Pan-African online travel agent (OTA) Travelstart, has launched a ‘Travelstart Media Hub’, offering a new media division that will support tourism agencies, airlines, cruise companies and related organisations with a platform to promote their brands and services to a global community of travellers.

South Africa’s official marketing agency, SA Tourism, and Norwegian Cruise Line – the third-largest cruise line company globally – are the foundation customers of the Travelstart Media Hub. The two brands will leverage Travelstart’s content and audience offerings to amplify their products and services both locally and abroad.

General Manager Brand and Marketing at SA Tourism, Browen Auret, says: “Travelstart is an established media partner with deep understanding of the consumer traveller market. Their digital prowess and powerful audience reach will help us inspire people with meaningful and measurable sponsored content and help us fulfil our mandate of promoting South Africa as a destination.”

The Media Hub aims to address an audience of 50 million travellers globally, with a robust campaign activation service, including the design of creative content, video production and access to a suite of resources to initiate connections with pre-defined audience segments. Users will benefit from the brand’s influencer network, lead generation campaigns, native advertising, customisable microsites, market research tools, social media and pre-negotiated TV and radio media plans, among other branded-content solutions.

Being underscored by the OTA’s travel booking technology, advertisers are empowered to facilitate bookings directly in the promotional content environment, shaping advertising content for targeted audiences by detailed filters such as country, age, gender and device type.