Africa Travel Week (ATW) 2022 offered as a hybrid event – with virtual meetings held for buyers who could not attend the in-person event in Cape Town this week – has led to the booking of more than 7 000 meetings.

“This is more meetings than during the 2019 event,” said Carol Weaving, MD of RX Africa, during the opening of the three-day event, which includes headline shows, World Travel Market Africa and International Luxury Travel Market Africa (ILTM). 

She said more than 87% of the over 500 hosted buyers were new, representing 20 international companies and 12 African countries. Countries represented at WTM for the first time were Japan, Croatia and Korea.

Feedback from the more than 400 exhibitors at the show was overwhelmingly positive and, after day one, hopes were high that good business deals would be signed up for well into 2023.

One exhibitor told Tourism Update: “It really is beginning to look like recovery is not too far off.” Many in the industry elected not to exhibit but, as one visitor put it, “show face and support”.

Many exhibitors have also scaled down their presence due to costs but noted that it was important to reconnect and re-establish relationships.

ATW Trend Report 2022

Independent tourism and hospitality industry consultant, Gillian Saunders, who presented the ATW Trend Report 2022 yesterday (Monday, April 11), was also upbeat about the prospects for recovery for the tourism sector, noting that 2022 was an exciting year for tourism.

In 2019, tourism accounted for 7% of Africa’s GDP, contributing US$169 billion to the continent’s economy and employing more than 24 million people.

But COVID-19 saw Africa’s tourism sector lose nearly US$55 billion and shed two million jobs in only the first three months (April to July 2020), according to the African Union.

However, said Saunders, Africa’s tourism sector was resilient. “The drive to travel and experience different cultures, climates and environments is innate, and the extent of travel’s rebound is testimony to this. Tourism will recover.”

She added, however, that policy-makers needed to create an enabling environment for recovery, highlighting that the sector needed to get governments to truly understand how important tourism was in ensuring the overall economic growth of a country.

To download the full ATW Trend Report 2022, click here.

The top-10 trends highlighted in the report are:

1. Greenwashing won’t cut it any more: Greater transparency. More accountability.
2. African cuisine will take its place at the global table: Mouth-watering African cuisine speaks for itself… but the African tourism industry must do its part to prepare potential tourists for African gastronomy and to create excitement around it.
3. Diversity: The ‘diversity traveller’ emerges – people with needs beyond the nuclear couple or family, such as single women travelling alone, single-parent families etc.
4. Accessibility will be a game changer for tourism: Tourism environments and services will need to be designed with different access requirements in mind.
5. Luxury is no longer about money: It’s about time and wellness. Travelling with purpose, meaningful experiences, bucket-list destinations and itineraries, and exclusive escapes (travel bubbles and remote locations away from the crowds) are the main luxury travel trends we’ll see in Africa.
6. Travel bubbles: The pandemic may be largely behind us but ‘travel bubbles’ are here to stay with a marked increase in demand for multigenerational trips. Africa is ideally positioned to tap into this exciting trend.
7. From over-tourism to impact tourism: Restorative safaris that make a positive impact on conservation and communities will become more popular, as will intimate and authentic experiences.
8. Slow tourism is coming of age: People are taking longer trips with fewer stops; the coming-of-age of what has been coined ‘slow tourism’.
9. Flexcation, bleisure, workcation − the workforce of tomorrow: Employees are now insisting on a more flexible workplace with a renewed focus on work-life balance. This new trend is creating incredible opportunities for destinations in Africa.
10. Tech and human connection go hand-in-hand: Most of us have forgotten how to live – and travel – without technology. The pandemic has accelerated our adoption of technology even further.