The hotel and tourism industry in Africa is beginning a period of sustained growth, according to the sector’s leading experts gathered at the Africa Hotel Investment Forum in Addis Ababa.

The conference heard that inward international flights were recovering after being hit by the Ebola outbreak. And the hotel sector reported significant expansion, as well as increased visitor numbers, boosted by demand from African business.

Now in its fifth year, AHIF brought together 500-plus leading international hotel investors, local operators, ministers, government officials and industry experts from around 40 countries.

The immediate good news came from ForwardKeys, which monitors future travel patterns by analysing 14 million reservation transactions each day. Its analysis showed there was an increase of 6.4% in international arrivals in September in Sub-Saharan Africa. The upturn marked a turning point after the Ebola outbreak, which had wiped out four years of strong growth.

Flight bookings for the next six months suggest a sustained recovery. The data shows arrivals on-the-book (bookings for travel in future) from October 2015 to March 2016 are now running 4% ahead, compared with the same period last year.