Travel Massive, the world’s largest tourism industry community, which is steadily growing in Africa, connects members through 157 chapters, and will launch its latest Hoedspruit chapter in South Africa.

The Hoedspruit chapter launch event will take place on September 19, from 15h00 at Ekhaya Private Villa in the Hoedspruit Wildlife Estate.

Travel Massive, an open network with chapters regularly holding networking events, is a live learning platform allowing for knowledge sharing and ideas, as well as a platform to tackle global issues, such as animal interaction.

Neil Jansson, Travel Massive Coordinator and Johannesburg Chapter Leader, explains the global tourism community in more detail: “Think LinkedIn but for the travel industry. It is the largest online travel community globally, with a network reaching over 500 million people through our community, allowing people to connect free and at any event around the world.”

“Hoedspruit has grown exponentially over the years, and has become to South Africa, what Maun is to Botswana – a base for the safari industry and a thriving tourism hub serving the Greater Kruger region,” says Sharon Gilbert-Rivett of The Safari Collective and chapter Leader for Travel Massive Hoedspruit. She thought it would be a great idea to start a Travel Massive chapter in Hoedspruit, which, with the help of Jansson, is what has been achieved.

The new Hoedspruit chapter only recently went live, and has received a hugely positive response from the local tourism community, with membership growing steadily each day, according to Gilbert-Rivett.

“Our aim is to bring the tourism community in Hoedspruit and its surrounds together for networking and to offer them regular events aimed at helping them grow their businesses. But, most importantly, it’s about having fun and getting to know one another, and belonging to a fantastic global community that’s able to get together online and brainstorm, share ideas, grow awareness and live, eat, and sleep tourism,” comments Gilbert-Rivett.

Travel Massive Hoedspruit chapter is planning a series of workshops for its members on matters such as community development, developing sustainable business models, and reasons as to why tourism needs to be more sustainable, as well as marketing, training and skills development, HR management, brand building, brand management, and content creation – learning to do tourism digitally, adds Gilbert-Rivett.

Recently, Travel Massive partnered with #HACKTOURISM to provide a series of pop-up Travel Massive Digital Workshops across the country, with the first having been held in Mbombela.

Jansson said #HACKTOURISM was a movement that focused on the tourism and hospitality industry in Southern Africa, and aimed to train, equip and prepare businesses to better use digital, online and social media to drive bottom-line value for their businesses.

Travel Massive is driven by its members, and the passion of everyone involved, said Gilbert-Rivett. In addition, she said it was completely apolitical. “It’s just about tourism and travel; open to all businesses that are involved in the tourism chain, that actively ‘do tourism’ but don’t necessarily have a community or a ‘home’ within standard tourism associations and organisations.

“We want to put Hoedspruit on the global map, and part of what the new chapter will be doing is raising awareness of Hoedspruit to a global membership of like-minded tourism people based in Travel Massive chapters in cities across the world, from New York, Los Angeles, London, Berlin, Sydney and Bangkok.”

Together, Jansson and Gilbert-Rivett want to help grow Travel Massive in South Africa’s Lowveld and Greater Kruger regions, and will be working closely with neighbours in Limpopo and Mpumalanga in this respect.

In Africa, Travel Massive has chapters in Johannesburg, Durban, Port Elizabeth, Nairobi, Lagos, and Kampala, with more planned in the near future.