Last week Enver Duminy, CEO of Cape Town Tourism, and Judy Lain, Chief Marketing Officer of Wesgro, returned from the second largest travel and tourism exhibition in the world, World Travel Market (WTM), which was held in London.  Both were first time attendees.

Sharing a Cape Town/Western Cape stand on the SA Tourism stand, and interacting with those 48000 attendees that came into the AFrica hall, both Enver and Judy were also able to attend workshops on numerous travel topics.

Cape Town Design NPC also attended, to launch its World Design Capital 2014 events program.  Duminy said that there was strong interest in the design events program for next year.  Given South Africa’s 20th anniversary celebration of its democracy, interest was expressed in new township tours and experiences too. Cricket and rugby events are of interest to tour operators, and it is interesting to note the interest in Cape Town as a Food destination, according to the Cape Town Tourism media release.  The UK market expressed its continued interest in Cape Town, while India and Nigeria are showing strong interest too, in addition to travellers from Brazil, Switzerland, and Sweden.  Negative perceptions about Cape Town were focused on safety, also questioned about public transport. Pricing was also raised as a negative, added value for tour operator packages being important.

Judy kept a Wesgro TravelBug blog while she was in London, recording what she had learnt and experienced every day.  She wrote that the SA Tourism stand was filled with excitement when Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk and Jonty Rhodes, SA Tourism Ambassador in India, came to visit the stand. She highlighted the following trends:

1.  Youth Tourism:  these tourists are not looking for cheap accommodation and other tourism products, affordable accommodation with wifi access being fundamental, while drinking with locals also is of interest, as is experiences that will help them to understand the local culture.  They tend to stay for longer than conventional tourists.  Highlights about this segment, according to Judy, are:

• ‘Youth represented 20% of international arrivals in the past year
• The Youth Travel sector is growing than any faster than any other sector in travel
• The biggest age segment within this market is the 20 – 25 year old
• Travel money is 50% their own, 50% from their parents
• The rise of the Flash Packer (the backpacker with money who wants a bit more with regards to accommodation) is an important and growing sector‘
• They travel to learn a language, to do volunteer work, to be on holiday or to study.
• Wifi should be free, and share information about the area one is located in on one’s website

Wesgro is working on how to apply these trends to attract students from South America (Brazil mainly), following her trip to South America in August.

2.   Sport Tourism:  important for Wesgro was hearing how other regions have managed to drive event participants into smaller towns and villages close to the sport event centres.  Equally important is how cities create events, to generate a tourism benefit. Weather plays less of a negative role when it rains, if one adds value and the event is fun. (The Franschhoek Bastille and Literary Festivals are excellent examples of winning winter events).  Highlights of sport tourism:

• ‘If tickets are being sold for an event, you are sitting with a goldmine. A targeted database. How are you using this database pre-event to help people plan their visit? Are you feeding them destination news getting them to spend an extra day or two to visit other areas?
• At the event, the trips has already been planned. So don’t try and push on driving them here. Rather focus your money, time and resources into creating a memorable experience. It’s the great memories that will bring them back
• Post-event, drive them to join your social media platforms, share content of their holiday on your platforms, send them newsletters etc. Stay top of mind, so that next time they are planning a holiday your destination is top of mind’

3.   Social Media:   The 80/20 principle should be used , with 80% of the content being social and only 20% sales, to not alienate one’s followers and fans.  Content should be of benefit to the reader, not the writer, should answer questions the reader may have, and even have a call to action.

4.  Bookings:  A minimum of 20 websites is evaluated when booking a holiday prior to arrival,  as cellphone roaming is expensive.   Wesgro lists all events on its website, and recommends one to link to their site, to benefit tourists.  It is also developing a trip planning service.

5.   Story-telling:  Guests love to hear the special stories of the city or suburb, and these should be incorporated on one’s website (via a blog, we would suggest).  Photographs and videos have the highest click through rate.

6.  PANKS a new niche: Professional Aunt, No Kids are the new niche, well-off, professional women, who travel for a 2-3 day period with their nephews and nieces.  This could be packaged into Mother’s Day packages.

7.   Sharing travel:   This trend relates to sharing hotel rooms with a stranger to save on single occupancy hotel rates, or saving on car rental by sharing with another traveller.

