What’s new at INDABA 2013?

A “Heritage and Culture Pavilion”, located at the Durban Exhibition Centre, will innovatively showcase South Africa’s world heritage sites, its leisure offerings, culture, art, design and music. With our research showing more and more tourists are looking for intimate, personal connections with South Africa’s people, its history, culture and attractions, the Pavilion will tell South Africa’s story, strongly promote its heritage sites and give better insight into its people. The pavilion is a major project undertaken by the National Department of Tourism, South African Tourism, and the MOJA Heritage Collection, and will be an exhibition of some of the country’s best heritage and culture tourist offerings and distinctively South African tourism products.

The INDABA Speed Marketing sessions, which were very popular at INDABA 2012, will again be an even more integral part of the show this year, with the focus on National Parks of South Africa on Saturday, Heritage and Culture on Sunday and Wine Routes of South Africa on the Monday.

The speed marketing sessions will give hundreds of international buyers the invaluable opportunity of being exposed to - and to do business with - a wide cross-section of South African tourism products. It will also give exhibitors an opportunity to interact with quality international buyers.

The Tourism Grading Council of South Africa (TGCSA) will again at INDABA 2013 host a master class with TripAdvisor, the world’s biggest and most influential travel website with 60 million unique monthly users.

The workshop will be open to all star-graded accommodation establishments and will be an invaluable session, providing tips first-hand from TripAdvisor experts on how best to use the platform to market your establishment to a worldwide and increasingly socially-engaged audience.

On the eve of INDABA this year, we will be hosting the biggest travel blogging event of the year to share insights with the trade on how critical the travel blogging fraternity has become in promoting destinations and tourism businesses online.

Working closely with the influential iAmbassador network, South African Tourism will be hosting 20 bloggers from all over the world in the build up to and during INDABA. Covering fashion, lifestyle, travel and food, these bloggers will be embarking on different itineraries that will cover the broad spectrum of activities, experiences, attractions and accommodation that South Africa has to offer. These bloggers will be sharing their stories with the trade at a special event in Durban on 10 May.

Practical sessions from the bloggers will unlock how travel bloggers can cover and promote a destination, using their own tools and techniques, with the bloggers showcasing their stories of how they have ‘met’ and interacted with South Africa’s people and its tourist offerings through their eyes. The trade will be given access to some of the world’s top travel bloggers, and the sessions promise to be informative and innovative. To RSVP, please click here.

At INDABA this year, particular attention has been paid to making sure that exhibitors, buyers, media and stakeholders are able to connect with all the key people, places and things they need for a successful INDABA.

One of the innovations we are adding this year, besides the information we have available via our website, mobile app and social media coverage of the event, is technology specifically designed to allow easy connections - which we are calling ‘INDABA Connect’.

INDABA Connect is a simple, but powerful platform that allows information, contact details, images and presentations to be easily shared among show delegates, in a very simple integrated way. By simply touching a delegate or exhibitor’s tag at an exhibitor’s stand, presentation, event or activation, users will have all the information attached to their online INDABA Connect profile. All of the information will be stored in one place and will make getting in touch easier and more productive than sharing business cards, brochures and CD-Roms or USB sticks.

Going green and going digital means that buyers and exhibitors are able to connect and share information more effectively than before, enabling better engagement before, during and after the show. It’s not just about sharing contact information, but making all of the relevant INDABA content available online for easy reference and better connectivity. This will allow for more meaningful connections this year, which is also going to be measurable for everyone using the platform.

We will be sharing more information about how the INDABA Connect platform will function closer to the show, while the Matchmaking diary system designed to facilitate important business connections at INDABA will again be in place.

INDABA is of course first and foremost a major trade show and as SA Tourism we have set ourselves the target of gradually increasing the number of international Hosted Buyers attending INDABA under our auspices.

Over 1 165 main and sharing exhibitors and 2 000 international and local buyers - 250 of them top international buyers hosted by South African Tourism - have already confirmed their attendance at INDABA 2013, with that number growing daily. And while the emphasis is on ensuring the INDABA Hosted Buyers number remains substantial, we are also conscious of ensuring the quality of buyers selected is stringently vetted to ensure only those with serious intentions of doing business with South Africa’s tourism trade are invited to INDABA .

We are again expecting well over 500 journalists to cover INDABA this year, over 100 of them top trade and leisure journalists hosted by our Country offices at INDABA and on a number of pre- and post-tours all across South Africa. Another exciting innovation at INDABA 2013 is the introduction of Live Host Radio and Television broadcasts. We are busy finalizing arrangements with a top information and business radio station and the country’s top national broadcasters to interview, broadcast and disseminate daily news from INDABA 2013.

Key industry players, exhibitors, buyers and leading tourism figures will be given interview opportunities at this year’s show for anyone wanting to do business with South Africa and its Southern African neighbours and to get a better feel for the regional African tourism industry, INDABA 2013 will be a treasure trove of key introductions, business opportunities and exposure to hundreds of exhibitors across the tourism spectrum.

For the tourism industry, there is the opportunity to interact and forge strong business links with some of the world’s top travel buyers. INDABA remains the premier regional African tourism platform for global buyers to gain easy access to the widest possible cross-section of the South African tourism industry - all under one roof – and we are very excited about the show this year.