Central American Travel Market 2008 in Nicaragua
ViaNica.com | Oct 7, 2008
Mario Salinas, president of the Nicaraguan Institute of Tourism (INTUR), indicated during a press conference this morning that the attendance of large tourism businesses (agencies that move considerable numbers of tourists towards a country or towards smaller national or regional businesses) has been confirmed, as well as the attendance of 160 private or state entities from the seven Central American countries: Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, and Belize.
The fair has been taking place since 2004, and was born as an initiative of the Central American Tourism Council. "It is a technical-professional meeting aimed at establishing commercial relations between those offering Central American tourism services on the one hand and large tourism organizations acting on international levels on the other", as the official website of the CATM 2008 explains (www.catm2008.com).
The event will be inaugurated on the night of Friday, October 10, in the Rubén Darío National Theater. At 8:30 AM on Saturday, October 11, there will be the opening of the fair by the Ministries of Tourism of the aforementioned countries. This event will take place in the Convention Center Crown Plaza. This is when the meeting between the smaller participants and the large international businesses will begin, which will end the next day.
During today's conference, representatives of INTUR pointed out that this is the first time CATM will open its doors to the general public. On Sunday, October 12, starting at 2:30 PM, all those interested can visit the event and find out what the Central American participants have on offer.
Mario Salinas explained that this fair will be an important step for the image positioning and tourism visits for Nicaragua. This will be observable at the beginning of 2009, when the national destinations have potentially been included in the catalogs of the international tourism businesses. Salinas also said that the attendance of companies from Europe, the United States, Asia and Oceania have been confirmed, as well as that of foreign media.