Ratio Magazine :: The Inside Track to East Africa’s Economies - EAC: Press Release: East Africa's First International E-Tourism Conference Yields Real Results

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EAC: Press Release: East Africa's First International E-Tourism Conference Yields Real Results

Thursday, 23 October 2008

22 October 2008 --- East Africa’s first international e-tourism conference, which took place in Nairobi last week, has achieved some major results. One of the keynote speakers at the conference, global online travel agency Expedia.com, has announced they have signed a marketing agreement with regional operator Vintage Africa. This will give a much needed boost and greater exposure online to the East African travel market.

South African based online, real time reservations system – Nightsbridge, also signed up a lot of new business as a result of the conference. “We were really impressed with the E Tourism East Africa conference. This was our first time to present to this market and we signed up a large number of Kenyan based hotels, safari camps and guest-houses. It’s really encouraging to see Kenya’s tourism moving to online channels’, said Theresa Emerick – Director of Nightsbridge.

Not only did the conference generate a lot of interest and new business for the East African region, it also garnered greater government support for the move to e-commerce in Kenya.

The Minister for Tourism – Hon. Najib Balala, who opened the conference, said that he would take a very active interest in pushing the approval of the ICT bill, which is now awaiting its second reading in the Kenyan parliament. “If all fails, we will consider petitioning the president to decree the law in order to hasten the passing of the bill and fast track the adoption of e-commerce in Kenya”, said the Minister.

Over 250 delegates from Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and Rwanda attended the East Africa conference, which was sponsored by Safaricom, Visa International and Microsoft. Coca-Cola and the Kenya ICT Board also sponsored 80 Kenyan tourism and ICT university students to attend and fifty students were fully sponsored to participate in the three-day training seminars that followed the conference.

Damian Cook, the Managing Director of E Tourism Africa, the company behind the conferences, said the success of the East African event, showed that Africa is becoming serious about shifting its tourism product online, rather than relying on traditional sales channels.

“We are extremely pleased with the feedback and the responses we received from our delegates. The tourism sector in East Africa is extremely eager to learn more about the web and the marketing opportunities it brings. We have had many enquiries to do a regional road show and Uganda is very keen to host the next East Africa E Tourism Conference in 2009”, said Cook.

Anthony Rawlins from UK based company Digital Visitor said the conference had been a great event for business and he urged international online companies to focus on East Africa. “We were overwhelmed with the enquiries we received at the E Tourism East Africa conference. We developed many new business leads and it was great to be able to offer a real business solution for online video to the local tourism sector”.

He went on to say, “I would really encourage UK based online travel companies to take Africa seriously. Tourism numbers to Africa are rising and broadband speeds are increasing across the continent, so we see many opportunities for new business. An increasing number of tourism players in the African market will move to online marketing in a much bigger way”, said Rawlins.

Following the East Africa event, the next E Tourism Africa conferences will be held in Cairo and Ghana in early 2009, culminating with a pan African event in Johannesburg mid 2009.

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