The three-day congress, which opened on Thursday and lasts until Saturday, has brought together the heads of 55 national associations of travel agencies from 35 countries along with 120 travel industry professionals from Croatia and abroad.
Rifai and nine travel agency associations, including Croatia's UHPA, signed at the congress the UNWTO's Global Code of Ethics for Tourism.
Underlining that Southeast Europe, including Croatia, has been experiencing a tourism boom in recent years, Rifai said that it would bring significant economic benefits to those countries.
Tourist growth in Croatia exceeds considerably the country's overall economic growth, he said, adding that the tourism sector therefore deserved certain incentives.
Along with tax reliefs, the UNWTO also recommends, for countries with strong tourism growth, the introduction of simpler visa regimes, Rifai said, adding that the UNWTO had been working intensively in the last few years on finding a model to overcome such problems.
Rifai noted that Europe's leading share in the world tourism market was beginning to decline slightly, while southeast Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and some other regions, which he called the most open in the world, were increasing their share.
Speaking about the issue of visa requirements which hampered tourist development, Rifai said the UNWTO's latest report and analysis showed that an average two-thirds of the world's population need a visa to travel abroad, while only 19% do not need a visa.
The report also shows that emerging economies are more open in terms of visa requirements, as well as that in the last few years there has been some progress in that regard. In 2008, visas were required for around 77% of the world's destinations as against around 62% today, and a considerable number of them has facilitated the process of obtaining a visa by policy changes, with "visa required" policies having been replaced by "e-visa", "entry visa" or "no visa required" policies, Rifai said.
Still, there remains a lot of room for improvement, notably in emerging markets such as China, Brazil and Russia, he said.
UHPA president Boris Zgomba said that the European tourism sector lost around EUR 70 billion in revenue every year because of complicated visa regimes.