The summit is presented by e-Tourism Frontiers in partnership with South African Tourism who are globally recognised for their ground-breaking approach to genuine integrated marketing within the travel and tourism sector. “The online environment has yielded phenomenal results for our destination,” says Thulani Nzima, chief executive SA Tourism. “Our organisation is proud to be associated with the E Tourism Africa Summit. This event has become a highlight in the tourism calendar. It’s exciting to note how receptive the South African trade is to using digital to grow their businesses.”
SA has a very dominant and valued online presence on global travel platforms like TripAdvisor and WAYN.com. As an extension of this success, all online sales (via Expedia and affiliates) now exceed R770 million annually. Another digital asset that performs extremely well is the South African Tourism website (www.southafrica.net with associated in-country sites), attracting over 3.2 Million online visits a year, influencing many people to travel to our shores, thanks to a well defined content strategy that’s geo-targeted at specific interests of consumers in 18 different markets around the world.
“It’s all part of our determination to ensure our marketing investment is fully informed by research insights and is therefore consumer-centric, delivering the right information to the right person, in the right format, at the right time,” Nzima says. It’s a strategy that’s paying dividends for South Africa, and for the South African travel trade.
In 2012 over 200 000 people booked their trips online to South Africa. These online purchases (inclusive of Expedia and other South African Tourism’s Online Travel Agent partners) resulted in more than R790 million for our economy, and the industry. Of these 200 000 trips, more than 186 000 were booked by international visitors. To illustrate this growth, the total gross bookings from Expedia grew 11 percent to more than R505 million in the first six months of this year.
South African Tourism’s combined trade and consumer-facing Facebook pages and Twitter feeds have over 747 000 friends and followers. These people and businesses keep track of what’s happening in South Africa, they look out for suggestions of new experiences, and they post stories and share pictures of their own South African holiday online for others to enjoy.
For more information, go to www.e-tourismfrontiers.com
