Top 100 Hotels in Nigeria Awards relocates to Port Harcourt with Bantaba 2017
After a two year break, the Top 100 Hotels Awards in Nigeria will be relocating to the Garden City of Port Harcourt.
Organisers of the event, ATQnews.com in partnership with Akwaaba African Travel Market said the awards will hold at the Port Harcourt Bantaba, in Rivers State, a shift from its traditional Abuja location.
The event will hold at De Edge Hotel Resort, Port Harcourt on 16 – 17th March, 2017.
“Bantaba” means “Meeting square” in Mandinka language of the The Gambia. Top 100 Hotels in Nigeria is aimed at recognizing and celebrating hotels which have impacted positively on the growth and development of travel and tourism business in Nigeria through maintaining resilience, high quality in service delivery, excellence in operations, top class in infrastructure and steady progress in growth. It was started in 1999 by Travellers magazine.
Winners emerged through a rigorous process that started at 2016 Akwaaba African Travel Market through over 2,000 nominations by delegates, top travel professionals, travel agents, tour operators, travel experts and professionals with collations from returned questionnaire from nominated hotels.
Ikechi Uko, Publisher of ATQNews.com and Organizer of Akwaaba Travel Market, talking about this year’s return of Bantaba in Port Harcourt, said that, ‘The Government of Nigeria through the Minister of Tourism had asked us to return Bantaba to Nigeria.’
“We had planned to move Bantaba to Atlanta, Georgia in America because for 4 years Boko Haram disrupted our events in Abuja.
“As a response to the Honourable Minister’s request, Bantaba is back to Nigeria. It might be rotated to different cities based on request,” Ikechi explained.
The recognition and awards for the Top 100 Hotels in Nigeria will hold at the Travellers Night Dinner inside the De Edge Hotel Resort, in the Garden City of Port Harcourt, on 16th March 2017.
In order to empower hotels in Nigeria, organizers of Port Bantaba has included a TWO-DAY Master Class training for e-tourism including Trip Advisor, Facebook, Google and other online tools, even as it creates networking opportunities for the participants. The first day will be training on how to package inbound and outbound tours and admission for day 1 is free. Bantaba is a travel and tourism speed dating event that was first held in Abuja in 2011.
Damian Cooke, a leading globally rated expert on e-tourism will be speaking at the event.
Some of the past speakers are Femi Adefope, former Chairman, HRG and former President of the National Association of Nigerian Travel Agencies and Harold Demuren, former DG, NCAA.
