Back in the mists of time on the banks of the Vaal river, a small and inconspicuous travel market with a handful of tourism products and even fewer delegates turned the Riverside Holiday Inn into the launchpad of something special. It was 1979 and the main focus of this new travel market, the brainchild of SA Tourism (then known as Satour), was to market South African tourism products to the international travel industry.
No one involved at that time had any concept of how the exhibition — which became known as Indaba — would evolve over the coming decades. If you had told any of them then that Indaba 2002 would offer a total of 1 300 tourism products to 1 316 international delegates, they would have called for straitjackets and armed guards.
And the fact that this year’s Indaba — being held at the International Convention Centre (ICC) in Durban from Saturday May 8 to Tuesday May 11 — is set to be the biggest yet with delegate registrations already up 19% over the same period in 2003, would have had the original “founding fathers” amazed. Indeed, this year’s “show” will see delegates representing 71 countries across the globe, putting South and Southern Africa’s tourism products under the microscope. That’s 11 more countries than those that made the trek to Durban last year.
SA Tourism CEO Cheryl Carolus calls this a fitting tribute to the ongoing success of the industry and says that Indaba is now widely recognised as one of the trade’s top three “must-visit” events of its kind on the global calendar. Logistically, it holds up its end of that sweeping statement.
A total of 485 main-stand holders have accepted more than 15 000m2 of exhibition space, with extra space being created to accommodate those still on the waiting list. In addition, it is forecast that 1 400 sharing exhibitors will be in the final count (up from 919 in 2003).
These numbers include exhibitors from throughout South Africa and the Southern African Development Community.
Carolus has also reiterated her organisation’s strong commitment to transforming the face of tourism in South Africa in line with the ThabaNchu Declaration made at the second Annual Tourism Conference last year.
This reflected the resolutions of the conference in which the stakeholder signatories — representing the broad spectrum of the tourism industry — agreed that transformation had not been speedy nor deep enough over the past 10 years.
As a result, to facilitate more exhibitions from previously disadvantaged individuals, floor-space allocation for provin- cial stands has been increased by 10% to 15%, allowing for a signi- ficant increase in small, medium and micro-enterprise representation from throughout South Africa’s nine provinces.
Despite the tremendous growth and sophistication that has typified Indaba in the past decade, the passing years have not changed its original objective — namely to effectively market South Africa as a preferred international destination.
To achieve this and fulfil SA Tourism’s vision for a bigger, better and more representative tourism future, Indaba promotes high-quality tourism products to the international market, represents with equality the broad diversity of South Africa — its people, culture and endemic landscapes — for the economic benefit of all and consistently presents a world-class exhibition, which, in turn, consistently attracts top international buyers.