Africa’s Travel and Tourism Summit is coming to Sandton and looks to bring travel trade together to share ideas on how to revive the industry.
- Africa’s Travel and Tourism Summit will take place from September 19-21.
- The Summit’s theme will be ‘Reawakening Africa’.
- The hybrid Summit will be held in five venues across Africa, including Johannesburg and Durban.
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The event looks to inspire tourism stakeholders to reflect, reimagine and reignite tourism on the continent, bringing ideas and solutions to the table that will be discussed and help boost the industry’s resilience in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, which will hopefully assist it in adapting to new business norms.
Pre-Covid-19 statistics show that Africa’s tourism industry was robust. The World Travel & Tourism Council reported that tourism generated in excess of US$200-billion – accounting for 6.9% of Africa’s GDP – and had supported 24.7-million jobs. In 2020, after the Covid-19 outbreak, statistics show a marked decrease of US$83-billion and a loss of 7.2-million jobs. This downturn trend was experienced by all tourism sectors across the globe.
Speaking about the future of the meetings, incentives, conventions, and events industry, the Chief Conventions Bureau Officer of the South African National Conventions Bureau, Amanda Kotze-Nhlapo, said that business events on the continent would need to adapt to what will be a hybridized environment.
The Summit is the first event on the continent to be hosted physically and virtually.
The Summit also welcomes global community delegates who are curious to understand how tourism has shifted on the African continent in order to re-engineer their packages to their clients based on what is on offer while preparing to do business in the future.
// Chief Conventions Bureau Officer of the South African National Conventions Bureau, Amanda Kotze-Nhlapo
Kotze-Nhlapo added that the Summit exists to address the perception that traveling and doing business in Africa is not safe due to Covid-19.
This was driven mainly by the heightened global media focus on the continent. On the contrary, Africa is ready and open to do business. With our vaccine rollouts underway in many different countries on the continent – we are proactively regaining our credibility.
// Chief Conventions Bureau Officer of the South African National Conventions Bureau, Amanda Kotze-Nhlapo
Africa’s Travel and Tourism Summit will be the African travel trade’s first hybrid conference, whereby tourism stakeholders can access events physically and online. The event looks to open with an SMME Workshop that will focus on best practices, collaboration for transformation, changing perceptions of small businesses.
The event’s focus will then focus on the industry’s macro-level issues such as how tourism can build a resilient post-Covid-19 business events Industry, how it can create a growth path for the recovery of airlines, and how the hospitality industry navigates the regulatory environment in creating sustainable investment opportunities in Africa.
To register for Africa’s Travel and Tourism Summit visit www.africatourismsummit.com
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