The two-day Summit (began yesterday) brought travel and hospitality industries under roof to discuss the importance of online tourism.
The Summit seeks to showcase the latest tools and trends on how to best leverage social media for your travel and tourism business factoring in the vast growth of smartphone usage in the travel space.
It will also focus on offering practical training and solutions to grow and improve your day to day business.
Damien Cook, E-Tourism Frontier’s CEO said that: “As a local example of the effect and benefit of online tourism, a Neilson report shows that in 2012 over 200,000 travellers went online to book their trips to South Africa, resulting in more than R790 million for the country’s economy.”
The globetrotter of note Cook, who facilitated the Summit held for the first time in both Cape Town and Johannesburg, says, with over 59% of travel now being researched, booked and bought online, this attributed to over $400 billion in travel sales, ensuring that the African tourism sector is partaking and benefiting from this fast growing space is essential for the sector’s growth and survival.
Representatives from Facebook, Tripadvisor, Twitter and Google made presentations to over 2000 delegates.
So-we-too, a Soweto-based tour-guide company representatives concurred that the Summit will help to increase their online footprint extensively.
It ends today.
