E-Tourism Africa, Day 2 morning

Let me begin with an apology that I had to leave the conference early yesterday and arrived late today, so missed several sessions. Unfortunately, my call for an ambitious blogger to cover those sessions went unanswered...alas.


For Day 2, I arrived late, missing the talk by Mariette du Toit-Helmbold of Cape Town Tourism (regrettably). I came in at the tail end of SA Tourism's head of e-marketing, William Price, giving his presentation. I missed him giving a quote that was tweeted by others in attendance, that "social media is the biggest thing since Industrial Revolution". Not something I'm ready to accept - sounds a lot like the overhyped statements about the web back in the 1990's. Yes, social media is important, but...the Industrial Revolution? Not.

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E-Tourism Africa, Day 2 morning

Morning coverage of E-Tourism Africa

The E-Tourism Africa "Summit" kicked off this morning. Some notes and observations from the session before lunch:

First up was Cape Town Tourism's CEO, Mariette du Toit-Helmbold, who spoke for fifteen minutes or so. Most interesting to me was her point regarding the need for the country to deal with the post-World Cup lapse in terms of identity, positioning, offering, etc., and that Cape Town (for example) is trying to get its brand positioning re-aligned for the future to try to capitalise on the gains from the World Cup. A bit late for this I think, but not too late and it is an essential thing to get done -- and do properly (even if a bit late). CTT certainly understand the importance of e-marketing, are getting quite good at it, and have really embraced the storytelling approach to destination marketing, which is spot on.

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Morning coverage of E-Tourism Africa

E-Tourism Africa Conference in Cape Town

A much-hyped "summit" on e-tourism in Africa will be taking place in Cape Town on Monday and Tuesday next week (25-26 October 2010). It is put on by E-Tourism Frontiers (an organisation that I confess I don't entirely understand) and "brought to you" by South African Tourism (who are getting better at e-tourism) as well as "hosted by" Cape Town Tourism (who are getting masterful at e-tourism).

I'll be attending many of the sessions and will blog from the conference summit as well as tweet (you can follow me on kurt_a), where I'll be using the official conference summit hashtag, #etasummit.

Conference Summit organiser, Damian Cook, advises via Twitter that there will be live video streaming from the conference summit, and as soon as I have more information on that, I'll post/tweet about it.

I'm trying to go into this with an open mind, but the lead-up has been underwhelming

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E-Tourism Africa Conference in Cape Town

Cape Town tours by bicycle push upmarket

I've long been a fan of cycling as an alternative way to visit Cape Town's communities, particularly the so-called 'township' of Masiphumelele, offered by AWOL Tours and the Bicycle Empowerment Network (BEN). The range of cycling options for tourists has grown nicely over the past year for casual cyclists and more serious enthusiasts.

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Cape Town tours by bicycle push upmarket