SOUTH BEACH, FL— The 6th Annual International Multicultural Tourism/Hotel Ownership Summit & Trade Show is slated to convene July 17 – 21 at the Royal Palm Crowne Plaza Resort here. The theme of the four-day educational summit, “Growing the Industry Together,” will focus on creating partnerships while developing strategies to maximize the economic impact of the minority travel market. The Summit is designed to educate attendees on how to: market to minorities, develop hotel partnerships, explore franchising, share minority travel trends and look at diversity issues affecting the industry. General sessions, workshops and seminars are designed to spark discussion on multi-cultural tourism, employment, marketing, supplier opportunities, financing, franchising and African-American hotel ownership. An accompanying trade show will feature hotel chains, franchise and financing, and industry exhibits. Invited guests this year include: Bob Johnson, chairman of BET; Don Barden, African-American casino owner; R. Donahue Peebles, developer and owner of the host hotel; Byron Lewis, chairman of Uniworld Group; Susan Taylor, editorial director of Essence magazine; Tom Joyner of the “Tom Joyner Morning Show”; Donnell Thompson, developer of several chain hotels and chairman of the National Association of Black Hotel Owners, Operators & Developers (NABHOOD); Jay Patel, franchise expert and board member of NABHOOD; and one of the first African American brand-affiliate hoteliers, Mabra Holeyfield. This year’s conclave is presented by Black Meetings & Tourism magazine, NABHOOD, www.africanamericantravel.com and Horizons Marketing Group. Selection of the new 422-room, $80 million Royal Palm Crowne Plaza Resort as the meeting’s venue is itself similarly pertinent to the tone of the summit/trade show; the property’s construction was said to be pivotal in a 20-point plan drafted and agreed upon by activists, city officials and lodging executives that ended the Black tourism boycott of Miami in 1993.