Step aside South Africa! World Cup soccer fever is headed for Brazil. And to capitalise on this, South African Airways is leading the charge to leverage interest in South America, and particularly Brazil, by hosting the first in what it hopes will become a global initiative.

SAA’s South America head, Nelson de Oliveira, says currently inbound traffic originating from South America forms the bulk of the traffic on that airline’s routes to South Africa. De Oliveira says: “We’re taking advantage of the great visibility of South America currently following the 2010 World Cup in South Africa and the upcoming World Cup in Brazil. The aim is to increase our market share of tourists on our routes to and from South America, which includes 11 weekly flights to São Paulo in Brazil and three weekly flights to Buenos Aires in Argentina.” SAA’s South America team has been running a very successful destination marketing initiative, Explore South Africa, in South America for 13 years. “It has grown so much that we now have over 3 000 travel trade stakeholders attending the experience every year, as well as 150 exhibitors. The workshops will be held on the following dates next year:
*Rio de Janeiro: September 13, 2011
*São Paulo: September 15, 2011
*Buenos Aires: September 20, 2011 Local event organisers, On Show Solutions, will act as SAA’s representatives in South Africa.