Durban – I’m (Jacques Bezuidenhout) an owner of a Pretoria based Travel Agency and annually attend the Indaba. I find the restriction placed on local trade to be pointless as I sell both local and international packages.
Indaba gives me an opportunity to learn more about SA and what’s on offer but because of this 1 day (This year luckily 2 days) constraint I’m not able to see all the people I would like to.
One of the exhibitors visited us shortly after Indaba and told us that she had mostly talked school groups and tourism students in the days before the travel trade was allowed. Most of her new contacts came from the Trade days.
Indaba online stats also show that they expected 12 000 people to attend Indaba in 2007 but also indicate that 61% would be exhibiting personnel and only 37.5% actual visitors.
If we had more days available to the trade I would have sent 2 of my staff to Indaba as well. We can’t close the office for 1 day.
Some seminars and meetings were held prior to the trade day. This means that I would need to fly to Durban and stay for 4 days to be able to attend a seminar and then wait for the trade day to actually be allowed.
I can’t see the reason for special Trade days.
