Cape Town Tourism has returned from a successful Indaba 2014, which saw the Western Cape’s Gold Award-winning stand showcasing various facets from across the region, in partnership with Wesgro.

Enver Duminy, Cape Town Tourism CEO, was among the panelists at the Tourism Cities at Indaba Conference - attended by tourism businesses, authorities and academics. Consistent with South African Tourism’s theme for Indaba 2014, “Twenty Years of Freedom,” the event examined the explosive growth in tourism over the past two decades.

Says, Enver Duminy; “Demand in tourism has increased exponentially. For much of the first decade of the last twenty years we were just responding to the market but tourism has since gone from reactive to proactive. In particular, the FIFA World Cup in 2010 had shaped tourism to Cape Town and South Africa, both in terms of perception and by harnessing the potential of industry collaboration and cross sector partnerships.”

At the opening address for Indaba 2014 Minister for Tourism, Martinus van Schalkwyk said that “in 1994 international arrivals to South Africa stood at just 3.6-million.” Twenty years on, arrivals have grown by more than 300% to reach nearly 15-million last year, 9.6-million of which were tourist arrivals. Minister Van Schalkwyk added that “in 1994 South Africa's tourism budget was just R81-million, accounting for just 1.7% of GDP (R9-billion). There were just 230 000 direct jobs in the tourism sector. Today, the national government invests in excess of R1.6-billion in tourism every year and has a fully-fledged tourism ministry with the industry now accounting for R93-billion, or 3% of GDP, and 610 000 direct jobs in the sector.”

Looking at travel trends will shape the next twenty years in tourism and Duminy noted that social and mobile continue to shape tourism’s future. The popular Indaba Tech Zone showcased plenty of exciting innovation and ideas that signaled the importance of innovation.

Says Velma Corcoran, Executive for Marketing at Cape Town Tourism; “One of the biggest trends to watch in travel is mobile - and the potential for mobile in Africa is staggering as mobile has enabled Africa to leapfrog many other technologies. Harnessing mobility is a way of thinking which extends beyond a mobisite or travel app. It means placing visitors at the center and can also be an approach to a physical space; like Cape Town Tourism’s new mobile Visitor Info Centre.”

A study by Grant Thornton and the City of Cape Town (2013) revealed that the economic value of tourism in Cape Town for 2012/13 was around R11.9 billion and that, at the time, there were around 34 600 permanent employees and 15 000 temporary employees employed in Cape Town’s tourism industry.

Cape Town is committed to ensuring that the next twenty years will also mark an even greater shift towards economic equity for tourism.

Global leader Reed Travel Exhibitions (RTE) has announced that it will launch “Africa Travel Week” at the Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC) to run from April 28 to May 3, 2014.

The event will comprise three co-located shows – WTM Africa, IBTM Africa, and ILTM Africa - encompassing Africa’s inbound and outbound markets for general leisure travel, luxury tourism, and the MICE/business travel sector under RTE’s established portfolios of WTM (World Travel Market), ILTM (International Luxury Travel Market), and IBTM (Incentives, Business Travel & Meetings).

Following the successful launch of ILTM Africa earlier this year, the decision to create an all-encompassing travel week will ensure Africa Travel Week is the leading global event for Africa’s travel industry. Richard Mortimore, Managing Director, Reed Travel Exhibitions commented:

“Reed has been exploring opportunities in Africa for some time, and the success of our first launch event, ILTM Africa, has given us the platform to now introduce two more of our global industry brands to create ‘Africa Travel Week’ and make it the leading global event for the continent’s travel industry.

“Because of the sheer size of the continent and diversity of its travel offering, all three brands will help bring the world to Africa and promote Africa to the world’s leading source markets. RTE is committed to the African continent and its future as a global player in the leisure, business, and luxury tourism sectors.”

WTM Africa will attract exhibitors from all categories of the leisure travel industry within sub-Sahara Africa as well as North African destinations, aligning itself with sister events, WTM, WTM Latin America, Arabian Travel Market, and International French Travel Market – Top Resa.

IBTM Africa will be a table-top summit located in the West Ballroom, adjacent to the exhibition hall in the CTICC. It will target the inbound and outbound meetings, events, incentives, and business travel sectors of sub-Sahara Africa, with suppliers from the MICE sector including hotels, venues, convention bureaus, DMCs, technology providers, and suppliers of services. IBTM will reflect the brand values of its sister events CIBTM (China), EIBTM (Europe), GIBTM (Middle East), AIME (Australia), AIBTM (US), and IBTM India.

ILTM Africa will be the second edition. A table-top summit located in the East Ballroom of CTICC will, in line with its successful launch, target Africa’s inbound luxury travel market. ILTM Africa is part of a global portfolio of luxury travel events that include ILTM (Cannes), ILTM Americas, ILTM Asia, ILTM Japan, and ILTM Spa.

Both ILTM Africa and IBTM Africa will operate with a pre-qualified Hosted Buyer program and a pre-scheduled appointment system. WTM Africa will combine a Hosted Buyer and appointment system with a trade visitor program.

Africa Travel Week will be supported by Thebe Exhibitions Group, based out of Johannesburg. "We will be working with Thebe as our local management services contractor to provide logistics, operations, and local sales and marketing services," added Mortimore.

Arthur Gillis, CEO of the Protea Hospitality Group, the largest hotel group on the African continent with some 130 hotels in 10 countries said:

“Africa Travel Week is the sort of event that exposes the best of the continent to a global audience that covers the entire travel spectrum from leisure to luxury, business to conferencing. Cape Town, arguably one of the most beautiful cities in the world, will be the perfect backdrop to a travel showcase of this magnitude. The Protea Hospitality Group firmly supports collaborative efforts of this nature in which tourism players work together for the greater good of growing travel and investment in Africa by creating infrastructure and permanent jobs in a market sector that I believe will continue to show steady growth in the long term.”

Dates for the events are:

ILTM Africa: April 28–30
IBTM Africa: April 28– 30
WTM Africa: May 2–3