SA Tourism profiles Meetings Africa at EIBTM

Johannesburg – South African Tourism will be fully represented at the world’s leading exhibition for the global conference, incentives, events, business travel and meetings industry – EIBTM (European Incentive Business Travel Market) that will be staged in Barcelona, Spain at the end of this month.The destination marketing organisation goes to Barcelona with 12 trade partners to showcase South Africa’s capacity as a world-class meetings destination for international Association and Inter-Governmental conferences, corporate meetings and Incentives.

The South African pavilion will showcase the destination’s diversity of business tourism offerings and will include representation from destination management companies, convention bureaus, convention centres, hotels and professional conference organisers.

South African Tourism recently acquired Meetings Africa, South Africa’s premier meetings industry trade fair platform. EIBTM will be used as a platform to showcase Meetings Africa, to encourage as many people as possible to attend the trade fair and to educate EIBTM delegates about Meetings Africa’s International Hosted Buyers Programme and to incrementally grow trade visitor and trade media participation on an annual basis.

Meeting Africa takes place in Sandton from February 27 to 29 next year. It is preceded by a high level business tourism conference on February 26 that will feature international speakers and local trade experts.

“South African Tourism owns Indaba, and we have acquired substantial trade expertise over the years. We are well placed to spearhead the future development of Meetings Africa,” says Lue.

“Our objective is to grow Meetings Africa into a globally recognised platform to showcase our destination’s business tourism offerings to our primary stakeholders, to the local and international travel trade and to media.”

There will be, for the first time this year at EIBTM, a macro investigation of the economic importance of the global meeting industry. South Africa has been chosen as one of six countries to both serve as a case study and to participate in a special steering committee on this matter at EIBTM. Australia, Canada, Mexico, Spain and Austria are the other countries chosen for the study.

The global investigation will be conducted by the United Nations World Tourism Organisation, by Meeting Planners International (MPI) and by the International Congress and Convention Association (ICCA).

“We are extremely pleased to be chosen as a pilot country for this study,” she says. “Meetings are a vital, and lucrative, component of the business tourism mix and our nomination as a pilot country is reflective of the growing profile of our destination and the number and caliber of international conferences and conventions that we host in South Africa. It is our intention to use marketing platforms such as EIBTM to fast track this growth and embed business tourism’s contribution to our national economy.”

South African Tourism, Lue says, welcomes the opportunity to engage with trade visitors and media at EIBTM. She invited all EIBTM delegates to visit her and her colleagues at their stand (H500) at EIBTM.

EIBTM takes place in Barcelona from November 27 to 29. It features around 3 000 exhibitors and draws tens of thousands of visitors and delegates.

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