JOHANNESBURG - The influential Forum de l’Investissement Hôtelier Africain, which links up new investors with developers, consultants, contractors, hoteliers and political leaders and was scheduled to take place in Abidjan later this month, has been postponed to July over coronavirus concerns, organisers said.
"A number of participating companies are responding to the coronavirus outbreak by implementing policies to restrict their executives from travelling and we must make sure that our delegates are safe," said Jonathan Worsley, chairman at the forum's organisers Bench Events.
"As FIHA is all about networking and meeting people, that is a genuine challenge. I am grateful to many of our speakers and sponsors who have told us they are willing to reschedule to a later date."
The meeting will now be held on July 7-9.
FIHA is the premier hotel investment conference in Francophone Africa, attracting many prominent international hotel owners, investors, financiers, management companies and their advisers.
Algeria, Egypt, Nigeria, Senegal and South Africa are the Africa countries that have so far reported cases of Covid-19 disease, caused by the current strand of coronavirus which has spread globally since being first detected in China last December.
The latest situational update from the World Health Organisation on Monday said there were now 109,577 confirmed cases around the world, 80,904 of them in China. Some 28,673 cases have been confirmed in 104 other countries. The death toll stands at 3123 in China and 686 elsewhere, resulting in a global total of 3,809 lives lost.