The Dominican Republic, El Salvador and Honduras are proposing that the World Trade Organization apply rules on competition to aviation services, as part of their proposal for an Annex on Tourism Services to the WTO’s services agreement, known as GATS. Dominican ambassador Federico Cuello Camilo, president of the Working Group on Liberalization of Tourism of the World Tourism Organization, leads the move to ensure that the lack of political will to liberalize air transport be resolved through the regulatory proposal on tourism during the ongoing WTO negotiations. Cuello, interviewed in Geneva by EFE news agency, explained that anticompetitive practices by tour operators and airlines explain the long-term decline in the real revenues received by tourist destinations. Furthermore, he said that current wholesale rates do not account for the environmental cost of tourism. Cuello feels discussing these matters on a multilateral level would bind all WTO countries and lead the travel companies to stop their anti-competitive practices. To this end, Cuello was invited to join the Strategic Group of Francesco Frangialli, Secretary General of the World Tourism Organization. Meeting in Geneva for the first time, the Strategic Group organized a working lunch with the International Air Transport Association (IATA), whose Director General, Pierre Jeanniot, opposes the proposal for a tourism annex as drafted because of its pro-competition orientation vis-à-vis air transport. Jeanniot favors that the liberalizing of air transport continue to be discussed at a bilateral or regional level and not in the World Trade Organization. “The definition of tourism includes air transport” said Mr. Frangialli. “It is impossible to negotiate competition rules applicable to tourism and exclude air transport from such rules,” said Cuello. (10 July 2001)
