The 6th Annual E Tourism Africa Summit with South African Tourism as a partner was a huge success. The two-day event was held at the Cape Town International Convention Centre on the 9th and 10th of September with over 360 people attending. This year’s summit was officially opened by the Minister of Tourism for South Africa – Marthinus van Schalkwyk. There was a huge amount of online buzz during the event and the summit became a trending topic on Twitter #ETAS13.
Damian Cook, the CEO and Founder of E Tourism Frontiers was delighted with the feedback from the event. “This year’s summit has certainly been our most successful event to date. We were privileged to have international speakers from both Facebook, Tripso and ZapTravel and we have been inundated with emails and tweets from both the speakers and delegates on how useful they found the content and how inspiring the presentations were. We are extremely pleased and we are very grateful to South African Tourism for their partnership.
This year’s summit also featured the judging of the Africa App Quest – a continent wide search, sponsored by South African Tourism and Visa for Africa’s Best Travel App. The four finalists of the competition presented their apps on the final day of the summit and the audience made their decision for the winning app, with a US $10,000 prize. The finalists were Africa Live is a live game sighting map, Activity Bridge – a web based platform to sell tourism activities, Tourism Radio – a device that combines GPS and location based information for self-drive holidays, Pixshare Africa – a photo sharing social media platform for travel businesses.
Africa Live won the Africa App Quest with the most audience votes. Rob Maclean, the Managing Director from Satpack Travel, the company behind Africa Live, said they were proud to have won the Africa App Quest. “We created Africa Live as we saw a strong need in the market place for a platform for people to share their wildlife sightings instantly. With over 70 apps being entered into the competition, we are thrilled to have received the title and this will certainly encourage us to continue seeking opportunities that can assist the growing travel population. However, special thanks must be given to Visa and South African Tourism for recognising the importance of technology in tourism”
