Algeria holds a four-day festival in the desert to promote tourism

Record ID: 1856904

  • Title: Algeria holds a four-day festival in the desert to promote tourism
  • Date: 18th November 2024
  • Summary: OUED SOUF, ALGERIA (NOVEMBER 14, 2024) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF TRADITIONAL BAND MEMBERS PERFORMING, FIRING SHOTS IN AIR AND PLAYING MUSIC VARIOUS OF MAN IN TRADITIONAL OUTFIT SERVING TEA, WITH YOUNG GIRL NEXT TO HIM WOMAN PREPARING WOOL-KNITTING TOOLS VARIOUS OF YOUNG GIRL SHAKING MILK IN GOAT SKIN PEOPLE GATHERING IN FRONT OF A BANNER READING (Arabic): "THE SIXTH EDITION OF
  • Embargoed: 2nd December 2024 13:29
  • Keywords: Algeria Saharan Tourism desert exhibition festival tourists visas
  • Location: OUED SOUF, ALGERIA
  • City: OUED SOUF, ALGERIA
  • Country: Algeria
  • Topics: Africa,Government/Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA001049618112024RP1
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: Algeria hosted last week the sixth edition of the International Saharan Tourism Festival in Oued Souf in the Algerian desert, with more than 400 participants including tourism offices, hotels, travel agencies and craftsmen.
    The four-day event - aimed to promote tourism in Algeria, especially in the desert - also included folkloric performances and activities to highlight the region's cultural heritage.
    "Our presence here aims to promote Saharan tourism because we concluded that the flagship product of our tourism - which is well sought after by foreign tourists - is the Saharan product," Algerian tourism minister Mokhtar Didouche said after inaugurating the festival's exhibition on Thursday (November 14).
    Didouche and other workers in tourism also highlighted how the state's facilitating the issuing of tourists visas has helped the sector.
    Algeria wants to lure more visitors to the cultural and scenic treasures of Africa's largest country, shedding its status as a tourism backwater and expanding a sector outshone by competitors in neighbouring Morocco and Tunisia.
    The giant north African country offers Roman and Islamic sites, beaches and mountains just an hour's flight from Europe, and haunting Saharan landscapes, where visitors can sleep on dunes under the stars and ride camels with Tuareg nomads.
    As Algeria's oil and gas revenues grew in the 1960s and 70s, successive governments lost interest in developing mass tourism. A descent into political strife in the 1990s pushed the country further off the beaten track.
    But while security is now much improved, Algeria needs to tackle an inflexible visa system and poor transport links, as well as grant privileges to local and foreign private investors to enable tourism to flourish, analysts say.
    The country has plans to build hotels and restructure and modernize existing ones, as well as restore its historical sites, with 249 locations earmarked for tourism expansion.
    The tourism ministry said in June that about 2,000 tourism projects have been approved so far, 800 of which are currently under construction.
    In 2023, Algeria hosted 3.3 million foreign tourists, according the tourism ministry, among them about 1.2 million Algerians from the diaspora visiting families.
    (Production: Abdelaziz Boumzar, Thawab Herzallah, Mai Shams El-Din)
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2024. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
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