Tourism is the fastest growing industry in the world, accounting for 10.7% of the world’s GDP, employing 260 million people and generating revenues of US$ 500 billion per year. The current growth rate is about 7% per annum.

According to the World Tourism Organisation (WTO), international tourism arrivals in 2003 were 694 million, despite a record fall of 1.2% versus 2002. This drop was largely attributed to the Iraq conflict, SARS and a persistently weak global economy. Despite a series of difficult years, from 2001 to 2003, the number of international tourist arrivals had still managed to show an overall increase of seven million since 2000.

While the WTO predicts that tourist numbers will nearly double between 2003 and 2020, rising fuel prices and the fight against terrorism could spoil the party by making travel an increasingly expensive and bureaucratic experience.

With the active support of local governments, a range of major tourism development projects are underway on all the continents.

The MBendi Travel website provides one of the most comprehensive sources of African travel and tourism information anywhere on the Internet. With your help, we would like to make it one of the best sources of information on travel to anywhere in the world!

From this page, there are a number of places you can go to find more information: