The Tshwane Tourism Association Showcase received the endorsement and support of Mayor Solly Msimanga today at the CSIR International Convention Centre.
The showcase provided a platform for over 200 tourism products from Tshwane, to showcase what the capital city had to offer.
Msimanga said he was proud of the city’s tourism because Tshwane was the only metro in Africa that owned its own airport while the city was the only city in the world that had all members of the big five wild animals.
Msimanga said stakeholders and key role players, including the local government, needed to continue to position Tshwane as the destination of choice in the world especially because the city hosted the second most number of embassies in the world, second only to Washington in the United States.
Head of Tourism Management Division at the University of Pretoria, Professor Berendien Lubbe, talked to stakeholders about the country and the city’s competitiveness in the tourism industry.
Scores of business people set up stalls and exhibited their products and businesses to showcase services they offered to tourists
Food was also sold by local business people outside the convention centre from fancy mobile kitchens that were designed to attract tourists who wanted to taste South Africa food.
The panel of speakers demonstrated that although South Africa was ranked number one in African in terms of tourism attraction it was actually number 53 in global ranking but that needed to change as it had the capacity to move up the ladder.
Lubbe said it was important for the South African tourism industry to grow more inclusively so that the industry became wider and provided many people opportunities to contribute.
Lubbe identified safety and security, corruption, visa openness as some of the challenges that needed to be dealt with to achieve more growth.
She said it was very important that the challenges that caused environmental instability, such as the poaching of wild animals, be eradicated to safeguard this industry that generated billions of rands in revenue annually.
Mayor Msimanga has also unveiled the new website for tourists, www.visittshwane.co.za
Tourists were encouraged to make use of the map-based website to see the beauty the city had to offer.
