African Open Skies the key to reaching travel and tourism potential

“African states must work together to open the continent’s skies in order to maximize the potential of the travel and tourism sector.”

“African states must work together to open the continent’s skies in order to maximize the potential of the travel and tourism sector.”

That is the message from David Scowsill, President and CEO, World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC), at a major speech in South Africa, today.

Speaking at the World Routes Strategy Summit in Durban, Scowsill hailed the success of air liberalizing initiatives across the world and called on Africa’s governments to put aside decades of differences, to heed the success of open skies reforms across the world by fully implementing open skies across the continent.

“Africa is a vast continent. The distances between the major cities is so great, with poor trans-continental road and rail networks, that flying is the only realistic way to travel.

“The economic potential of tourism in Africa is remarkable. According to our figures it will rival Asia Pacific for growth in the next decade. But for this to materialize or even be exceeded, it needs individual nations to work together on progressively implementing the Yamoussoukro Agreement signed over 25 years ago.”

“The biggest single opportunity for Africa is to fully liberalize its air travel. The role of aviation in creating jobs and driving economic growth is too important to be ignored, particularly when restrained by one ministry’s mandate to protect a national airline. The industry requires a coherent aviation policy. It cannot make financial sense for a country to protect one or two companies, at the expense of the economic growth of an entire industry.

Travel and tourism generates economic growth, jobs and investment. Aviation liberalization creates more routes, greater competition and lower fares. We urge the continent’s leaders to fully liberalize aviation for the potential of our industry to be fully realized.”

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Linda Hohnholz

Editor in chief for eTurboNews based in the eTN HQ.

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