The Federation of Tourism Associations of Nigeria (FTAN) is set for the 2016 Nigerian Tourism Investors Forum (NTIFE) scheduled to hold in Abuja on November 29 and 30 2016, with the theme Tourism: Tool for Economic Recovery and Development.
The NTIFE will bring together experts in the travel and tourism industry to deliberate and make recommendations to both the private and public sectors.
The forum, according FTAN, offers opportunity for the promotion of Nigeria as a tourist destination.
The two-day event will create an avenue for private sector, states and agencies of the Federal Government to showcase their tourism products, potentials and be able to meet with potential investors in tourism.
Also during the event, issues affecting the growth and development of tourism in the country are brought to the fore, with experts and stakeholders offering solutions on the way forward.
According to FTAN, “NTIFE has become more important now that the Federal Government has identified domestic tourism as one of the avenues towards poverty alleviation.
This, it says, has become imperative given the fact that tourism is one of the world’s largest industries generating an estimated 11 per cent of the world’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
The industry employs about 200 million people and annually transports nearly 700 million people. This, the organizer says, is what the NTIFE would help in achieving for the government.
organisers said NTIFE will help the government in harnessing the full potential of tourism in Nigeria in its quest to diversify the economy.
Speaking on the this year’s NTIFE, the chairman of the committee for the forum, Otunba Ayo Olumoko, said this year’s event would be an improvement on the past editions, as it was the first time FTAN is setting up a committee with a mandate to organise the forum.
He said this gesture has brought a certain level of professionalism and the committee has the duty of sourcing for fund, reaching corporate bodies and states for participation.
On the format that the forum would take, Olumoko said participants would have opportunity to exhibit their products and services.
There would also be cultural presentations from states and groups.