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Ecuador eyes India to promote its tourism and food industry

16 Nov 2009

In a bid to promote tourism and food industry of Ecuador, the Ecuador Embassy has organised a week long (November 10-17, 2009) Ecuadorian Gastronomy Festival at ITC Grand Central, Mumbai. Prior to Mumbai, the Festival was also organised at ITC Maurya in New Delhi. This is the second year of the food festival, in November 2008 the food festival was organised in New Delhi.

Speaking about the initiative, Carlos Abad, Ambassador of Ecuador said, “India is a huge and potential market for Ecuador. The motive of holding the food festival is two fold: To promote tourism and hospitality of the country and to create awareness about the food industry of Ecuador. Food industry is the second largest contributor to the GDP of Ecuador. However in India, we would like to promote Ecuadorian vegetarian food. As far as tourism is concerned, Ecuador has beaches, jungles, heritage, culture and history. We will target the high-end traveller in Mumbai and also MICE, corporate and leisure segment. Apart from these, we will focus on export, infrastructure and defense.”

Furthermore, Abad added, “Depending upon the response, we will look at organising such food festivals in Chennai and Kolkata in near future. I am hoping to receive positive response from Mumbai. As part of our strategy, we plan to organise a Business to Business (B2B) event wherein delegates from Ecuador will visit India in March 2010 in order to increase business with India. At present we are gauging those segments which would interest the Indian clientele in Ecuador.”

— ImagesFood.com Bureau