• ‘Economic growth in Africa is driving international business tourism, whilst rising incomes and urbanisation mean that domestic travel is growing on the continent
• Driven by the demand for multi-generational holidays (parents, grandparents and children travelling together), family-friendly safaris are very popular
• Most popular are safaris in malaria-free sub-Saharan Africa
• Disney films such as ‘Madagascar’ and ‘The Lion King’ have captured the imagination of children across the world and play an important role in promoting African safari holidays for families
• The report identifies a new market demographic emerging in America; PANKS – ‘Professional Aunt, No Kids’, a woman over 18 who has no children but travels to remain close to the children of close friends and relatives, with some taking these children on holidays
• Increasing Air Passenger Duty (APD) is continuing to have an adverse effect on inbound and outbound holiday markets. Nearly half (41%) of holidaymakers polled by WTM will change their holiday plans because of the controversial tax’s next increase on April 1, 2014
• No-frills airlines could introduce ‘low-cost business class’ sections being pioneered by Middle Eastern budget carriers such as Jazeera Airways and Flydubai
• Middle Eastern markets continue to pursue luxury experiences and destinations
• UK holidaymakers “have been left cold by 2013’s summer heat wave”; with almost two-thirds saying it won’t make them more likely to ‘staycation’ in the UK next year
• Asia is tipped to become a global travel and tourism leader, with almost one-third of the countries listed for tourism potential being Asian nations
• China remains the most important emerging economy for the global travel and tourism industry – the Chinese are said to be the most important BRICS market in terms of outbound and inbound travel, followed by Russia, Brazil, India and South Africa
• TripAdvisor and similar peer review websites continue to have the biggest impact on how UK holidaymakers plan their holidays. The report found that TripAdvisor was a key resource for holiday information for 27% of the UK public. Guide books keep a place in the hearts and minds of UK travelers (14% chose guidebooks), whilst blogs (3%) appear to be struggling to gain widespread adoption. Other factors in the decision-making process of travelers include personal recommendations, tourist board websites, travel magazines and newspaper travel sections. Much further down the list of influences were travel agents
• The Travel Tech Show at WTM revealed that social media and mobile trends continue apace for most destinations. The report found that mobile technology was increasingly being used to support customer experience before, during and after travel
• In India, tech savvy travel companies are using social media to target India’s urban youth travelers
• China is a growing market for cruise tourism
• A further highlight of the Travel Tech Show was that Germany is set to become Europe’s biggest online travel market within the next five years’.

It appears that Wesgro in particular has come back from London with lots of ideas, which we hope to see translated into action.  It is impressive how Judy has packaged her observations and trends from her WTM experience with action recommendations for accommodation and other suppliers on the new Wesgro Blog.   It is also commendable that Cape Town Tourism and Wesgro shared costs in their joint presence on the SA Tourism stand.

POSTSCRIPT 14/11:  Judy Lain sent a more personal report on how she had experienced World Travel Market, with additional information not incorporated in the blogposts she had written from London.  We are grateful to her for her detailed input to this blogpost:

‘I had the wonderful opportunity to attend WTM 2013 in London this year on behalf of the Province.  It was my first time attending the exhibition, which has been running for 30 years. I also had the opportunity to meet with the organisers of WTM to ask them what they believe is the best approach to get ROI (return on investment) when attending this show. 

Personal Level: 

My main focus for this show was to attend as many presentations as possible to hear and learn from the best in the industry and bring these learnings home and to network with industry thought leaders. The presentations ranged from good to brilliant, and I left inspired. I also got to meet a handful of influential people that were more than willing to share their experiences and learnings with me. 

From a team perspective, we shared our booth with Enver Duminy and Inge Dykman from Cape Town Tourism and the stand with SAT (S A Tourism). This allowed us all to spend time together and discuss ways to collaborate better together both regionally and provincially. Something that will also be implemented. 

Business Level: 

We had set up meetings for each day of the show with travel trade and media before arriving in London, which ensured that we didn’t just hang around on the stand waiting for people to hopefully come and chat to us. This has already proved successful as my team has already had follow up sessions and some good outcomes. 

Return on Investment Level 

ROI has so many levels and one I am still trying to get my head around, as I compare this exhibition to the roadshow we did in South America in August. For every single rand we spend, we (as a team at Wesgro) keep challenging ourselves and asking ourselves “are you getting the most for this rand”.  I suppose in a way it is similar to comparing a TV ad (aimed at building brand and awareness) to an in-store promotion (aimed at building brand and driving sales) if I look back at my experience from working in advertising.  To truly see ROI (I believe) we need interrogate the measurements we put in place and the outcome for e.g. how many visitors / tourists we got from travel trade that attended the show and met with us and how much media exposure we got internationally from the meetings we had with media etc. 

Top line learnings: 

• At such a big show, the country needs to lead the communication i.e. South Africa before province
• Have meetings set up before you arrive with a clear intent on what you want out of those meetings – this will help with measuring ROI and sign JMA’s
• Don’t print too much collateral
• Network (it’s not often you get the opportunity to have everyone in one area)
• Take in as much as possible with regards to the presentations and speakers
• Wear comfortable shoes’

Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com  Twitter: @WhaleCottage