22 May 2008
Arusha — The Angolan Hotel and Tourism minister, Eduardo Jonatão Chingunji, on Tuesday in Arusha, Republic of Tanzania, chaired a gathering that discussed the air routes within Africa and the quality of hotels and hospitality in the continent, in continuation of the 33rd annual congress of the African Travel Association (ATA), which started on Monday.
Concerning air links, the delegates analysed the air service quality, the inter-continental connections, the levels of investments and the necessity of co-operation diversification.
As regards the quality of accommodation and hospitality in Africa, the participants were unanimous in saying that to improve the services it is necessary big investments by governments, so as to provide more employment.
Besides investments in infrastructures, they also underlined the need to focus on human resources training. On the other hand, they defended the standardisation criteria of granting the quality rating stars to hotels without looking at differences among continents.
On Wednesday, the participants in the event debated topics like the community models to benefit tourism, how to achieve competition through media and travel agents packages and also tourism operators.
The President of Tanzania, Jakaya Kikwete, during the opening of the congress, announced that the projections say that Africa will receive 47 million tourists until 2010 and 77,3 million up to 2020, totalling an annual growth of 5,5 per cent.
He appealed to the African countries to invest in airline companies, in order to facilitate the entrance in the continent of tourists coming from America, Asia and Europe.
The meeting, which will end on Friday, gathers over 500 delegates among ministries, executives of travel agents, tourism and tourists from various countries.
ATA, a non profit association, was founded in 1975 and has its head-offices based in New York City, in the USA. Its 32nd annual congress was held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
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