First Tourism & Travel Fair Far behind Those of Other Countries

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia – Ethiopia’s first Tourism & Travel Fair is taking place side-by-side with the Fifth Agrifex Ethiopia. While not quite measuring up to more established fairs in other countries, there is always a first time for everything, writes Hadra Ahmed, Fortune Staff Writer.

Sanjay Sharma, 32, is an Indian businessman who came running to visit the Tourism & Travel Fair organised for the first time in the country.

The Fair was organised alongside the Fifth Agrifex Ethiopia, where agricultural products and machinery are annually displayed. The two events, organised by the Addis Abeba Chamber of Commerce & Sectoral Associations (AACCSA), are going on side-by-side from June 14 to 18, 2012.

Tour operators were displaying pictures and their profiles at the corners of their stands.

However, Sharma was a little bit disappointed in seeing the 43 local and international tour operators. Gashaw Debebe, secretary general of the Addis Abeba Chamber of Commerce & Sectoral Association (AACCSA), described the 167 registered operators to Fortune.

Sanjay recalls the tour and travel exhibition that he attended seven months ago in the semi-desert of Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan, one of the largest states of India, as it is described as a hotspot for culture.

“I was fascinated by the organisation of the exhibition,” he said. “There were visitors from all over the world, and I was expecting to see the same thing here.”

One such programme was the demonstration of a married couple. In a setting that was prepared only for showing how the marriage ceremony is celebrated in India. There were horses, a music band, and dancers to encourage visitors to dance.

“They would take couples and made them ride the horse as they approached the crowd, then the crowd welcomed them dancing, making them feel like they were the married couple, for real,” he recalls the moment that he danced in one of the weddings with a big smile.

The other way that the organisers presented the tourist attractions of their country was displaying pictures, playing videos of the sites and of tourists visiting the places with a big screen, and scenes depicting the cultures and ways of life in the states.

There are over 27 tour and travel exhibitions in India organised throughout the year. The number of foreign tourist arrivals in the year 2011 was 2.92 million, according to a report by the Indian Ministry of Tourism.

As the tourism industry’s popularity grows, the image of travel and tourism has begun to evolve in Ethiopia, in the past couple of years, agreed the exhibitors.

It took a year to organise the tour and travel event, according to Gashaw.

“As it is the first time, we are very much satisfied with the performance and responses we got from the stakeholders and the people,” he said.

Ethiopia earned 253 million dollars in the first two quarters of the 2011/12 fiscal year from tourism, which is 111pc higher than that of the same period last year. During the same period the number of tourists grew by 11pc to 321,000 tourists, according to Ministry of Culture & Tourism (MoCT).

The event was successful in creating contacts between the local tour operators and foreign visitors, according to Gashaw. Read more on Addis Fortune.