Tourism Today 7th Edition | Page 10

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TOURISM TODAY

Events Trek

World Tourism Day Celebration:

Conference of Lieutenant Colonel Misael Ortiz

The conference of Lieutenant Colonel Misael Ortiz, started with the presentation of the police hierarchy and the different ambits of operation. The National Police of Colombia has 126 years of service and nowadays has 182.623 agents among uniformed and no uniformed, and also 150 units called CAI.

The Lieutenant Colonel Ortiz said that the Police of Tourism started with the law 300. It has effected some actions with the Security Strategic Plan 2018. He also said that tourism increased by 77% for leisure reasons, by 14% for professional reasons and by 6,3% for other reasons.

74% of tourism in Colombia is foreign tourism and 26% is national. From the moment of President Santos announced the papal visit, the National Police started the planning of security scheme, in which Ameripol, Europol and Interpol participated.

Some of the timeline steps of the planning process were the following:

1. Announcement of Pope's Visit.

2. The Assistant Chief of National Police was appointed as Service Manager.

3. Planning Processes.

Finally, the Lieutenant Colonel came to the conclusion that if it was not easy operate the Pope's security, because any of officers could intervene if people approach to the Pope, and because he did not want any armored car, nor luxuries ones.

Normally the Pope made the caravan stop suddenly. The event was a success and people had a very responsible conduct.