Category: National News

ORTPN, Microsoft in e-tourism partnership

By: Patrick Bigabo

Following the recent conference held in Cape town, South Africa that was aimed at identifying methods of improving tourism industry’s competitiveness and quality in developing countries especially those of Africa, ORTPN has disclosed that it has been selected alongside with South Africa both to act as models for e-tourism.

According to an ORTPN press statement seen by Business Daily, selection of the Office of Rwanda Tourism and National Parks (ORTPN) will pioneer in executing the e-tourism venture in Africa. The impressive venture will be executed in partnership with Microsoft, New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO).

South Africa and Rwanda were the only African countries that presented at the e-tourism session in Cape Town during which two projects including Windows of Africa and UNWTO and NEPAD were initiated.

In the press statement, Bill Gates of Microsoft is quoted to have said, “The public-private partnership with UNWTO will aid more than 40million African people in their future economic growth”.

According to statistics released by UNWTO, in 2005 about $682billion was spent on tourism and more $49billion spent in the previous year pushing spending by tourists abroad to an average more than $2 billion a day when transport costs of $130billion are factored in some 6% of global export of all goods and services.

In the same statement, the UNWTO secretary general Francesco Frangiali noted that Africa’s tourism has increased by 7.8% over the previous 5 years.

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