In a special session at the Arabian Hotel Investment Conference on Monday, May 4, senior vice president of the Veratect Corporation, Kevin Hart, will address delegates via a special live link from Chicago to discuss recent developments concerning the outbreak of swine flu and how the global tourism industry can prepare to cope with incidents of this kind.
Veratect locates disease outbreaks globally via a 24-hour tracking service and has just announced that this information will be made available to the public to provide government health, humanitarian and aid organisations with up-to-the minute information about potential spread of the disease in order to aid with early response efforts.
The company's analysts first detected the current outbreak 18 days before the World Health Organisation (WHO) posted its initial public report on April 24, and has since then made its tracking reports available to officials at the WHO, the International Federation of Red Cross and other state and foreign governments as well as NGO public health entities, issuing more than 100 alerts of suspect cases.
According to AHIC co-organiser, Jonathan Worsley, advance warning of this kind can make a huge difference in response times for dealing with disease outbreaks, potentially averting both disease and panic outbreaks, and is vital to the tourism sector.
"The session will deal in depth with these issues and how we can work to minimise disruption and stay ahead of the risk curve in these uncertain times," he said.
The Arabian Hotel Investment Conference runs from May 2-4, 2009 at Dubai’s Madinat Jumeirah Convention Centre and is jointly organised by Bench Events and MEED.
Details can be found on www.arabianconference.com.
Bench Events
As organisers of top conferences for the hotel and investment industry, Bench Events is a growing entity which currently hosts hotel investment conferences in Berlin, Dubai and Moscow in partnership with other leading providers. Jonathan Worsley, Chairman of Bench Events is one of the organisers and founders of the International Hotel Investment Forum held each year in Berlin. In 2005, he was responsible for launching the successful Arabian Hotel Investment Conference in Dubai and in 2008, hosted the Russia & CIS Hotel Investment Conference in Moscow. Worsley sits as an advisor to the World Travel & Tourism Council which represents many of the leading companies operating worldwide in the travel and tourism industry. He is also a shareholder and board director of STR Global which is the new entity for global benchmarking outside North America following the merger of The Bench, Smith Travel Research and Deloitte’s Hotel Benchmark.
www.benchevents.com
