Located exactly at the center of the African continent, Arusha town will be a meeting point for Eastern African travel trade and tourism executives during the annual regional travel fairs to be staged there.

Nestled on the foothills of Mount Meru in northern Tanzania tourist circuit, Arusha has been picked an ideal center for African travel trade executives to meet and discuss business.  The town lies half-way between Cape Town in South Africa and Cairo in Egypt.

Seven years of successful annual national tourism exhibition in this town is a secret behind its selection to hold annual regional travel trade and tourism exhibitions expected to attract participants around the globe.

The just-ended annual “Karibu Travel and Tourism Fair (KTTF) was held Arusha, surprisingly, attracted some 160 local and regional tourist companies to showcase their tourist products and services they offer to international class visitors.

The annual KTTF that was launched in 2000 and firstly registered as “Arusha Travel Market” (ATM) with 38 exhibitors has changed its name four years ago to become Karibu Travel and Tourism Fair and had now attracted the regional governments and private tourist stakeholders to take part.

The executive secretary of the Tanzania Association of Tour Operators (TATO) Mustapha Akunaay said KTTF has been growing faster to attract other exhibitors from Kenya and Uganda, the reason that prompted the travel trade stakeholders to appoint this town their regional meeting place.

“Karibu Travel and Tourism Fair is the brainchild of TATO and now we are happy to see the government of Tanzania recognizing our efforts and supporting us,” Akunaay told eTN.

“The ministry of Tourism and the Tanzania Tourist Board (TTB) have taken over coordination of annual KTTF starting this year, and we are now looking at strengthening private and public sector partnership in making this annual event the most attractive in Africa,” Akunaay said.

There has been a dialogue between the East African Community (EAC) Secretariat deliberating joint protocols that would bring together tourist stakeholders from member states and the governments to endorse the KTTF a joint annual regional event.

When endorsed, each member state (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and later Rwanda) will be showcasing their tourist products and services in annual rotation, but at the same venue. Other African countries have been as well invited to exhibit their tourism there.

“This means that each year a regional member state will liaison with KTTF organizers and bring to Arusha its tourist companies and other stakeholders to showcase what is there to offer to foreign visitors,” Akunaay said.

When successful, KTTF will probably be the most attractive tourism fair in Africa organized under regional integration. Most of such fairs are nationally organized.

Tanzanian Tourism Minister Anthony Diallo told eTN that his government will be working closely with private tourist stakeholders to ensure sustainability of KTTF annual tourism fair. This year KTTF has attracted over 6,000 visitors, mostly travel trade stakeholders and professionals.

Tanzania Tourist Board’s managing director Peter Mwenguo said the fair was the first of its kind in Africa which brought together public and private stakeholders in tourism marketing and development.

“Being the biggest regional tourism fair, it has shown how the public and private sectors could come together in formulating and planning travel and tourism marketing strategies and development initiatives for the best of Africa’s fast growing tourism,” Mwenguo said.

After South Africa’s popular Indaba Tourism Fair, Karibu Travel and Tourism Fair is the second tourism trade fair in the African continent that brings together travel trade industry players at regional and global levels.

Tanzania had received 612,754 tourists in 2005 and collected revenues amount to about US$1 billion according to ministry of Tourism. The tourist board (TTB) has targeted to attract 1 billion (one billion) tourists by 2010 to generate US$1.5 billion per year.