THE AFRICA TOURISM LEADERSHIP FORUM PRESENTS A CATALOGUE OF RECOMMENDED ACTIONS
(Posted 05th September 2019)
During the 2019 Africa Tourism Leadership Forum held in Durban, South Africa, Africa’s vast tourism potential was once again reinforced.
Various valuable insights were provided on the changing tourism landscape and the future challenges and opportunities to enhance Africa’s future tourism competitiveness.
A central message regarding the future was an appeal to public and private sector stakeholders in Africa to adopt a visionary, collaborative and implementation/action-orientated approach to the future tourism management and marketing of the continent.
Against this background, this one-pager highlights the key “action” challenges that were posed to delegates in a spirit of “Actioning Tourism in Africa Now”!
WITHIN THEIR PARTICULAR SPHERES OF INFLUENCE AND RESPONSIBILITY IN THEIR RESPECTIVE DESTINATIONS, THE FOLLOWING ACTIONABLE CHALLENGES WERE POSED TO DELEGATES:
• Passionately embrace and promote Brand Africa through your networks and social media platforms
• Actively work towards a “United States of Africa”, both between public and private sector stakeholders
• Continuously share positive initiatives, case studies, best practices and tourism success stories in Africa
• Lobby for the easing of visa restrictions and the improvement of value -for-money connectivity in Africa
• Pursue the establishment of an Intra Africa Convention Bureau, with the aim of enhancing the MICE sector
• Collaboratively address key transformation issues, particularly pertaining to women; the youth in tourism; and entrepreneurship advancement
• Continue to work towards balancing people, planet and profits at all levels and spheres of tourism
• Embrace the philosophy that in African tourism “not one of us is as good as all of us” and every one of us can make a difference”
THE AFRICAN TOURISM PARTNERS (ATP) AND BDO, WERE CHALLENGED TO CHAMPION/FACILITATE:
• The creation of a one-stop AFRICA TOURISM KNOWLEDGE GATEWAY AND COMMUNICATION PLATFORM that, among others, will:
o Provide access to the papers presented at the Africa Tourism Leadership Forums
o Provide a central base for networking with other key Africa tourism stakeholders
o Enable stakeholders across the continent to share particular insights, innovative ideas, success stories, best practices, etc.
o Provide the central base from which to collaboratively and cohesively address key challenges of common interest and lobby for the remove of barriers to travel in Africa (visa restrictions, airline capacity, etc.
) o Provide a platform to reach out and explore collaborative opportunities and initiatives across political and geographic boundaries
o Share knowledge and research on global tourism trends, research, case studies and best practices that could be relevant to Africa
o Provide a co-ordinated advocacy platform regarding key policy and development issues impacting on Africa’s future sustainable tourism competitiveness
o Generate themes and topics for the 2020 Africa Tourism Leadership Forum
• Create a LinkedIn group to share knowledge around key tourism themes and issues in Africa
• To keep the momentum, consider hosting two to three webinars on key tourism issues in Africa before the 2020 Forum
• Put together an Actioning Tourism in Africa Task Team, with clear goals for the next planning period, that will report back on the progress made at the 2020 Africa Tourism Leadership Forum
A special session will be included in the 2020 Africa Tourism Leadership Forum for stakeholders to share their initiatives that they implemented during this planning period.
Prepared by Prof Ernie Heath (erniet.heath), based on panel discussions and the wrap-up sessions. Feedback is welcome.
