This Global Roundtable at ITB Berlin 2026, moderated by TV presenter Marianna Evenstein, brought together three senior voices — Sandra Carvao (Chief of Tourism Market Intelligence and Competitiveness, UN Tourism), Natalya Tabaka (Chairperson, State Agency for Tourism Development of Ukraine), and Márcio de Jesus Lopes Daniel (Minister of Tourism, Republic of Angola) — to debate what 'leading tourism into balance' concretely means across radically different destination contexts. Eduardo Santander (CEO, European Travel Commission) was unable to attend due to travel disruption, a real-time illustration of the 'poly-crisis' framing discussed earlier in the day.
Angola's Minister set the stage by framing his country's challenge as an emerging destination starting 'from scratch' after being an oil-dependent economy. He highlighted the Okavango–Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (shared with Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Namibia) as a case study: Angola is the least-developed and most pristine node of this five-country area, drawing investors and visitors precisely because of its untouched nature. The risk, as he put it, is transforming that pure nature into 'a destination with 300 safaris per day' through unmanaged growth. Angola's response is a tourism master plan that designates specific zones for luxury/low-volume tourism (waterfalls, desert, national parks) while allowing more volume-based development only in appropriate sun-and-beach areas. The government has committed half a billion euros to infrastructure a new destination area, but insists local communities, NGOs, and environment associations must be involved before the master plan is locked — invoking the phrase 'don't plan for us, plan with us.' He also noted that Angola hosted a ministerial conference on tourism and air connectivity in Luanda the prior year, gathering African ministers of tourism and transport, only to discover that the critical missing voice was the ministers of home affairs who control border policy — a governance gap that blocked visa-free and open-skies progress.
Sandra Carvao provided the global data and policy layer. She stressed that 40% of all international travel worldwide occurs between June and September, highlighting the severity of seasonality concentration. Additionally, 40% of the world's 1.5 billion international travelers go to just 10 countries, underscoring how concentrated demand is geographically. She argued against one-size-fits-all solutions, noting that even within over-tourism hotspots like Venice, Amsterdam, or Barcelona, moving off-peak or away from the most-visited zones changes the picture dramatically. A key finding from a UN Tourism survey: when residents were asked what measures they preferred, the majority did not say 'stop growth' — they asked for better infrastructure, better transport, and better housing policies. She argued that governance is experiencing a renaissance: tourism policy has historically been dominated by marketing and promotion, but the pressures of over-tourism have forced governments to treat tourism as a cross-cutting sector requiring coordination with housing, environment, transport, and investment ministries. She also pushed back on the assumption that 'sustainable' means small-scale, arguing that large investments can be sustainable if they enforce local hiring (including managerial positions, not just entry-level), sustainable energy, water treatment, and waste management — while some smaller operations may not meet those standards.
Natalya Tabaka framed Ukraine's situation as the inverse of over-tourism: wartime domestic resilience and preparation for ethical post-war reopening. She described two active projects — one focused on helping Ukrainians (including veterans and military personnel) find rest through 'non-toxic' mental recharge, and the 'Silent Mood' project, which surfaces little-known Ukrainian destinations to redistribute domestic visitors away from overcrowded spots like the Carpathian mountains toward quieter areas. She emphasized that when Ukraine reopens internationally, growth must be 'ethical' — avoiding turning trauma into spectacle, and preparing both visitors and communities for how to engage respectfully with war memorials and sites of resilience.
The session closed with each panelist offering a single concrete action for the next 12 months: Tabaka called for deep dialogue and shaping the tourism agenda together with communities; Carvao called for each destination to define what 'balance' means relative to its own development objectives; and the Angolan Minister called for including local communities in shaping the tourism vision — summarizing with 'tourism is for people, not the people for tourism.'
We are very honored that Natalya is also going to be part of our global roundt and after talking about poly crisis our global roundt panel this year is in fact going to reflect the motto of the ITB itself and that is as we've been hearing throughout the day leading tourism into balance. So balance of course sounds very nice. It sounds very reassuring. But I think we all are aware that in tourism balance is rarely straightforward. It's rarely simple because even if we have growth which is a good ...
27:48Nathan Blecharczyk, Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Airbnb, sat down with Mitra Sorrells (SVP Content, Phocuswr...