Tourism Breaking News
Having already established itself firmly in the Indian market, the South African Tourism (SAT) has now further expanded its product offering to include newer regions that offer newer activities. This includes the Garden Route and the Eastern Cape which it started promoting during its Learn SA multi-city roadshow to the Indian travel trade. The new regions include the towns of Knysna, George, Oudtshoorn, Plettenberg Bay, Port Elizabeth and East London that are poised to become strong selling points on the new itineraries.
To this end, SAT’s India office organised an educational tour to these new regions for a few travel agents from Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Nagpur and Bengaluru in September. The 11-day itinerary saw them visit a range of tourist attractions and holiday experiences in the Garden Route towns of Knysna, George, Plettenberg Bay and Oudtshoorn, and in the nearby cities of Port Elizabeth and East London in the Eastern Cape.
Hanneli Slabber, South African Tourism’s country manager for India, explained that the aim of the trip was to showcase South Africa’s diverse tourism offering beyond the usual ‘big three’ destinations of Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban. “A large section of the Indian market includes second- and third-time visitors to South Africa, and to maintain their interest, we need travel agents to be equipped with expertise on different locations within the country. The six ‘new’ South African destinations offer a cross-section of the wildlife, adventure, lifestyle, entertainment and shopping experiences that are most in demand by the outbound Indian travel market. What is particularly appealing about the Southern Cape-Eastern Cape region, Slabber pointed out, is that it offers everything from casinos to beaches, safaris to nightlife, all within close proximity of each other,” she say.
