PATA Travel Mart Growing Bigger and Bigger

As Asia Pacific Travel and Tourism Grows, so does PATA Travel Mart!

PATA Travel Mart 2008
September 16-19
Hyderabad International Convention Centre (HICC)
Hyderabad, India

The Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) invites you to join us for a bigger, better PATA Travel Mart 2008 (PTM2008) in Hyderabad, India.

Asia Pacific travel & tourism continues to grow. Expectations are for annual growth of around 6% per annum for the next few years, which will see the combined total of international visitor arrivals to the wider Asia Pacific region approaching 450 million by 2010. It is no surprise therefore to find Asia Pacific’s premier business-to-business travel trade event, PATA Travel Mart, growing in tandem with the region.

PTM2007 in Bali celebrated record numbers -- 423 buyer delegates met with 376 seller organisations, which occupied a net floor area of 4,294 square meters. Please click here for PTM2007 Post Show Report

PATA's stringent buyer qualifying procedures have proven to deliver the right geographic and industry mix of quality buyers from key and emerging markets. This will be even further enhanced at PTM2008.

Returning sellers are rewarded with loyalty discounts of up to 15% on space costs, as well as priority booth locations.

PTM2008 in Hyderabad promises to reward everyone who is serious about Asia Pacific travel and tourism:-

* Pre-scheduled business appointments
* Additional onsite networking opportunities
* An improved buyer-seller breakfast meet
* Insightful educational workshops
* Newsworthy media sessions and PR opportunities
* A chance to rediscover Hyderabad and India

Please click to register as a Buyer or Seller

For further details, please check the PATA Travel Mart 2008 webiste: http://www.pata.org/

Cambodia, Qatar sign MOU for Direct flights

Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jasim bin Jabir al- Thani arrived in Cambodia on Tuesday for a two-day official visit, hoping to boost diplomatic relations between the two countries and also exchange views on potential investment projects. The visit was made at the invitation of Prime Minister Hun Sen.

Cambodia and Qatar have established direct flights aimed at promoting tourism between the Middle East and the Southeast Asian nation, officials said yesterday.

The agreement was inked on Tuesday between Prime Minister Hun Sen and Qatar’s Prime Minister and Foreign Minister H E Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem bin Jabor Al Thani, on an official two-day visit to Cambodia, government spokesman Khieu Kanharith said. No date has been set for the start of air services between Doha and Phnom Penh, said Mao Havannal, chief of Cambodia's Civil Aviation Authority, adding that experts from both countries were studying potential flight schedules. "When we have new flights, there will be more tourists, more business people and more income in tourism," Mao Havannal said. The kingdom, which is known for its famed Angkor Wat temple complex, aims to lure three million tourist arrivals annually by 2010. More than 20 foreign airlines currently operate direct flights to Cambodia, Mao Havannal said.

Rare water birds repopulating in Cambodia's Tonle Sap lake

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia: The populations of seven species of rare water birds have recovered significantly in Cambodia's Tonle Sap lake due to a program that employs former hunters as park rangers, conservationists said Thursday.

A report by the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society found the populations have increased by as much as 20 times for some of the species since 2001, when the program started.
The findings mark a "success story" in efforts to protect the bird colonies from poachers, said Noeu Bonheur, the Cambodian Environment Ministry's deputy director of the Tonle Sap Biosphere Reserve.

"It is definitely exciting news that we should be proud of," he said.

His office and the WCS have worked together for several years on a conservation project at Prek Toal, a flooded region on the northwestern edge of the Tonle Sap.

The lake is Southeast Asia's largest freshwater reservoir, which can expand to 12,000 square kilometers (4,630 square miles) at the peak of the rainy season and recede to about 3,000 square kilometers (1,160 square miles) in the dry season. It is rich in biodiversity and provides a breeding ground for many species of birds and fish.

The WCS report, released earlier this week, said the Prek Toal bird colonies hold the largest — and in some cases the only — breeding populations in Southeast Asia of the seven globally threatened large water bird species.

The species are the spot-billed pelican, milky stork, painted stork, lesser adjutant, greater adjutant, black-headed ibis and the Oriental darter. There were over 20,000 birds in 2007, compared to 5,000 in 2001, the report said.

All seven species are listed as "threatened or near-threatened" by the World Conservation Union, Tom Clements, a WCS technical adviser in Cambodia, said in an e-mail Thursday.

"Prek Toal is the most important large water bird breeding colony in Southeast Asia. In some cases, Prek Toal supports up to 30 percent of the global population," Clements said.

When the colonies there were discovered in the late 1990s, they were threatened with extinction as a result of villagers' rampant harvesting of eggs and chicks, the report said.

But during the past seven years, a colony protection and monitoring program has resulted in a gradual decline in poaching incidents, allowing the birds to stage "remarkable comebacks," it said.
The program employs some 30 park rangers, many of whom are former poachers, who work in shifts around the clock to monitor the bird populations.

"The approach was extremely effective," Clements said.

He said some of the hunters who were not employed did try to collect the birds' eggs and chicks in the early years of the project, "but since 2004 this threat has effectively ceased."

Source: The Associated Press