Julius Baumann
3 July 2008
Johannesburg — CELLPHONE technology will play a vital role in Africa when the continent is marketing and selling itself as an international tourism destination online, says Damian Cook, MD of E Tourism Africa.
The continent is lagging behind in terms of technological access and advancement.
But with cellphone usage far outstripping the use of PCs and even land lines on the continent, mobile access to the web may well be the way forward for the online travel sector.
"A million users around the world are signing up as cellphone users every hour and mobile technology is clearly the way forward. Africa, where cellphones are already the preferred way of communicating, could lead the rest of the world in mobile access," says Cook.
He says most tourists now travel with their phones and would increasingly look to them to access information about their destination or even book hotels or flights. "There is some exciting mobile technology that will allow users to transact using their phones with ease."
E Tourism Africa is a continental initiative to develop a sustainable and equitable online tourism sector in Africa and Cook is in the country to launch the first E Tourism conference in SA to take place in Johannesburg in September. A similar conference will take place in Cape Town in June next year.
The conferences aim to educate and provide resources to both public and private sectors to enable the shift from traditional sales channels to online channels.
Cook says while in the US more than 70% of travellers book through the internet, in Africa barely 2% of all tourism sales are done online. "This is mainly because outside of SA and Egypt, e-commerce is not allowed in most African countries in the sense that there is no enabling legislation to permit trading online," says Cook.
He warns that if Africa does not catch up to the rest of the world quickly, most of its hotel and airline inventory could end up being sold offshore by big online players overseas.
The focus of the conferences will be on 2010, which Cook believes could benefit more than just SA. Many of those coming to SA for the 2010 Soccer World Cup are long-haul visitors and may look to extend their stay in Africa. Cook says online marketing will be crucial for African destinations in attracting these visitors to their shores.
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But look at the online cost totaly ridiculous,some countries realise the urgency as well as the crucial part and charge only a nominal fee or no fee at all,but it looks as if our minister of telecomunications will miss the boat. Helping to increase Telkom's profitability I take it,after all the shareholders,"special price shares" are entitled to a dividend which increaces every year are they not.
If anyone wants to attend the conference discussed in this article- you can find information and registration at www.e-tourismafrica.com