E-Tourism Africa has just completed a successful roadshow of seminars across East Africa- visiting six towns in four countries- training tourism professionals in online marketing and management. The events were held in Kampala, Kigali, Nairobi, Arusha, Zanzibar and Mombasa.

The two-day events featured a structured course designed to help tourism stakeholders strategize to shift their businesses away from traditional sales, marketing and distribution models and to adopt a greater use of technology- particularly the internet.

The training was undertaken in conjunction with Quirk eMarketing. Quirk  is Africa’s largest full service online marketing agency   with a loyal client Base that includes big names like Google, South African Tourism, Sun International Hotels, and BMW .

The course took attendees through the essential steps to success in online tourism, including building better websites, marketing to individuals and groups using email, practical e-commerce and reservations solutions, Search Engine Optimization, online reputation management and much much more.

Guest presenters in key areas included Nightsbridge  on realtime reservations, as well VISA International, Kencall Call Centres, Safaricom, Kenya Airways and Galileo. Special public sector sessions to discuss destination issues were held by New Mind .

The roadshow offered access to information and training for regional tourism players who were unable to attend the 2008 E-Tourism East Africa conference held in Nairobi. Attendees included both public and private sector stakeholders- tour operators, travel agents, hoteliers and specialist tourism providers.

Presentations included material from the recent E-Business event held by E-Tourism Africa in conjunction with SA Tourism at the Indaba Travel show in Durban South Africa

We will soon be announcing dates and venues for our next events- our West African Conference and Pan-African summit in South Africa.