Gauteng Tourism will this year at the Africa’s Travel Indaba Trade Show lead the largest contingent of Small, Medium and Micro Enterprises (SMMEs) in repositioning and reintroducing destination Gauteng back to the travel, tourism, and hospitality sector following the 2-year pause induced by the COVID-19 pandemic.
This premiere business-to-business leisure tourism platform is aimed at encouraging glocal dialogue to sell and position South Africa and the African continent as a preferred leisure destination. Of over 250 strong SMMEs at this year’s event, the golden province of Gauteng is responsible for 47 make it the largest delegation of small business we have assembled.
Small businesses especially those found and operate in our townships suffered tremendously during the height of COVID-19 infections and lockdown. It is our responsibility and priority as the authority to make our tourism sector recovery work SMMEs driven, explained GTA CEO Sthembiso Sthe Dlamini.
Over 8000 delegates from travel, tourism, and related industries are expected from today to do
business, connect, and shine a focus on shared African stories that inspires travel into our various
destinations with a showcase of the widest variety of Africa’s best tourism products to attract
international and domestic visitors, buyers, and media networks worldwide.
Africa’s Travel Indaba comes at an opportune time for us in Gauteng following the groundbreaking
signing of the Gauteng Township Economic Development Act into law last week by Premier David
Makhura.
This piece of legislation will empower majority of township-based travel and tourism businesses
to secure the much needed financial and non-financial assistance from development finance
institutions since Gauteng townships business areas are now formally recognized as true
business districts enabling products like backyard real estates to legally trade. We will be using
the Africa’s Travel Indaba and the scheduled business network sessions to socialize the
importance of this momentous legislation, reiterated Dlamini.
Gauteng SMMEs in the tourism and travel sector will today engage with their counterparts,
buyers, and travel trade during the Business Opportunities Network Day (BONDay) to explore
emerged and emerging business opportunities in a COVID-19 environment.
The Business Sessions will focus on: SMMEs and Youth business development, business
recovery opportunities, intra-Africa market access and connectivity, digital transformation and
marketing, niche marketing (Gastronomy focus) with all these forming a key mix of destination
Gauteng’s inclusive sector recovery programme and the Growing Gauteng Together vision 2030.
Central to these sessions will be the exchange of knowledge on trends and insights that can assist
businesses to recover, strengthen their growth and thrive in the “new normal” as we journey
together in positioning tourism as a key driver of the broader economic recovery work.
The #VisitGauteng team is at stand DC1 J20 with its SMMEs products ready to do business.
