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West Africa to work together W
estern African nations are to exhibit in one pavilion at next year’s WTM London
as they seek greater collaboration. Though arrivals trends are upward,
West Africa lags behind the rest of the continent for tourism growth, said Cape Verde’s minister of tourism and transport Jose da Silva Goncalves during a session in the Middle East & Africa Inspiration Zone. Connectivity is a key problem, he explained: “International airlines receive greater privileges than the country next door. If you want to go to Kenya, for instance, sometimes you need to go via Europe.” Cape Verde’s open skies agreement has helped it achieve double-digit arrivals growth in the last decade.
“We are approaching one million a year but West African tourists are negligible,” the minister said. The islands aim to improve this situation by becoming an air transport hub. The first West frican tourism ministers’ conference, to be held in March 2019, will also focus on air transport, while West Africa Integrated Tourism, a forum launched at WTM last year, is pushing for joint marketing and a tourism visa for the sub-region.
It was also announced at this year’s WTM London that Connect – an event helping airports and airlines do business – will hold a Middle East, India and Africa show within Arabian Travel Market in Dubai in April. It is planned to become an annual event.
Big cities gather to tackle overtourism
New York tourism chief has said operators that offer the chance to “live authentically like locals can be an effective way to curb overtourism by shifting visitor focus to less-discovered areas. Chris Heywood, senior vice-president of global communications at NYC & Company, joined representatives from Barcelona, Amsterdam and London at WTM London to discuss how each destination had tackled the issue, which has caused protests in recent years. eywood said the five boroughs strategy was to draw visitors away from the tourist hotspots of Manhattan and into locations such as Queens. Promoting the value of visiting during the first quarter of the year when attractions are quieter and hotel rates lower – was another policy, he said. Heywood also cited another
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programme by NYC & Company aimed at educating local businesses in less tourism-heavy areas with classes on how to promote themselves better to visitors and the travel trade. On the rise of Airbnb and homeshare platforms, Joan Torrella, managing director, Turisme de Barcelona, said the city’s council was working with these companies to limit the number of
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properties and ensure each was properly licensed, and had since cut the number of unregistered properties from 6,000 to around 100. Laura Citron, London & Partners chief executive, said destinations should only promote themselves to tourists they believed would benefit them, citing the capital’s recent pursuit of millennial travellers. Frans van der Avert, chief executive, Amsterdam Marketing, said striking a balance between the needs of local businesses and visitors was difficult. “A city without visitors is boring and a city without inhabitants and businesses just feels dead – they need each other,” he said.
Dubai gets ready for Expo 2020
T
he WTM London audience was given a snapshot of the latest developments for Expo 2020, the hugely anticipated mega-event in Dubai.
Expo 2020 will open on October 20 for six months, closing on April 10, 2021, during which 25 million are expected to visit. Laura Faulkner, UK commissioner, Expo 2020 Dubai, described it as “the largest event on earth; the Olympics of tourism”.
The UK is among 180 countries to have a presence at Expo. The UK area will include “a pavilion that will speak to the world”, called the Poem Pavilion, where people will be asked to submit a word in any language which will then be joined with others using artificial intelligence to write poems. They will be projected onto a wall of light visible throughout the Expo site. “Poetry is part of the DNA of the UK and also part of the Arabic culture. We will see it become part of a never-ending digital legacy,” said Faulkner. Euromonitor’s Travel Trends
L-R: Chris Heywood, NYC & Co; Laura Citron, London & Partners; Franz van der Avert, Amsterdam Marketing; Joan Torrella, Turisme de Barcelona; and chair Martin Brackenbury
revealed the MEA region as one of the world’s tourism hotspots. Senior analyst Lea Meyer said inbound arrivals are expected to record a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6% between now and 2023, making MEA one of the fastest-growing regions, second only to sia acific. In the same time period, MEA is set to be the second-fastest growing region in terms of disposable income. Tunisia is expected to achieve a 3.5% CAGR between 2018-2023, largely due to the return of European tourists, the country’s main source market; but Saudi Arabia is forecast to achieve a of .. or the first time in 2018, Saudi Arabia issued tourist visas as part of its strategy of boosting international visitors.
winter 2018 wtm insights 7
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