Salalah : The Arab Media and Sustainable Tourism Conference, organized by the Arab Centre for Tourism Media (ACTM) in collaboration with the Ministry of Tourism – Oman (MOT) and the Municipality of Dhofar, concluded its activities on Sunday with a call for integration of Arab tourism.

The conference, held in the Omani city of Salalah, saw the participation of academics and media professionals from various Arab media institutions. The participants called for Arab tourism integration as a means of promoting tourism and increasing its contribution to the national output.

The event stressed the importance of cooperation of concerned parties and the involvement of society in crisis management in order to find an integrated tourism system. It also called for the need to manage the tourism products to ensure that it contributes more to the economy.

The conference emphasized the need to find tourism products capable of attracting more tourists It suggested developing a tourist media message that begins with awareness raising and provides a diverse picture of tourist data.

The conference underscored the importance of social networking sites in parallel with the media outlets to achieve good and rapid promotion of tourism components. It also recommended that great importance be attached to media tourism specializations in the colleges and institutes of media and tourism, as adopting a crisis management strategy to address any tourism crisis in any Arab country.

The participants further recommended that attention should be given to training and rehabilitation programs besides focusing on preparing media specialists in the field of media tourism.

—AB/UNA-OIC