TravTalk India Online Magazine
With a new destination – Stellenbosch – on offer for B2B sessions, this year’s Outbound Tour Operators Association of India (OTOAI) Convention seems to have hit the popularity charts among attendees.
Hazel Jain
Prepare to be ‘digitalised’! The upcoming Outbound Tour Operators Association of India (OTOAI) convention that will take place in South Africa has already a chart hit. Set to be hosted in the idyllic port town of Cape Town from August 11-14, 2018, the
convention will draw some eminent international speakers.
Sharing some updates about this is Himanshu Patil, Vice President and Chairman-Convention, OTOAI. He says, “We have invited some international speakers who will be coming from South Africa and Canada. Some of them will also be flying from India. We do not have confirmations yet so we will announce names at a later date.”
The convention preparations are in full swing but the registrations have now been closed and for good reason. “The number of agents we are expecting is more this time. We have crossed 175 registrations this year. The problem we are facing now is availability of rooms because, we are holding only 100 rooms at the Taj Cape Town at the moment and are not getting any further.” The association is not looking at another hotel to distribute the members though.
Patil reveals that since north is its strong belt, most of the registrations have come from there. “But even the numbers from Gujarat and Maharashtra have gone up this time. Sharing details about the flow of the convention, he says, “We are looking at two B2B sessions – one will take place in Cape Town and one will be in Stellenbosch. There will be about 30-40 sellers from South Africa who will get a chance to meet the Indian outbound agents under one roof at their table. We are expecting the Deputy Minister of Tourism of the Republic of South Africa to attend the inaugural functions and the business sessions. The delegates will also meet Hanneli Slabber there who was the India Country Manager for South Africa Tourism for many years.”
Stellenbosch: A new destination
Stellenbosch is a university town in South Africa’s Western Cape province. It’s surrounded by the vineyards of the Cape Winelands and the mountainous nature reserves of Jonkershoek and Simonsberg. The town’s oak-shaded streets are lined with cafes, boutiques and art galleries. Cape Dutch architecture gives a sense of South Africa’s Dutch colonial history, as do the Village Museum’s period houses and gardens.
He said that the table-top meetings during the convention has worked very well for the association as well as the host country. “We do this at every convention as it is an opportunity for the local agents in those destinations to meet the travel trade from India without moving from their city and at one go. We also have pre- and post-familiarisation trips going to two different locations – from Sun City to Johannesburg to Garden Route and Kruger National Park. Almost 90 per cent of the delegates are taking post-Fams because August 15 is a holiday,” he adds.
Members from New Delhi are paying around `77,900 for this and those from Mumbai are paying roughly about 67,900. The airline partners are Emirates and Ethiopian Airlines. “We have also received a lot of assistance from the South African consulate with the visas and almost 70-80 per cent of the registered members have already received their visas. We are still almost 20 days away from convention,” Patil adds.
The team is still working on the details such as keynote addresses and business sessions that will revolve around the theme ‘Digitalisation – The Way Forward’. African Link Travel is its partner agency in South Africa that will be taking care of the logistics.
