desire to solve their economic problems through tourism or seek for a better society. But it is necessary to give them opportunities and long-term opportunities. And as a member of this group of people, I couldn't agree more. Natalia added that in most cases, she feels that big companies do everything because, of course, they have the power to change things. But the biggest challenge is in the SMEs to give confidence to young people to come to the sector and contribute with their ideas. In the same interview, she mentioned that the other part of the story is to educate the tourist. She says that she loves it when she gets into a room and finds these kind of advertisements that say, please, think twice before sending this towel to the laundry after each use. Because they are small, simple steps, but they are part of the education that we want to bring if we want to transform the system. Because if not, you can be extremely green and have all the certifications as a good company. But if all the tourists that come don't know how to manage waste and don't know how to be sustainable, or they are not aware of the consequences that every action can have in the near future, we are not getting anywhere. I think that, of course, there is some triple force that is very important in the UN system that is people, planet and prosperity to assure sustainable investment. We need to assure that we are training people in parallel because it doesn't matter that you have a good infrastructure if you don't have people trained. And that's a strong challenge that this sector has because more than 50% of people working in tourism only have secondary skills. With that said, I'm really confident that all the regulations and incentives that governments are creating in tourism are focused on giving people a strong capacity building in order to be on the center of the discussion and, of course, to use renewable energies and all the sustainable tools that can help, that new generations can assure a better tourism for all. Now, let's delve a little bit deeper into the details of this UN investment framework. Let's go back to Natalia's last interview with the World Tourism Forum. With respect to the planet aspect, she mentioned that in 2021, 66% of global investments are directed to hotel infrastructure, but only 25% of hotels have a climate action plan. Yes, those are very alarming figures. She suggested that it is necessary to rethink the type of buildings and infrastructure being used to strengthen the sector. The investment opportunities that the green building sectors represent by 2030 is $24.7 trillion. Yes, 12 zeros after the 74. This is incredible and we need to work smart together. With reference to prosperity, she considers that the focus on investment in innovation and technology, especially innovation and youth empowerment, is the most appropriate. And this is where Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple and founder of Pixar and Next, would have agreed. For in his book, Make Something Wonderful, he emphasizes numerous times that the key to success is to recruit the right people and make sure that they are smarter than you are. According to him, there is no point in competing, if that's the right term, with the new generations looking for something innovative, but rather projecting your vision onto theirs. Empowering them and creating something wonderful together. This kind of philosophy led him to undeniable success through all his life, and it is a very important reflection. With that said, let's come back to Natalia's interview. She said that all the regulation and incentives that governments are creating in tourism are focused on giving people a strong capacity, building to be at the center of the discussion. And of course, using renewable energies and all sustainable tools that can help that the new generations can ensure to promise better tourism for us all. The last question I asked Natalia was, for people outside the industry, how would you motivate them to connect with it and see its value and importance? And she had a beautiful response. I feel that tourism is the most human economic sector, so by far, connections and creating community is crucial. So, for many reasons, because as I already said, tourism is top employer of youth, tourism is top employer of women. We need to take those values into consideration and to make community powerful and to help community to have an exchange of knowledge. The values of tourism are very important in times where geopolitics are not in our favor. Values as respect, diversity, innovation, inclusion, peace, women, youth. So, we need to, we have that mandate, no, by nature, to make tourism a place where people make a stronger tourism sector, to create a stronger community that can help us to revise the most human economic sector and to lead by example on how these values can get into a life, generosity, respect, innovation, as I was saying. Thank you so much Natalia. Of course, whenever you have the podcast, let us know because we can, you know, spread the voice and make it happen, you know. Nothing, take care. Take care, bye-bye. This was Random Podcast with Natalia Vallada. All her social media is linked in the description of this episode as well as the UN Online Tourism Academy links. I wish you all get inspiration and learn some valuable insights to succeed in the path towards sustainability. This episode was produced by Natalia Vallada. Explore further sources and connect with us on Instagram as GroundedSustainabilityAllFollowed and LinkedIn as GroundedSpaceSustainability. Promote your home place.