Global leader Reed Travel Exhibitions (RTE) has announced that it will launch ‘Africa Travel Week’ at the Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC) to run from April 28th to May 3rd 2014.
The event will comprise three co-located shows – WTM Africa, IBTM Africa and ILTM Africa - encompassing Africa’s inbound and outbound markets for general leisure travel, luxury tourism, and the MICE/business travel sector under RTE’s established portfolios of WTM (World Travel Market), ILTM (International Luxury Travel Market) and IBTM (Incentives, Business Travel & Meetings).
Following the successful launch of ILTM Africa earlier this year, the decision to create an all-encompassing travel week will ensure Africa Travel Week is the leading global event for Africa’s travel industry. Richard Mortimore, Managing Director, Reed Travel Exhibitions commented:
“Reed has been exploring opportunities in Africa for sometime and the success of our first launch event, ILTM Africa, has given us the platform to now introduce two more of our global industry brands to create ‘Africa Travel Week’ and make it the leading global event for the continent’s travel industry.
“Because of the sheer size of the continent and diversity of its travel offering, all three brands will help bring the world to Africa and promote Africa to the world’s leading source markets. RTE is committed to the African continent and its future as a global player in the leisure, business and luxury tourism sectors.”
WTM Africa will attract exhibitors from all categories of the leisure travel industry within sub-Sahara Africa as well as North African destinations, aligning itself with sister events, WTM, WTM Latin America, Arabian Travel Market and International French Travel Market – Top Resa.
IBTM Africa will be a table-top summit located in the West Ballroom, adjacent to the exhibition hall in the CTICC. It will target the inbound and outbound meetings, events, incentives and business travel sectors of sub-Sahara Africa, with suppliers from the MICE sector including hotels, venues, convention bureaus, DMCs, technology providers and suppliers of services. IBTM will reflect the brand values of its sister events CIBTM (China), EIBTM (Europe), GIBTM (Middle East), AIME (Australia), AIBTM (US), IBTM India.
ILTM Africa will be the second edition. A table-top summit located in the East Ballroom of CTICC will, in line with its successful launch, target Africa’s inbound luxury travel market. ILTM Africa is part of a global portfolio of luxury travel events that include ILTM (Cannes), ILTM Americas, ILTM Asia, ILTM Japan and ILTM Spa.
Both ILTM Africa and IBTM Africa will operate with a pre-qualified Hosted Buyer programme and a pre-scheduled appointment system. WTM Africa will combine a Hosted Buyer and appointment system with a trade visitor programme.
Africa Travel Week will be supported by Thebe Exhibitions Group, based out of Johannesburg. "We will be working with Thebe as our local management services contractor to provide logistics, operations and local sales and marketing services," added Mortimore.
Arthur Gillis, CEO of the Protea Hospitality Group, the largest hotel group on the African continent with some 130 hotels in 10 countries said:
“Africa Travel Week is the sort of event that exposes the best of the continent to a global audience that covers the entire travel spectrum from leisure to luxury, business to conferencing. Cape Town, arguably one of the most beautiful cities in the world, will be the perfect backdrop to a travel showcase of this magnitude.
The Protea Hospitality Group firmly supports collaborative efforts of this nature in which tourism players work together for the greater good of growing travel and investment in Africa by creating infrastructure and permanent jobs in a market sector that I believe will continue to show steady growth in the long term.”
Dates for the events are:
ILTM Africa: April 28th – 30th
IBTM Africa: April 28th – 30th
WTM Africa: May 2nd – 3rd
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