Nations call for ANTOR help

THE Association of National Tourist Office Representatives should be doing more to help tourist boards during the Middle Eastern crisis, one of its members has claimed.

Moroccan National Tourist Office director Ali El Kasmi said ANTOR should be pressurising the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to stop it issuing heightened travel warnings without more consultation with the destinations concerned.

“The current crisis provides a chance for ANTOR to prove its value. It seems unfair the FCO should be highlighting destinations as potentially dangerous to visit when Heathrow has so recently been surrounded by soldiers, tanks and police,” he said.

El Kasmi’s comments were made after FCO advice to Morocco was stepped up. But ANTOR said it couldn’t influence the FCO. “There’s nothing we can do as their information is based on the highest intelligence and we are not a political organisation,” a spokeswoman said.