African travel and tourism pioneer Derek Houston recently celebrated 39 years of operating his company, Houston Travel Marketing Services (HTMS), and has been working in the travel trade for an astounding 58 years.
Travel News’ sister publication Tourism Update sat down with Houston to hear about his impressive career, get his advice and ask his thoughts about the future of the African tourism industry.
Career
Houston started his journey in Pretoria with SA Tourism before working for the South African Tourism Board’s (Satour) office in Harare. He also worked for Trafalgar Tours, Thomas Cook Travel and Sunshine Tours and spent three years in London to broaden his travel experience.
In 2000 Derek started the very popular ‘Spotlight on Africa’ workshops to promote the continent as a whole to various markets both in Africa and overseas.
Over the last 23 years HTMS has grown its portfolio of travel trade workshops under the Spotlight brand and now runs 30 trade workshop sessions around Africa and in Europe.
The workshops in Africa are held annually in Harare, Gaborone, Windhoek, Maputo, Lagos, Accra, Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.
Houston, together with Reed Travel Exhibitions, helped launch World Travel Market Africa. The biggest highlight for him was hosting workshops in Eastern Europe.
Love of travel
Houston spoke about his gratitude to the tourism industry and also about the passion he feels while exploring the globe.
“It is about the interaction with the travel trade. We are a very lively, enthusiastic industry. I love going to tourism exhibitions, meeting people. Knowing so many people after 58 years in the industry, it is always great catching up.”
Houston has travelled to around 80 different countries. “It really opens up one’s mind when meeting new people in many different ways all over the world.”
With his decades of experience, Houston shares some valuable advice on how the travel trade should “keep on going”.
“The tourism industry has a lot of ups and downs. You just have to stick in there and carry on. Apart from COVID there have been financial problems, meltdowns – all sorts of disasters have hit the travel and tourism industry. But we have to continue marketing and keep on selling.”
He highlighted Zimbabwe’s political and economic upheaval in the early 2000s as a prime example of tourism resilience.
“They were at every trade show around the world, waving their flag and being there saying: “We are still open for business’. When things quietened down, the business immediately came back because everyone still had them top of mind.
Bright future
“I think the future of African tourism looks very bright. It has bounced back much stronger than people had been expecting. Some countries are sitting at 90% of 2019 levels and South Africa is doing well,” he said.
Sharing his thoughts on the future of the industry, he was not only upbeat about the Rainbow Nation’s prospects, but of the whole continent.
“All the airlines are coming back in. I’ve taken a number of flights all over Africa already this year and every one of them has been very full. Business travel seems to be picking up again.”
Houston has been particularly impressed by the dedication of the travel trade.
“I have come across many new travel agencies that have suddenly opened; in Windhoek, there are about three or four new ones. People got retrenched from major agencies and they then started out on their own as ITCs. Everything looks really positive for tourism’s outlook going forward.”
Houston signed off with a smile, saying that he had no plans whatsoever to retire.
