By Martin Wiest, CEO of Tourvest Destination Management 

Over the last decade, the African continent has undergone an amazing change in terms of being ever more connected. Airlines such as Ethiopian Airlines and Kenya Airways have been extremely successful in connecting countries on this continent with an ever-improving frequency and capacity.

This development has allowed for international, regional and domestic tourism development, only briefly halted by Covid-19, which is fortunately nearly a dim and distant memory. An interconnected Africa simultaneously means tourists have the ability to explore in a multi-country fashion, either in a single trip or, if possible, in multiple explorations.

So, what does this mean for DMCs on this continent? Historically they either sold destination expertise of their home turf or, at best their region, combined with a transactional and operational capability in that area. As their customers broadened the destinations to create choice for consumers, typically other local providers were chosen as no DMCs had a broad African footprint.

This obviously has the advantage of true local knowledge, but is flawed, with many shortcomings such as system integrations, differences in standards, multiple negotiations for terms and conditions, inability to leverage continental purchasing power, consumer brand recognition and many more.

At Tourvest Destination Management we recognised early on the requirement to develop a footprint on the African continent that straddled the requirement of local expertise with continental presence, which now includes 10 countries and 13 offices in Southern and East Africa, with further expansion planned into West and North Africa for the next 24 months.

We have no doubt that this thinking is aligned to market developments and ever more adventurous consumer behaviour on our continent. It creates unique sales opportunities in most source markets and hence is beneficial for destinations seeking a presence there.

So, is the future a number of Pan African DMCs or does the South African phrase “Local is lekker” still apply? In my mind the answer is “It depends!”. It depends on the customer’s choice, the consumer demands, local circumstance, value proposition created by the various stakeholders and hence both business models are future proof.

The question remains, which of the two principals are more scalable – only time will tell.