text: Tourism NI said it expects a strategy to be in place by early next year.
  Janice Gault from the Hotels Federation told the BBC's Inside Business programme it was crucial for the industry.
  She said a "partnership" approach was essential.
  "I mean we've really urged people to get a strategy at sort of quite a high level so that everybody can buy into that," she said.
  "Hotels have probably spent about a billion pounds in the last decade and are set to spend more."
  Ms Gault said another big boom was expected in the hotel market which would probably generate another half a billion pounds.
  "The funny thing about the strategy is we still have the target, but we don't have the strategy. We only have one way to go and that's growth and the way for us to get that is to partnership," she added.
target: The Hotels Federation has called for a proper tourism strategy for Northern Ireland to help boost growth in the sector.