December 1-2nd 2009, Johannesburg
We have an amazing line up of speakers for our upcoming E-Tourism Africa Summit, including some of the world’s leading online tourism experts- but also an impressive array of innovative African projects and internet developers. This two day event, (December 1-2nd in Johannesburg South Africa) sponsored by Vodacom Business, VISA and Travelport is our biggest event yet- and will be the event for online tourism in Africa.
There’s now no doubt that the future of our Tourism is online- and this event will show you how to get there. African Travel companies have seen the success of tourist produced online viral videos such as the Battle of Kruger, which has been viewed by almost 50 million people, and they are now creating platforms for user generated content, reviews and discussions of their products.
One of our key messages is that the market now looks to their users for advice and content- and a great review or video posted by a user is marketing gold- it’s all in how you make use of that. The web has really made it easy for small players to use technology, creativity and innovation to make a big connection with global markets. And with the world’s spotlight on Africa next year with the 2010 FIFA World Cup™, it is critical that tourism companies in South Africa and across Africa take advantage of online marketing opportunities.
Our international line up includes Head of Tourism for Google Andrew Pozniak, Trip Advisor’s Head of Emerging Markets, Maude Larpant, Ross Kata from Expedia and leading Internet innovator Jerome Touze – the co-CEO and one of the Founders of Where Are You Now WAYN.com – the world’s leading travel social networking site, which has over 15 million members.
Jerome spoke at our event in South Africa last year and following meetings held there he has since worked with South Africa Tourism on a social media campaign called the “Face of South Africa”, which has been hugely successful, attracting over 5 million views and 20,000 members signing up.
Jerome will be taking the audience through this highly successful campaign- and previewing new South African promotions. He is looking forward to meeting with other African destinations and stakeholders at this year’s event. SA Tourism‘s Digital head William Price will also be demonstrating South Africa’s approach to social media- particularly in respect to the 2010 World Cup.
We are proud that alongside the international speakers at this year’s summit, there will also be an impressive number of Africa based companies and projects presenting new and innovative ways of promoting and selling Africa online- showing how the sector is growing and local innovation is coming to the fore.
We’ll be highlighting locally available products such as the Nightsbridge booking solution for SMEs, business solutions for tourism from Vodacom, and the multimedia tools offered by Virtual Africa. We’ll see how rich dynamic content from Africa is spreading on the web- with interactive TV from SA Direct and the unbelievable work of Wild Earth who stream game drives live to the world via vehicle mounted webcams and provide Twitter updates and interactions with viewers as they go.
We’ll also be talking a great deal about the rise of mobile technology and it’s importance to tourism, as more and more travellers are arriving carrying web enabled SMART phones. Once again- we will have local experts- Mobiguide and others- demonstrating some amazing mobile travel tools.
For those of you new to online marketing and looking for advice to get started, we’ll have an e-marketing essentials session with the ever popular author and online guru Rob Stokes from Quirk eMarketing- with some optional sessions on using Facebook and Twitter for tourism.
Going Ape - Going Online
We want to show that Africa can set examples for the rest of the world to follow. We are proud to have Uganda Wildlife Authority presenting at the summit. UWA recently made their population of endangered mountain gorillas members of Facebook, through the launch of Friend a Gorilla. The project, supported by a group of Hollywood celebrities, grabbed world headlines and garnered over 12,000 supporters in the first weeks of operation to both promote tourism and conservation in Uganda- and will surely go down as one of this year’s social media success stories- and they will be showing us how they did it.
Also presenting at the summit will be ecologist and author Dr. Paula Kahumbu – CEO of Wildlife Direct who have created a blogging platform and social network for conservation projects- Paula will be discussing how Tourism and Conservation can work together online. Paula was recently made one of the prestigious Pop Tech fellows for Social Innovation.
These are just a handful of the speakers who will be presenting. It’s going to be a great event- and we look forward to seeing you all there.
The E Tourism Africa Summit will be held in Johannesburg at the Gallagher Convention Centre – Midrand on the 1st-2nd December 2009.
Registration for the E Tourism Africa Summit is open now.
