INDABA: HIGH-ENERGY SHOWCASE OF AFRICA
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INDABA 2014 gave a platform to 24 African destinations to do business with quality buyers, in an environment attuned to the remarkable inbound tourist growth of a continent. This was the hallmark of the most advanced, business-focused and tech-savvy INDABA to date that lived up to its theme: Plugging into Africa’s Growth.
When the show closed on 12 May, 8 706 delegates had attended INDABA 2014. A total of 281 of those delegates were hosted buyers (35.7 percent up on hosted buyer numbers in 2013); 788 of total delegates were South African buyers; and 1 069 delegates were (non-hosted) international buyers.
A total of 1,198 different products, experiences and services exhibited at INDABA this year. Significantly there was a 15.5 per cent growth in regional African products on show at INDABA.
The INDABA Connect system this year proved its value. There were 229,191 connections made using the system over the three days of the tradeshow. The 8,305 INDABA Connect users at this year’s show exchanged 35 019 documents electronically, an impressive 150 percent up on the 14,007 documents exchanged at INDABA 2013.
Even more importantly, a total of 19 399 meetings took place between exhibitors and buyers through INDABA’s electronic diary Matchmaking system. There were 18,044 logins into the system by 4,316 users.
Thulani Nzima, Chief Executive Officer, South African Tourism said, “This is a key focus for SA Tourism as we begin gear-up for INDABA 2015, ensuring enhanced user-friendliness and automatic intelligence that maximises the value of the online paring system. South African Tourism is confident that its tighter buyer selection criteria, which resulted in a marginally reduced number of buyers this year, succeeded in delivering improved quality buyers for INDABA exhibitors.
“Securing the attendance of quality buyer delegates has been a priority at INDABA for a number of years. We are confident that our efforts to stimulate meaningful engagements between buyers and exhibitors at INDABA was effective and that this will lead to the generation of millions of Rands in tourism business, and tourists, that will contribute substantially to the long-term growth of tourism on the continent.”