The E-Tourism Africa Summit held in Johannesburg December 1-2nd 2009 was our largest and most popular event yet- bringing together 260 delegates from all over the continent. Given the venue and the date- there was one topic at the forefront of the agenda- the 2010 World Cup being held in South Africa in just over six months time.

So it was appropriate that the conference was launched with South Africa’s popular World Cup “ Diski Dance” being brought to life as a team of dancers performed live and a coach taught the delegates the series of moves that make up the popular dance which blends a typical township groove with footballer footwork- culminating in a mass Diski by the entire group.

The most common message delivered at the conference was simple: Africa needs to start using technology to encourage our visitors to market our destinations by communicating their positive experiences via social media. While the focus for the World Cup is currently on a single month of ticket sales and visiting fans- we need to start thinking about how the experiences of those visitors, and the positive focus on the destination, can be used as a sustained and growing marketing tool- a point strongly brought home by William price- Head of Di gital marketing at South African Tourism.

The event, which was sponsored by Vodacom Business, VISA International, Travelport and Johannesburg Tourism- mixed practical online business sessions on reservations and booking technology with sessions on e-marketing, social media and content.

Speakers included Jerome Touze, the co-founder of Wayn.com the world’s largest social network for travel, who highlighted the work he has done with South African tourism to promote the destination to Wayn’s 15 million members. Andrew Pozniak, Google’s Head of Travel discussed the media giants role in the region and the implications for tourism- and invited all of the delegates to join and take part in developing the new Google Wave project.  Travel distribution and business sessions from both Travelport and Expedia, two of the world’s largest travel businesses, showed extremely positive trends in the African market- and plenty of room for growth- while trade support sessions from Vodacom Business and local realtime booking solution Nightsbridge showed how businesses can star achieving distribution and selling online.

Maud Larpent from Trip Advisor demonstrated the power of positive opinion from online user reviews to influence and drive bookings, using examples from Africa. This ‘user generated’ theme was further enforced by two leading bloggers on African travel visiting from Europe. Johan Knols of planyoursafari.com presented on the art of blogging and Michael Theys of Africafreak.com gave every delegate a copy of his new ‘crowdsourced’ safariguide and e-book- with collaborative content drawn from social media.

South Africa’s popular author and e-marketing guru Rob Stokes of Quirk eMarketing gave an excellent intensive e-marketing session and provided every attendee with a discounted voucher for Quirk’s online marketing course. Two of his ‘Quirkstar’ eMarketers- Mary Mzumara and Heidi Schneigansz ran interactive sessions on using Twitter and Facebook for tourism businesses.

A host of other African web, e-marketing and social media experts presented new products, projects and promotions using locally available solutions. These included the Uganda Wildlife Authority who recently grabbed headlines by putting their entire population of endangered Mountain Gorillas on Facebook, raising funds for conservation and the profile of their tourism destination as over 13,000 people have signed up in the first months of operation.

Graham Wallington, CEO of WildEarthTV gave a thought provoking presentation on the nature of live interactive media- and whether live streamed game drives can be not just a tool to promote travel to Africa- but a saleable alternative to visiting Africa for a mass market, thereby reducing impact on the environment.

Paula Kahumbu Executive Director of Wildlife Direct- an online conservation community that uses social media to raise direct onli ne donations to conservation projects, called for stronger cooperation between tourism operators and conservationists to protect the natural resources that the sector depends on. Also presenting were Mobiguide, Virtual Africa, Cambrient, Platypus Productions, Smartguide, Realmdigital and many many more.

The conference was an engaging lively and information packed two days- that highlighted the power of the internet and social media to reinvent and reinvigorate African tourism. As Garai Makaya of Life Media from Botswana, attending his second E-Tourism Africa conference, said “This is my annual wake up Call”.

Next year’s Summit will be held in Capetown in September 2010, following regional events in East and North Africa.

Stay tuned for more videos, delegate interviews and blogs from the event.