The pilot phase of a new South African focused booking tool, as well as a revolutionary tourism data hub has been launched by Jurni at an event at the Indaba Hotel, Spa and Conference Centre in Johannesburg.

Jurni is the official rebranding of the National Tourism Visitor Information System, an initiative, created and launched jointly by Amadeus, The South African Department of Tourism, the Thebe Tourism Group and other key representatives of South African travel and tourism private sector.

The booking tool aims to empower South African tourism businesses with an affordable and easy to use digital platform to generate and manage bookings, with a special focus on empowering SMMEs.

There are over 30 000 hospitality providers in South Africa. Only 20% of these businesses currently have a professional digital presence that makes them visible to travellers, Dr. Nomvuselelo Songelwa, CEO of Jurni, said at the launch on Wednesday.

“Jurni has created a tourism booking tool that will address this challenge and allow all tourism players in the South African market to have a professional digital preference and access the global market.”

During the pilot phase, Jurni will prioritise accommodation establishments on the booking tool. Eighty accommodation establishments have already been onboarded.  

As of December 04, the booking tool is live and bookable to visitors. Several establishments have been verified and quality assured. Ten accommodation providers are already bookable.

The process of activating the property will include a rigorous quality assurance process driven by South African Tourism and the Tourism Grading Council of South Africa.

Jurni’s roadmap includes covering other tourism products, such as tour operators, activities, attractions and experiences.

The data generated through the Jurni booking tool will be consolidated with existing data sources into, the Jurni data hub, that will equip South Africa’s tourism businesses with improved insights to inform their business strategies and decision making, Songelwa said.

“Tourism data sources in South Africa today are disparate and do not provide intelligence at a granular level to inform South Africa’s travel and tourism sector,” she said.

“Through meaningful data, we can monitor changes, make forecasts, devise strategies and policies, determine whether these have been successful, and if we are achieving the goals we set out as an industry and a country.

As all the various stakeholders data converges, the data quality rules will cross-check between stakeholders.

Jurni has data agreements in place with industry organisations such as SA Tourism, StatsSA, TBCSA, SAVRALA, as well as with other international organisations.

“The Jurni data hub can already generate reliable tourism insights for stakeholders. We have the ability to unveil investment opportunities for South Africa’s unexplored destinations. We can even generate insights that span beyond the travel and tourism industry. Our data scientists will be able to look for patterns and correlate data from multiple and diverse sources, including from sectors and industries outside of travel and tourism,” Songelwa added.

Maylene Broderick, National Chief Director for Enterprise Development and Transformation of the National Department of Tourism noted that, as a key driver of jobs growth for the South African economy, “the tourism sector is being elevated as a critical economic and social driver”.

“Tourism intelligence that is meaningful tourism data that is consolidated into an independent data hub like Jurni, helps us to strengthen this debate,” she said.

“We are very pleased with the progress of the projects, as well as with the commitment and contribution by the partners in this exciting initiative, which will contribute to sustainable growth and transformation in South Africa,” said Svend Leirvaag, Vice President of Industry Affairs of Amadeus IT Group.