The Federation of Tourism Associations of Nigeria (FTAN) in collaboration with the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) has concluded arrangements to organize Nigeria’s first tourism investment forum.
The event slated for May 21-22, 2013 will be held at the prestigious Ladi Kwali Hall of Abuja Sheraton Hotel and Towers.
According to Chief Samuel Alabi, President of FTAN, the objectives of the program are to enable stakeholders to discuss and address the issue of funding as a vital element towards the development and maintenance of tourism products and destinations that can induce creation of new tourism frontiers by the creation of accessible funds.
Other reasons put forward by Alabi on the need for the forum are: to showcase the potentials of the tourism sector to the economic development of Nigeria; to organize as well as to promote local tourism products and destinations to Nigerians before taking the same to the international market; and to strengthen relationship between the tourism investors and their services/product providers.
The two-day event which will be comprised of a seminar and exhibition is expected to proffer a new direction for the tourism industry, most critically the much-talked about “Tourism Intervention Fund” which is yet to see the light of the day.
Participants are expected from federal agencies, states, airlines, hotels, travel agents, and tour operators among others.
The FTAN President assured that necessary contacts are still being made within and outside the sector to ensure that the issue of an intervention fund is given deserved attention.
He said that the earlier information made available by the Federal Ministry of Tourism, Culture and National Orientation that President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan has approved a fund, but without government seed money as is done for many other sectors, will be counter-productive.
According to him, the position of the federal government on the sector’s intervention fund of not making money available and that the fund be put together through local and international donors will not meet the urgent demand of a distressed sector that even in the face of many challenges has created so much jobs and still doing so.
Chief Alabi noted that the tourism investment’s forum will be used to urge the government to quickly address the issue because of the difficulties operators are facing, especially high interest rates, double taxation, and the need for reorientation of Nigerians to patronize local tourism products/destinations, difficult visa regime that the current level of occupancy and low tourism activities in the country cannot support.
