S A Tourism is re-developing its website www.southafrica.net, and the government tourism promotion agency, together with Google, is doing a “complete clean-up of the National Tourism Product Database” says an e-mail sent to tourism players yesterday.

Sent by William Price, the Global Head: eMarketing of S A Tourism, the letter encourages co-operation to help to update each tourism player’s information, particularly in the interest of 2010.   The e-mail contains an 8-digit verification code, which must be requested of the S A Tourism representative when he/she calls.  

What is most astounding is that the letter says”….and don’t be alarmed by the Aussie accent when you get your phone call.”    Whale Cottage was called by a man with an American accent earlier this week, requesting update information.    The immediate question to the caller was to understand why a South African tourism agency would use a non-South African company to update the S A Tourism website.  The caller could not explain this.  This reply, plus the poor ability to understand his American-accented questions, made Whale Cottage decline the rest of the call.

The e-mail promises that the website will showcase the tourism products as follows:

It will be interesting to see what degree of co-operation S A Tourism will receive for the tourism information update, given that the e-mail with the verification code has to kept until the call is received.  No date for the call is specified.   

Whale Cottage has written to S A Tourism, to check why a South African company cannot update the tourism product database.