Born in 1947 in Paris, Francesco Frangialli is the Honorary Secretary- General of the UN Tourism and the former Director General of Tourism of France. With an extensive academic background in economics, public law and political science, Francesco is an alumnus of the renowned French École Nationale d'Administration (ENA). From 1972 to 2016, he was a member of the Supreme Court of Audit of France (Cour des comptes). From 1986 to 1989, he served as Head of the French national tourism administration, and from 1990 to 2009, he was Deputy Secretary-General and subsquently Secretary-General of the World Tourism Organization (now UN Tourism). In 2003, he led its transformation into a specialized agency of the United Nations. From 2008 to 2012, he was a professor at Paris 1 University Pantheon-Sorbonne, and lectured on international tourism at various universities, in France and abroad. Frangialli was the Non-Executive Chairman of AMFOHRT (the World Association for Education and Training in the Tourism Sector), a member of the Board of the International Hotel and Restaurant Association (IHRA), as well as of the Board of the French public company SSIT (tourism engineering in Savoy ski resorts), and the President of the UN Tourism STEP Foundation. He is an adviser on tourism to the Chinese Province of Guizhou, a member of the Council of the International Mountain Tourism Alliance, and the Honorary President of the Tourism Institute of the North-West of China. His most recent books, published in French by Éditions L’Harmattan (Paris), are titled « Géopolitique vécue du tourisme international – Les Nouvelles Routes de la Soie » (2017) and « De-ci de-là en suivant les nuages – Un monde qui disparait » (2022).