AT a function to be held at Sandton Sun tonight (Wednesday, April 5), two South African travel entrepreneurs will be officially acknowledged as master franchise partners for Canadian-based Uniglobe Travel International - the largest single brand travel franchise in the world.
Uniglobe Southern Africa opened its Sandton head office in October 1999 and master franchise owners, Michael Gray and Barbara Raath, currently own seven franchise offices in Pretoria, Cape Town, Johannesburg, Durban and Midrand.
"The target is to establish 90 South African franchisees within three years and 30 offices in the rest of Southern Africa," Gray told Travel Now.
The two latest franchisees to join the regional Uniglobe stable are Inpoint Travel Agency in Sandton, which signed up on Monday and Monex at Century City in Cape Town which signed up last week.
Franchises in Nelspruit, Tyger Valley, Kempton Park and Isando are also expected to be "up and running under the Uniglobe brand" by next month.
Twelve representatives from the 20 member countries will be at the gala function tonight, including president of the Uniglobe group, Martin Charlwood.
Charlwood says the company, which was established in Vancouver, Canada in 1981, recognised that a new trend of global travel was emerging and that Southern Africa had "a large part to play in this".
According to figures released by the World Tourism Organisation (WTO), more than a billion international tourists will be travelling by the year 2010 - indicating a 250% growth in tourism over the next 10 years.
The global company will provide support and assistance to its master franchise partner in the Southern African region, which in turn, will provide hands-on franchise support to the individual units, he explains.
Gray says that while Uniglobe's main focus will be the corporate and outbound market, the development of leisure and inbound tourism will become an important factor over the next few years.
"Currently about 10 to 15% of our business is inbound," says Gray.
(Adele Mackenzie)
