Success Stories
Some Success Stories from our Past Programmes:
South African Tourism Board Partners with the World’s Largest Social Networking site for Travelers – WAYN.com
The CEOs and Founders of WAYN.com Jerome Touze and Pete Ward
have been involved in both the E-Tourism Africa conferences in 2008 and 2009
and they are now working with South Africa Tourism Board on video promotions
through the WAYN.com site which has over 15 million members. The partnership
with WAYN has achieved great results with South Africa Tourism Board attracting
the highest number of views for their promotional video – in fact, the highest
number of views ever generated for any promotional video they have ever used. See more information here
Nightsbridge.co.za Realtime availabilty booking software expands
Nightsbridge specializes in the provision of realtime availability to the online accommodation market. The company provides software that bridges the availability gap between accommodation owners and Internet marketing web sites, travel agents and tour operators. Since partnering with ETA, the company has increased in size by 50%. After presenting at the E Tourism East Africa Conference in 2008 and again at the E Tourism East Africa Road Show in 2009, the company has expanded to Kenya, with an office in Nairobi servicing East African tourism clients.
Uganda Wildlife Authority Get their Gorillas Online with Facebook
After attending the E Tourism East
Africa Road Show in Kampala in May 2009 – the Uganda Wildlife Authority created
a Facebook page for the country’s
mountain gorillas with daily digital updates in October 2009. So far more than 15,000 visitors have
signed up to Friend a Gorilla, raising the profile of Uganda’s mountain
gorillas and also raising much needed conservation funds.
Targeting Tourism Students
E-Tourism Africa also works with local tourism and ICT students, Coca-Cola and the Kenya ICT Board have funded approximately 150 student places to attend E-Tourism Africa conferences and seminars across East Africa. In Uganda at the 2009 E Tourism East Africa Road Show seminar in Kampala, students from the tourism programme in Makerere University attended, along with their lecturers. Following the seminar, the university is now incorporating an e-tourism curriculum in the existing course units such as “Tourism Marketing” and ‘Computer Applications in Tourism’, The university is also hopeful that E-tourism will later be made an independent course unit in the near future.
Expedia Signs Deal with Local Kenyan Tour Operator
Following the E Tourism East Africa Conference in Nairobi in October 2008, Expedia made an agreement with local Kenyan operator Vintage Africa to open their first East African office to bring local tourism online.
e-commerce Launched in Kenya – January 2010
E Tourism Africa has long been an advocate of online payments for the tourism sector in East Africa. Since 2006, the E Tourism Frontiers CEO has been addressing both the tourism sector, banking and ICT business groups and the Kenyan government on the importance of the electronic payments and e-commerce.- and in 2010 this was finally achieved and we were included on the panel at the press announcement of this major step forward for Kenya.
Special Inspirational Session for Young Entrepreneurs
Aside from the conference and training seminars, we also hold a special session for budding entrepreneurs in the ICT and tourism sector, as part of the conference programme. Pete Ward, the CEO and Founder of WAYN.com gave an inspirational presentation in a two hour session to over 200 SIFE, (Students in Free Enterprise) students who attended the East African conference in October 2008. Peris Mwaura of Kabarak University called the seminar a “life changing experience”, “On a scale of 1 – 10, I wouldn’t hesitate to say that I rate it a 10!” he said.