The Ministry of Culture and Tourism announced this week that Ethiopia has earned over US $39 million from Conference Tourism during the last Ethiopian budget year.

Ato Awoke Tenaw, the Ministry's International and Public Relations Directorate Director, said that the revenue had come from local, continental and international conferences that had been hosted by the country, and that a total of some 50,000 people had attended the conferences held in various parts of the country. Ato Awoke said that there were now some 426 tourist-friendly hotels in the country. The Addis Ababa city administration was striving to improve the service quality of its hotels through training of hotel and tourism professionals. During the last financial year, the administration had trained 3,000 professionals. Efforts were now underway to expand conference tourism in different regional centers, including Adama, Bahr Dar, Hawassa and Bishoftu, in order to increase earning from the sector.