The spotlight was on Africa and the Indian Ocean islands yesterday (September 1), with 23 exhibitors and 95 people from the travel trade in attendance at Hotel Sky in Sandton during the Spotlight Africa workshops.
The main objective of the workshops is to promote outbound travel from South Africa to the rest of Africa and the Indian Ocean islands.
Participants included airlines, safari lodges, beach resorts, city centre hotels and African DMCs promoting Mauritius, Tanzania – including Zanzibar – Mozambique, Kenya, Maldives, Uganda, Botswana, Seychelles, Zimbabwe and Madagascar.
“We had a really fantastic list of exhibitors. We had a collection of exhibitors that could do some negotiating, promote their products and also educate the travel trade,” Derek Houston, event organiser of Spotlight Africa, told Travel News.
He said travel into Africa from South Africa was booming – for both corporate and leisure travel.
Exhibitors weigh in
Travel News spoke to Janet de Kretser, who represents the Mauritius Tourism Promotion Authority. She said while the MTPA had held a couple of workshops and roadshows during COVID, it was nice to have the travel trade networking once again.
“After such a long time it is really great to be able to meet people face-to-face again. For us it is just great to be able to be here in the industry again – meet old friends, make new friends – and be able to promote the destination.”
De Kretser said the number of South Africans travelling to Mauritius had grown significantly since restrictions were dropped in January. “To the end of June we have had 50 000 travellers from South Africa, although it is still around 14 000 fewer than pre-COVID in 2019. It has picked up a lot, which is very encouraging.”
Linda Ben from the Uganda Tourism Board said some travel operators and agents were amazed when they showed them the travel opportunities Uganda had to offer, and that it was “awesome” to be part of Spotlight Africa.
“Getting feedback from our travel trade partners has been amazing.” She said quite a lot of those in the trade did not know much about the destination, which made them realise that more marketing was needed. “Things are also getting back to normal, which is great,” said Ben.
Spotlight has been holding workshops for 20 years all over Africa in cities such as Nairobi, Lusaka, Arusha, Gaborone, Windhoek, Harare and Maputo, to promote intra-Africa travel.