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Travel Feature
ATA World Congress Convenes in Senegal
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- Parent Category: Travel Info
- Category: Travel Feature
- Published on Sunday, 22 May 2011 05:00
- Written by FFestivalTraveler Staff
The 36th Annual Africa Travel Association (ATA) World Congress runs May 25 - 29, 201
1 at the Le Méridien President in Dakar, Senegal. The theme of this year’s event is "Destination Senegal: A Tourism Gateway Inspired by Culture, Heritage and Arts."
The Ministry of Tourism and Handicrafts, Liaison with the Private Sector and Small Businesses of the Republic of Senegal is host to the ATA World Congress. ATA has longstanding ties with the West African nation, where it held its Eco and Cultural Symposium in 1992.
The four-day networking and learning industry event engages delegates from around the world in discussions on a range of industry topics, such as marketing and promotions, niche markets, industry trends, sustainable tourism, climate change, airline access, public-private partnership, and tourism policy choices for Africa.
ATA’s signature event in Africa provides a unique networking, learning and agenda-shaping platform for hundreds of travel professionals in Africa. ATA expects several hundred delegates at its hallmark event.
Delegates include African tourism ministers and industry experts representing tourism boards, tour operators and their product development executives, front-line agents, ground operator companies, airlines, and hotels.
Participants from the travel trade media and the corporate, non profit and academic sectors are also expected to attend, along with African Diaspora representativ
es.
ATA’s Young Professionals Program, representing travel, tourism and hospitality students and young professionals from North America and Africa, will also participate in the event.
As part of the ATA Congress, delegates will participate in TICAA-Dakar, an international tourism travel show, where Africa’s tourism, culture and arts industries will be showcased.
Special events include the Business-to-Business Exchange for Buyers and Sellers, in which travel professionals from the USA and Africa will have the opportunity to meet and develop business relationships and linkages, as well as a gala dinner featuring Senegalese folk wrestling.
Senegal will also organize a Host Country Day, when delegates will explore the city of Dakar, shop at crafts markets and artists quarters, visit Goree Island, and see the new African Renaissance monument. Delegates will also participate in a Destination Africa Marketplace.
Pre and post congress tours will be available for more opportunities to sample Senegal’s diverse tourism products and to explore the country’s new offerings.
For more information, visit www.africatravelassociation.org/ata/events.
Africa Travel Association World Congress
May 25 - 29, 2011
Le Méridien President
Pointe des Almadies
BP 8181
Dakar, Senegal
221-33-8696969
Los Angeles Culture Shock
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- Parent Category: Travel Info
- Category: Travel Feature
- Published on Tuesday, 19 April 2011 05:00
- Written by Kevin Filipski
There are many people — myself included — who think of Los Angeles as a cultural wasteland where only movie and TV stars count in any way, shape or form. A recent visit to the City of Angels helped to disprove that theory by concentrating on the arts far removed from the clichéd stars on the sidewalks on Hollywood Boulevard.
Probably the biggest instance of culture shock for this New Yorker was arriving at the glamorous Dorothy Chandler Pavilion—yes, that's the place where they used to hold the Oscars—for a 7:30 LA Opera performance of Benjamin Britten’sThe Turn of the Screw at 7:20—and being pretty much the first people in their seats! Isn't anyone coming, we thought, or is everyone else in a fabled L.A. traffic jam? Neither of those, it turned out—by 7:35, when the opera began, the seats were filled as the famed laid-back attitude of West Coasters again reared its head.
Traveler Henry Biernacki Visits 120 Countries
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- Parent Category: Travel Info
- Category: Travel Feature
- Published on Monday, 11 April 2011 10:00
- Written by Ginny Grimsley
When Henry Biernacki was 17 years old, he hopped a Greyhound bus from Colorado to Mexico with nothing but a small backpack, the clothes on his back and a few bucks in his pocket.
He hasn’t stopped moving since.
Today, Biernacki is an airline captain with Virgin America and he has traveled to more than 120 countries, but his travel habits haven’t evolved much since his teen years. No five-star hotels or limousines for him. Most of the time, he’ll get on a plane the same way he boarded that bus – backpack, clothes on his back, a few bucks in his pocket.
In fact, back in 1997, he toured 40 different countries over 11 months, spending only $3,700 the entire trip. He slept on the streets, in airports, and at times, in a guest house. And that’s why he thinks he’s been so fortunate. For him, it wasn’t about seeing the world – it was about meeting the people along the journey.
To Vande Maharashtra on Indian Railways
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- Parent Category: Travel Info
- Category: Travel Feature
- Published on Sunday, 20 March 2011 17:25
- Written by Caroline Martin
For a budget adventure, there is nothing like a couple of days on Indian Railways.
.
One recent October, the combined forces of a railway accident and Indian bureaucratic mix-up led to my taking an enforced leisurely ride from central Kerala to Maharashtra. Normally there is a 24-hour express train, but since a mishap in May, the Konkan line was closed for repair.
So I had to take the looooonnnnng -- that is, more than 40 hours -- local train trip. It was the proverbial Slow Boat to China, through an array of landscapes and languages hinting at just a fraction of India's diversity.
