Dr Juan Francisco Rivero
Juan Francisco Rivero, full member of the Royal European Academy of Doctors (RAED), was featured in one of the latest editions of the television programme El Diario del Lunes, which Portal de América, a leading digital tourism communications outlet in Ibero-America, streams through its YouTube channel. In an extensive interview, Rivero spoke about his admission to the RAED with the address “The Importance of Communication in the Promotion of Tourist Destinations”, in which he reflected on the fundamental role played by communication professionals, in their various roles, in tourism dissemination and promotion, as well as on the new communication channels and formats needed to reach target audiences.
Rivero, a journalist from the first graduating class of Information Sciences in Madrid with three decades of experience at Spain’s Directorate-General for Tourism, recalls that he began his career in Mallorca and that he was unanimously chosen to represent the tourism sector in a century-old and highly prestigious institution such as the RAED, stressing the honour that this personal and professional recognition represents for him. During the conversation, he highlights the profound value of tourism beyond sun-and-beach holidays: “People think tourism is only about beach holidays. It is also about discovering other cultures, other tastes, other cuisines, other ways of being. It is also about carrying peace, harmony and the meeting of different cultures in our suitcases and in our words.”
In his remarks, the academic even quotes King Juan Carlos I, who stated that tourism is precisely harmony and peace for the whole world. Rivero expresses a quiet pride in the work he has done and thanks colleagues and friends on both sides of the Atlantic for their recognition, while inviting viewers to follow his induction closely as the culmination of a life devoted to tourism promotion. “I carry Spain here; my heart fills with pride, a quiet pride – not vain pride, but quiet pride – in the work one has done and in the fact that friends like these recognise it,” he concludes.
Editor-in-Chief of the newspaper Baleares, Head of News at Radio 80, founder and director of the Mallorca Press news agency and the communications office of Palma de Mallorca Airport, Rivero worked for more than three decades at Turespaña. He is a member of the Spanish Federation of Tourism Journalists and Writers, where he served as Vice-President, and of Skal International, an organisation bringing together 13,000 tourism professionals in more than one hundred countries, where he has chaired both Skal Madrid and Skal Spain. He was one of the founders of Visión – Latin American Association of Tourism Journalists and Writers, Secretary-General of the European Academy of Tourism Journalism and of the World Travel Media Guild.
