South African Tourism (SAT) organised its training programme ‘Learn South Africa’ on a bigger and better scale this year. The fifth module of the popular training session travelled to KwaZulu-Natal, Gauteng and Western Cape – three of South Africa’s nine provinces. The tourism board hosted 96 valued Indian trade partners to South Africa in two groups this July.
Commenting on the all new and revamped module of Learn South Africa, Hanneli Slabber, Country Manager, SAT said, “The key objective of Learn SA is to equip Indian travel trade with destination knowledge and what better way than taking them to South Africa and getting them to experience the destination first-hand. We showcased diverse experiences to the hosted trade ranging from wildlife, adventure, food and wine, shopping to city tours. We put in our best efforts to design an itinerary immersed the hosted trade in as many experiences as possible over a period of ten days. The Indian travel partners also got an opportunity to interact with select South African suppliers across three provinces and experienced diverse products available in the country and at the same time discussed queries on needs of Indian travellers.”
SAT invests heavily in market research which provides them with updated information on traveller trends and preferences. “Market research proves extremely beneficial for us to understand the needs and demands of the consumers, competitive threats from each market, thereby helping us to plan out our growth strategy. Informed by our research, we customise our travel trade training programmes which further empower the agents to make interesting itineraries and sell memorable holidays of choice to Indian travellers. Taking into consideration the growth potential of the Indian market, South African Tourism will continue to invest in training our trade partners to create profitable partnerships that can only benefit the consumer in the long run,” added Slabber.
