Following what it terms the “overwhelmingly positive” feedback from the participating South African exhibitors at the 2021 SA Tourism Virtual China Roadshow and Virtual Fam hosted last month, South African Tourism is set to host another one in March next year.

An SA Tourism spokesperson said that nearly 40 South African exhibitors and 150 Chinese buyers had completed 1 196 meetings during the week-long event, utilising a B2B technology platform developed by Dragon Trail.

More than 90% of the exhibitors who responded to the satisfaction survey after the event indicated that they were “satisfied”, and that all had gone well with the event. They rated the quality of Chinese buyers with 4.14 stars out of 5 and said they would most likely attend the next edition of the roadshow in 2022.

“We are happy with the positive feedback we have received as it indeed is a great sign that the tourism sector recovery is well on its way. We were also encouraged by the level of engagement that we received from all our exhibitors and partners. They came to the virtual platform with a collaborative spirit and a strong commitment to reignite travel from this market. While we have a lot of work to do to promote our destination and make sure that Chinese visitors choose to visit South Africa, we are pleased that we still have products that appeal to this market post outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. We know that many businesses in our sector did not survive,” said SA Tourism Acting CEO, Sthembiso Dlamini.

She added that SA Tourism would intensify its tourism recovery strategy by starting to plan for the next edition of the roadshow.

“I welcome all qualified South African product owners to consider the lucrative Chinese market. We will be launching our third edition of the China Ready Workshop later this year to help the tourism sector in South Africa understand the Chinese market opportunities better and to prepare well for the next edition of the roadshow,” said Dlamini, pointing out that in 2019 nearly 100 000 Chinese tourists visited South Africa.

This workshop is for existing and new SA and regional tourism products and services who want to gain market access to the Chinese and Japanese tourism markets. 

Any accommodation provider, attraction, DMC or tourism service provider is welcome to join the next SA Tourism China Virtual Roadshow in March 2022 by first registering for the China Ready Workshop, planned for December 1, 2021, by clicking on this link.