Business tourism is like a visit to the dentist – painful but essential.  Our tourism minister made this clear (the essential part, not the painful part, I hasten to add) when he opened the Meetings Africa conference in Johannesburg this week.  Business tourism (meetings and conferences) brings more people to South Africa per year than the total number that came for the Soccer World Cup – at a fraction of the expense and hoo-ha, it is important to note. Cape Town, unsurprisingly, is the leader in Africa with regard to business tourism. Some 49 major events were held there last year – almost one per week.  South Africa hosted 90 in total, way ahead of the second place, Egypt, with only 32.  This brought R1,6 billion into our economy – almost as much as was spent on one of the World Cup stadiums. That’s the good news.  The bad news is that Africa – the whole continent – managed to attract a mere 3,8% of global meetings worldwide.  Cape Town might have led the Africa rankings but it is only number 35 in global terms.  Johannesburg is number 128 and Durban number 231.  In other words, our Golden City and our Beach Paradise hover somewhere near the bottom of the scale. Clearly something needs to be done.  More than half of all the 8 300 global meetings were held in Europe, most of the rest in the US, with the East and Africa coming a very poor third and fourth. The Minister put a positive spin on these numbers, but that is disingenuous.  The market for business tourism is vast, and we enjoy a little over half of a single percent. Perhaps one could argue that the World Cup put us on the map, and that SA will begin to attract more business tourism as a result of being the flavour of the world in 2010.  But we must remember that already the focus has shifted to Brazil for 2014 – we have a very small window of opportunity to attract and hold on to those people who currently hold us in high esteem. So what’s stopping us from being much higher in the business tourism ranking?  Granted, South Africa is a long way from the world markets of the Northern hemisphere, but that is changing fast.  We haven’t moved closer, in case you were wondering, but the world markets are no longer concentrated in Europe and the US.  The fastest-growing economies are in the East and the Southern hemisphere – are we doing enough to build our brand there? And is our tourism industry adapting to the needs of the business tourist?  I would venture to suggest that the conference-goer is a very different animal to the holiday-maker.  Have a look at Cape Town’s programme of visitors for 2011:  vets (the creature doctors, not the other sort) will be descending on Cape Town in September, there’s a Pain Congress, of all things, a Federation for Mental Health, various educational conferences, an astronaut’s congress and – best of all – Indian Pumps and Valves. I never realised the importance of Pumps and Valves until I was commissioned to write a conference supplement on them a few years ago, and I realised that people take their pumps and valves very seriously indeed. The point is that the people attending these conferences are not typical tourists.  For many of them, this trip might be their first or only foreign venture.  Their company is paying for their trip, so their expenses are not all that discretionary.  They might need a lot more education and cosseting than the average traveller as they are visiting a foreign country out of necessity and not choice. Also, organisation for a convention is not remotely glamorous.  It is all about numbers.  A conference centre has to serve thousands of meals all at once – there is not time or practical use for personal service.  Thousands of people have to be conveyed from A to B, safely, comfortably and promptly.  The people are there for business, and all they want is convenience and speed.  It takes a big, smooth, well-run engine to hold a successful conference.  It’s less about tourism and more about logistics. There is a huge gap in the market for an increase in business tourism to South Africa, but I would venture to suggest it might take some lateral thinking on the part of our tourism bosses.  A vertical approach, where the big organisers work with the smaller operators to create a combination of impeccable logistics and personal service.  Offer the bland facilities for the actual conference but add African spice.  Create a reason for people to want to come to South Africa for their conferences -  surely they would like to have something else to talk about besides Pumps and Valves?