Cape Town - Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk made a strong call on Wednesday for international tourism and travel organisations to stop operating in "silos".
Speaking at the World Economic Forum (WEF) on Africa, he said this was inhibiting tourism sector growth.
"In many countries and international institutions the silo mentality persists, inhibiting the growth of our sector. The same holds true for how we often fragment our planning in the aviation and tourism components of what is actually an integrated value chain," he said in a speech prepared for delivery.
Van Schalkwyk, who chairs the WEF Global Agenda Council for Aviation, Travel and Tourism, said the tourism component was characterised by a very large number of players operating in multiple market segments.
"Moreover, the tourism sector is dominated by small, medium and micro-sized enterprises, with a few big operators at the top of the pyramid mostly calling the shots.
"And while the larger global players are linked institutionally through industry bodies such as the WTTC (World Travel and Tourism Council), it remains a challenge to forge truly inclusive institutional links with the proliferation of smaller players throughout the remainder of the value chain."
The aviation component, on the other hand, was dominated by a relatively small number of commercial airlines, organised in the International Air Transport Association, but poorly linked to their tourism counterparts, as well as the "new model" airlines such as low-cost carriers.
"Despite admirable efforts to enhance co-ordination, I believe the gaps between those global institutions representing industry in its different silos, and between industry and those multilateral institutions responsible for global governance, simply remain too large.
"Also within the United Nations family, I believe that silo-based thinking on aviation and tourism still is too deeply entrenched."
Historically, aviation and tourism had been institutionalised and regulated in silos.
"This historical institutional architecture and the lack of dynamic interaction between UN agencies do not reflect the fundamental changes in tourism and aviation over the past few decades."
Tourism today was vastly different to that of the 1950s, or even 1990s.
"In 1950, we had 25 million international tourists; last year, we had 935 million; within a decade, this figure is forecast to increase to 1.6 billion. Of these, 378 million will be long-haul.
"The growth and internationalisation of tourism have thus created an umbilical cord between the aviation and tourism sectors.
"This challenges us to find new ways to organise our work -- not only between industry bodies, but also by reforming and strengthening institutions for global governance, including in the UN," he said.