Four Nations, One Stage: Tourism Leaders Reunite in Alicante to Rebuild an Alliance.

Four seasoned tourism figures, separated by continents and years, found themselves back in the same room in Alicante, Spain — and they wasted no time agreeing to work together again.

Earl McPhee of the Bahamas, Abdulfas Garayev of Azerbaijan, Alain St.Ange of the Seychelles, and Nico Barito, representing ASEAN, reunited at the CLEVENARD Conference in Alicante. All four attended as invited speakers and panelists. All four have spent much of their careers pushing for the growth of an industry that depends, above all, on people. And all four used the reunion to commit to supporting one another in their current roles.

“It was great to catch up after so many years. Tourism remains so much the industry built on friendship, and friendship continues to rally friends to work together and support each other,” Amb. Dr. St.Ange said in Alicante.

Consider the distance each traveled to reach that shared stage.

Garayev, Azerbaijan’s former Minister of Culture and Tourism, once served as President of the Executive Council of the UNWTO — now UN Tourism — during the 2017 election in which Dr. St.Ange ran for Secretary-General. Today he is an Associate Professor in Baku and a Visiting Professor at Coventry University in the United Kingdom.

St.Ange, the Seychelles’ former Minister of Tourism, Civil Aviation, Ports and Marine, now serves as Ambassador At Large for the Republic of Seychelles.

McPhee, formerly Senior Director of International Relations and Sustainable Economic Development for the Bahamas, has moved into the private sector as Owner and Manager of Let’s Go Travel Bahamas.

Barito serves as the Special Envoy of the Seychelles President for ASEAN, based in Jakarta, Indonesia, connecting the Indian Ocean to Southeast Asia.

The meeting did not end with handshakes alone. From the corridors of the conference, Garayev and McPhee began reaching out to others across global tourism networks — past leaders and current players alike — to push for a renewal drive that brings this experienced group back into coordinated action.

Institutional memory fades when leaders move on. These four chose to treat their combined experience as an asset worth pooling. All four remain engaged in tourism, and all pledged to stay a positive force in the sector they spent much of their careers shaping.

This is tourism — people first, always.