BECOMING GREEN - Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism - page 198

leaders of this era. President Lula, as he is known, explained how the tourism summit
would add weight to Brazil's bid to hold the 2016 Summer Olympics. “This is the first in
a series of events we intend to celebrate during the next eight years,” he told the crowd.
“This event is being held in our continent for the very first time. In five years, we will host
the FIFA World Cup and, with a little help from God, in 2016 we will host the Olympic
Games.”
It is rare for the head of state to attend a WTTC summit, much less give the opening
address. Three years earlier, when the summit was held in Washington, D.C., the WTTC
was pleased to have Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice address the group. President
Lula, though, knew what he was doing. He was flattering these influential business exec-
utives by elevating the WTTC meeting to the level of the Olympics. He said tourism de-
served it. “I am saying this so that you understand we are not working in tourism because
it is beautiful or because it helps us win elections. We intend to help the tourism industry
because we understand it is an extraordinary industry for cultural, economic and social
development.”
In the high-stakes lobbying campaign to host the Olympics, the president, a former
labor organizer, was enlisting the elite of the travel industry—an essential partner at these
sporting extravaganzas—to return to their capitals and spread the word that Brazil was
worthy of hosting the 2016 summer games. Sports are an integral part of tourism. Few in-
dustries follow the bidding for international sport events like travel and tourism. It was of a
piece with President Lula's stubborn push to hoist Brazil into the top ranks of the world's
emerging powerhouses, and it worked. The executives could see for themselves that Brazil
was capable of organizing a fabulous summit for them.
“A big embrace and thank-you,” said President Lula.
At the close of the summit Jean-Claude Baumgartner, the president of the WTTC and
summit host, said he was pleased at the outcome. He had set the agenda: trends and crises
in the industry, including fears of pandemics, and the special emphasis on sustainable
tourism. A former Air France senior executive, Baumgartner said he saw tourism as a nat-
ural advocate for the environment.
“What is important now is that we get out of this economic crisis and that we protect
our fragile planet,” he said. Baumgartner quietly slipped away with Ed Fuller, Marriott
International president, after the summit and traveled 1,800 miles across Brazil to tour
the Marriott-sponsored preserve. Thanks to Kathleen Matthews, I was able to travel with
the group. The forest was over halfway across the enormous country. We flew four hours
northeast to Manaus, the famous turn-of-the-twentieth-century rubber capital that lost its
wealth when the British stole rubber plant seedlings and planted them in Malaysia. Now
the legacy of that long-ago era is confined to the historic town center, especially the city's
century-old opera house. Today, Manaus is on the tourist map as the main jumping-off
point for the Brazilian Amazon.