Friday Nov 15, 2024
Friday Nov 15, 2024
Friday, 7 April 2017 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
The much-anticipated Annual General Meeting of the Pacific Travel Asia Association (PATA) will be held at the Jetwing Blue Hotel, Negombo, in collaboration with the Sri Lanka Convention Bureau and Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau, which will host the event scheduled to be held from 18-21 May.
This year’s theme will be based on ‘Disruption, Innovation, Transformation: The future of tourism’ and will include a wide number of speakers and panellists to discuss upon the subject.
A half-day UNWTO/PATA Ministerial Debate will also take place parallel to the event, where industry leaders and Government representatives will discuss ‘The shift to Recognised Sustainability Leadership’ and ‘The Sharing Economy in Travel and Tourism,’ which will be a highlighted part of the event in order to benefit the economic and tourist sector.
This high profile event, one of the major events which takes place annually in the tourism calendar, will be a great opportunity for Sri Lanka especially as Sri Lanka is expecting to bring home 2.5 million tourist arrivals this year and to boost the tourist sector. Presently Sri Lanka is going through a rapid growth of tourist arrivals especially during the peak seasons, thereby bringing an increased tourist expenditure.
The event focuses on a wide variety of subject matters which are related to tourism, providing strategic solutions for the industry’s betterment. PATA 2017 also showcases additional sessions such as PATA Market Place and PATA Youth Symposium.
The event will showcase a distinguished line up of speakers/panellists such as Dr. Taleb Rifai, Secretary General, World Tourism Organization (UNWTO); Andrew Chan, Founder and CEO of ACI HR Solutions; Andrew Jones, Chairman, PATA; Greg Klassen, Partner at Twenty 31 Consulting Inc; Ha Lam, Co- Founder and COO – Triip.me; Dr. Mario Hardy, CEO, PATA; and Hiran Cooray, Chairman, Jetwing Hotels. These experienced veterans of travel and tourism trade will be ready to share their in-depth knowledge and analytical skills to make them applicable for the country’s tourism growth.
According to the organisation, international travel will double from one billion to two billion travellers and that growth at the same time will not be equally distributed around the world. Therefore, travel and tourism industry stakeholders, tour operators and even media personnel should contribute from their end to make each destination around the world have a similar share of increasing tourist arrivals and provide better infrastructure facilities.
This year’s event will also provide a Media Centre for both international and local media to get support from the media field to showcase PATA’s effort to uplift the tourism sector.
The Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA), established in 1951, is an international body to safe guard responsible development of travel and tourism from and within the Asia Pacific region. Since it was established, it has been the leading representative for travel and tourism in the Asia Pacific region up to date.
It consists of 95 Government state and city tourism bodies and 29 international airlines, and SriLankan Airlines recently joined as its newest aviation member. PATA also has airports and cruise lines added to the list, 63 educational institutions, and hundreds of travel industry companies within the Asia Pacific and other regions.
