The emergence of creative tourism reflects the growing integration between tourism and different place making strategies, including the promotion of the creative industries.
It is against this background that the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is partnering with Africa Tourism Partners (ATP) to host the inaugural forum on tourism, creatives, and cultural industries.
The launch of the forum will take place during the Africa Tourism Leadership Forum & Awards (ATLF) scheduled for October 4-6, 2023, at the Gaborone International Conference Centre, Botswana.
Following the development, Botswana is gearing up for the hosting of the inaugural AfCFTA Forum on Tourism, Creatives, and Cultural Industries.
The forum seeks to involve key Pan-African and intra-Africa travel and tourism stakeholders and related sectors to harness the value of the continent’s creative and cultural assets in order to stimulate demand for intra-Africa travel. It will also highlight and harness emerging trade opportunities with regards to intra-Africa travel and tourism investments sectors, and will be used to launch the newly established Africa Tourism Private Sector Alliance (ATPSA), an apex body for Africa travel and tourism private sector.
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Moreover, the objective of the forum is to use the body to leverage the opportunities under the AfCFTA. Themed, “Shifting demand dynamics to shape the future of intra-Africa Travel”, the 2023 ATLF & Awards will present distinct networking avenues, business opportunities and learning programmes relating to intra-Africa travel, franchising, creative industries and culture, tourism investment, MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Events), digitalisation and more. The forum discussions will be led by renowned global experts, ministers, CEOs, business executives, policy-makers, entrepreneurs, academics, researchers, practitioners and DMCs.
As well, hotels, lodges, guest houses, B&Bs, DMCs, restaurants, tour operators, travel agents, online travel agents, marketing agencies, NTOs, DMOs, associations, women associations, youth association, entrepreneurs and all key industry stakeholders are set to benefit from high level B2B sessions, tourism entrepreneurship masterclass, intra-Africa travel & tourism roadshow & exhibition starting on October 3, 2023. The ATLF & Awards 2023 will also feature destination showcase & presentations from all participating Africa member states as a way of promoting destinations to a wide spectrum of global participants.
Excited to host the 6th annual ATLF, Botswana has expressed its readiness to enthral the over 500 physical delegates, including the media and hosted buyers from across the globe at the Gaborone International Convention Centre, Grand Palm, Gaborone, the country’s capita; city and across other attractions.
The ATP is a UNWTO-affiliated award-winning Pan-African tourism development and strategic destination marketing advisory firm. The firm specializes in tourism and MICE strategy formulation, investment facilitation and promotion, research, master planning and destination market development and capacity building across Africa’s travel, tourism, hospitality, aviation and golf sub-industries.
On the other hand, the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is a free trade area encompassing most of Africa. It was established in 2018 by the African Continental Free Trade Agreement, which has 43 parties and another 11 signatories, making it the largest free-trade area by number of member states, after the World Trade Organization, and the largest in population and geographic size, spanning 1.3 billion people across the world’s second largest continent.
