South Africa Targets Middle East Travelers
Twenty-one South African tourism entities and companies are visiting the Middle East to meet with the region’s leading outbound travel professionals to showcase their touristic offerings and promote the unique attractions and experiences that South Africa has to offer as a leisure, honeymoon, and business travel destination.
The mission, titled the “Learn South Africa Roadshow”, is a first for South African tourism industry leaders to visit the Middle East in this format. The delegation will travel to five cities across the region between November 19th to 25th, 2018 with the roadshow providing a valuable platform for strategic connections and engagements, including briefing sessions and one to one meetings where South Africa’s diverse tourist offerings will be showcased.
Hosted by South African Tourism, the roadshow will take place in Iran (Tehran), the UAE (Dubai and Abu Dhabi), Kuwait (Kuwait City) and Saudi Arabia (Jeddah).
The “Learn South Africa Roadshow” is one of the ways that South African Tourism is planning to achieve its 5-in-5 strategic goal to attract four million more international tourist arrivals and one million more domestic holiday trips by 2021.
“As part of our 5-in-5 strategy, we are continuously looking for ways to position South Africa as a destination brand, and make it recognisable, resilient and attractive to all markets,” said Hanneli Slabber, Regional General Manager: Asia/Australasia/Middle East.
“We enjoy a high number of visitors from the region, and we have outstanding business and leisure opportunities for the Middle East segment and we consider it a valuable spot for our “Learn South Africa” programme. With a similar time-zone, Halal and Muslim-friendly locations and potential for more inward tourism from an under-served Middle East market, we are well poised for an even stronger tourism foothold,” added Slabber.
South African Tourism received an overwhelming response from those who were keen to exhibit at the roadshow.
“It’s really encouraging to see the interest shown by potential exhibitors and going forward we will assess the need to increase exhibitors at future roadshows” concluded Slabber.
The exhibitors travelling to the Middle East are segmented into categories of provincial tourism authorities, tour operators, accommodation establishments and experience providers.
Provincial Tourism Authorities participating in the mission include Cape Town Tourism and Durban Tourism.
Participating tour operators include: Africa Incoming LTD, African Pride Tours, African Wildcats Travel, Centurion Tours, Escape to the Cape, ILIOS Travel (Pty) Ltd., Islamic Travels and Tours, Royal African Discoveries, Tamrich Tours (Pty) Ltd., Thompsons Africa, TOP Reizen (TR), Travcare Holidays, Tripos Travel & Tours and Wow Travel & Tours.
Participating accommodation establishments and attraction providers include Aguila Safari Collection, the Kwantu Private Game Reserve, One&Only Cape Town , Tsogo Sun and White Shark Projects.
Following the Middle East Roadshow, South African Tourism will embark on another roadshow on 29 January 2019 to Turkey, to coincide with its participation at Emitt (East Mediterranean International Tourism and Travel Exhibition) from 31st January to 3rd February 2019.
