Some tourism leaders collect titles. Others collect lifelong friends. Dr Taleb Rifai has managed both, and now there is a WTTC Icon Award for the mantelpiece.
The former Secretary-General of the World Tourism Organisation, now known as UN Tourism, received the honour during the World Travel & Tourism Council’s 26th Global Summit in Valletta, Malta, on 8 October 2026. It celebrated a career spent building bridges between governments, businesses and destinations.
For Seychelles tourism veteran Alain St.Ange, however, the applause carried a distinctly personal note. He recalled how Rifai welcomed him to the organisation’s Madrid headquarters when he became chief executive of the Seychelles Tourism Board. Their friendship endured as St.Ange went on to serve as a government minister.
“He stood by my side when I was honoured with the Tourism Change Maker of the Year in 2019 in Johannesburg, South Africa. Today, even from afar, I stand with him in Malta as WTTC honours him with its Tourism Icon Award. I am happy for Dr Taleb Rifai and remain so proud of the man I call a friend,” St.Ange said.
Rifai led the organisation from 2010 to 2017 and strongly backed African tourism. The UNWTO General Assembly’s 2013 gathering in Zambia and Zimbabwe remains a notable chapter of that commitment.
Working with WTTC, he also helped put tourism’s economic case before more than 80 heads of state through the Tourism Open Letter and Golden Book initiative. Quite an achievement for an industry still sometimes mistaken for little more than holidays and hotel keys.
The tourism industry has never lacked grand speeches or polished trophies. Leaders who leave genuine friendships behind are rarer. Rifai, it seems, has always understood the difference.
By: Stephen Morton – © 2026.
Read Time: 2 minutes.
Author Bio:
Stephen Morton has spent nearly fifty years shaping how the travel industry thinks, speaks and sells itself. From a family agency in 1976 to today’s digital frontier, he’s rarely followed the crowd; more often, he’s been waiting at the front long before anyone noticed the line forming.
In the mid-nineties, he pushed Agents Support Systems online while the industry still clung lovingly to the fax machine. In 2001 came e-Travel Blackboard, a daily bulletin that grew into Australia’s most read industry newsletter, expanding across New Zealand, Asia, the Americas, and MICE.
EGT Media followed in 2009, earning international awards and spawning new titles, from DTN News to Global Cruise News and now GTM Holidays and the forthcoming GTM Mall.
Lecturer, founder, and agitator Morton has always turned instinct into impact.
