E tourism conference comes to Cape Town

William Price, the global e-marketing manager for South African Tourism, said that the conference will be a great opportunity for the tourism sector to catch up with all the latest online technology and leverage the social media interest in the country, following the World Cup.

Damian Cook, the CEO and founder of E Tourism Frontiers, the company organizing the conference, said this year's summit will be bigger and better than ever. "We have a great line up of international speakers including Trip Advisor, Expedia, WAYN.com and other innovative international and local products and services. Delegates are expected to come from all over Africa to attend the summit and last year's event was sold out".

Take note of the trends

"We want the industry to take note of the trends and use the information shared at the conference to build their business. We will be showcasing our new global campaigns at the summit and we will be highlighting how the industry can use the national tourism database initiative, which will really help drive exposure for the sector's products", said Price.

Damian Cook: “We have a great line up of international speakers."

Online tourism sales continue to skyrocket, reaching over US$150 billion (about R1050 billion) worldwide and tourism is now the number one selling commodity online.

He said as more people switch to book and pay online, using social media effectively is critical. The conference will feature practical training sessions in using social media such as Facebook and Twitter to promote tourism. "The role of social media in the decision making process for holidays and travel has become even more important and the summit will have very focused sessions on how tourism companies can leverage Twitter and Facebook for increased sales."

Other sessions will include presentations on website development, e-commerce, online reservations and booking, distribution channels, multimedia and video and mobile marketing.

He added that many companies attending previous ETF events had already experienced major results and a revolutionized approach to marketing.

"We just launched a specially created online payment and reservation system for the tourism sector in Kenya at our East Africa conference in Nairobi in September. We worked with both companies - Kenya Commercial Bank, (KCB) and Nightsbridge, a South African real time reservation software company, to develop and launch the new product and it has created huge buzz across East Africa, with many tourism companies signing up for it," he concluded.

Registration for summit is open on www.e-tourismfrontiers.com