(Posted 07th September 2026)
Amb. Dr. Alain St. Ange: Seychelles Ambassador Dr. Alain St.Ange challenges the world to measure tourism by more than arrival numbers, calling it one of humanity’s largest and most underrated forms of exchange
‘What if the most powerful diplomacy of our time happens not in embassies or at summit tables, but over a shared meal? That was the question Ambassador Dr. Alain St.Ange of the Seychelles put to delegates today as he delivered the keynote address at the Oxford Global Diplomat Summit & Dialogue at the Lord Mayor’s Cabinet Office, in the presence of the Lord Mayor of Oxford.
Speaking on the theme “Tourism as a Bridge Between Nations,” Amb. Dr. St.Ange made the case that tourism deserves to be understood as far more than an economic sector. It is, he argued, a daily act of human connection that can challenge prejudice, strengthen peace, and reshape how nations see one another.
“At its best, tourism allows us to meet each other as people,” St.Ange told the gathering. “And at a time when the world is more connected than ever, but also deeply divided in many ways, that matters.”
The numbers are enormous — but they are not the whole story
Amb. Dr. St.Ange opened with figures that few in the room could ignore. The World Travel and Tourism Council forecasts that in 2026, travel and tourism will contribute around $12 trillion to the global economy — almost 10 percent of global GDP. The sector is expected to support roughly 376 million jobs, or about one in every nine jobs worldwide.
Yet he was quick to push past the statistics. Why, he asked, do we so often reduce tourism to a scoreboard of arrivals?
“Behind every international arrival is a person crossing a border, a culture being encountered, and a community being seen. And sometimes, a prejudice being challenged,” he said.
The difference between knowing about a country and actually knowing its people, he argued, is the difference tourism can make. A nation becomes the home of the taxi driver who spoke about his children, and an unfamiliar culture becomes the family who welcomed a visitor to their table.
“That is cultural diplomacy,” St.Ange said. “Not governments telling people to understand one another. But people discovering one another for themselves.”
Connectivity that outlasts the holiday
Amb Dr. St.Ange linked tourism to a broader argument about connectivity, noting that improved air links, maritime routes, roads and digital infrastructure do far more than move visitors. They connect businesses to markets, families to one another, and students to universities.
A new air route, he observed, is not simply a tourism statistic. It can become an economic corridor. “The person who visits as a tourist today may return as an investor tomorrow. A student may return as a researcher.”
For small island states, the stakes are especially high. St.Ange cited World Bank figures showing that around 21 percent of Seychelles’ GDP and 27 percent of its employment are concentrated in tourism-related industries. The relationship between tourism and national prosperity, he said, is not theoretical — it is visible every day in the hotel worker, the taxi driver, the fisherman supplying a restaurant, the farmer, the musician, and the family running a guesthouse.
How much value actually stays home?
Here Amb. Dr. St.Ange turned reflective, and pressed his audience to rethink what success looks like. Visitor numbers matter, he acknowledged, but they cannot be the only measure.
“We also need to ask: How much of the value created by tourism stays in the country? How many local businesses benefit? How many young people find good careers? How much of our culture is protected and celebrated?” he said.
The truth, he added, is that tourism depends on the very things it can destroy if poorly managed — beaches, oceans, forests, wildlife, heritage and communities.
“A hotel can be built in a few years. A coral reef takes generations to develop. A tourist can leave tomorrow. The community remains.”
Sustainability as the condition for growth, not its enemy
Amb. Dr. St.Ange rejected the familiar framing that pits environmental protection against economic ambition. Citing the World Bank’s warning that Seychelles’ GDP could be more than 6 percent lower by 2050 without sufficient action on environmental and climate-related risks, he argued that sustainability is precisely what allows growth to continue.
“The choice is not tourism or the environment. We need both,” he said.
The real question, he suggested, is how destinations can create more value from tourism while placing less pressure on the resources tourism relies upon — through cleaner energy and transport, reduced waste, protected biodiversity, and development that fits within a destination’s environmental limits.
But sustainability is not only ecological. Communities, he stressed, cannot be spectators in their own tourism industry. They must be participants, decision-makers, business owners and beneficiaries. The same applies to culture, which “belongs first to the people who live it” and should never be reduced to a product packaged for visitors.
Why difference is worth protecting
In one of the address’s sharpest observations, St.Ange warned against the quiet cost of global sameness. The more connected the world becomes, he argued, the more valuable its differences become.
“People do not usually cross oceans to experience exactly what they have at home. The future of tourism should not be about making every destination look the same. It should be about allowing every destination to remain unmistakably itself.”
Diplomacy without a negotiating table
Closing his address, St.Ange returned to his central claim: that tourism moves more than money. It moves ideas, traditions, knowledge and stories — and, sometimes without our noticing, it changes attitudes.
“At a time when much of the world is being encouraged to retreat into camps, tourism asks us to cross a border. When we are told to fear difference, tourism gives us the opportunity to experience it,” he continued.
His ambition, he told delegates, should be shared widely: a tourism sector that creates prosperity without sacrificing the future, connects economies without erasing cultures, and opens nations to the world while protecting what makes them unique. He then concluded:
“If we can do that, tourism becomes much more than travel. It becomes diplomacy without a negotiating table. Education without a classroom. Trade with a human face. And ultimately, a bridge between nations — carrying not only travellers, but understanding, opportunity and hope.“
