On December 19th local time, Chairman of China UnionPay, Ge Huayong, attended the closing ceremony of the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development 2017 held in Geneva on invitation, and delivered a keynote speech entitled “Safety: an Eternal Theme for Sustainable Development of Tourism”, calling for all parties to jointly create a safe and stable environment for tourism to for facilitate sustainable development of tourism. 

2017 is decided by the United Nations as the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development, and Ge Huayong is named by UNWTO as a Special ambassador for it. He is the only Ambassador from China. During the closing ceremony, Ge Huayong and Secretary-General of UNWTO, Taleb Rifai, made in-depth exchanges on promoting cross-over cooperation between tourism and relevant industries, improving tourist consumption service and jointly facilitating the sustainable development of world’s tourism.

Ge Huayong said in his keynote speech that, creating a safe and stable environment for tourism is the common responsibility of society as a whole. He then made four points: First, a strong condemnation of terrorism; second, the creation of a safe and sound environment and infrastructure for travel, such as transportation, telecommunication, dining, lodging and payment; third, better emergency response to travel accidents; fourth, a mechanism for reputation comeback. Ge Huayong said that he would do all he could to promote the construction of the harmonious, beautiful and secure tourism environment, and to make tourists enjoy better travel experiences.

Ge Huayong stressed that, with the rapid development of card payments and card-based mobile payments, secure and convenient payment service has become a critical driving force for the sustainable growth of tourism. He will spare no efforts to call for and promote the building of a harmonious, beautiful and safe environment for tourism, so as to enable tourists to enjoy better travel experiences.

In recent years, UnionPay is dedicated to offering secure and convenient payment services to facilitate the sustainable development of tourism. At present, UnionPay cards are accepted in 162 countries and regions, covering 45 million merchants and 2.55 million ATMs. UnionPay’s services cover pre-departure online booking, flexible payment on the road, exclusive card-using benefits and tax refund services, meeting tourists’ travel and payment demands.