Reed Travel Exhibitions Launching Africa Travel Week in 2014

Global leader Reed Travel Exhibitions (RTE) set to launch ‘Africa Travel Week’ at the Cape Town International Convention Centre (CTICC) from April 28th to May 3rd 2014.

Following the successful launch of ILTMAfrica in April earlier this year, the decision to create an all-encompassing travel week will ensure Africa Travel Week is the leading global event for Africa’s travel industry.

Comprising three co-located shows in one venue encompassing Africa’s inbound and outbound markets for general leisure travel, luxury tourism, and the MICE/business travel sector under RTE’s established portfolios of WTM (World Travel Market), ILTM (International Luxury Travel Market) and IBTM (Incentives, Business Travel & Meetings).

Richard Mortimore, Managing Director, Reed Travel Exhibitions commented:
“Reed has been exploring opportunities in Africa for sometime and the success of our first launch event, ILTM Africa, has given us the platform to now introduce two more of our global industry brands to create ‘Africa Travel Week’ and make it the leading global event for the continent’s travel industry.

“Because of the sheer size of the continent and diversity of its travel offering, all three brands will help bring the world to Africa and promote Africa to the world’s leading source markets. RTE is committed to the African continent and its future as a global player in the leisure, business and luxury tourism sectors.”

WTM Africa will attract exhibitors from all categories of the leisure travel industry within sub-Sahara Africa as well as North African destinations, aligning itself with sister events, WTM, WTM Latin America, Arabian Travel Market and International French Travel Market – TopResa.

All shows will have a table-top format IBTM Africa will be in the West Ballroom, adjacent to the exhibition hall in the CTICC. Targetting the inbound and outbound meetings, events, incentives and business travel sectors of sub-Sahara Africa.

With suppliers from the MICE sector including hotels, venues, convention bureaus, DMCs, technology providers and suppliers of services. Reflecting the brand values of its sister events CIBTM (China), EIBTM (Europe), GIBTM (Middle East), AIME (Australia), AIBTM (US), IBTM India.

The East Ballroom will host ILTM Africa in its second edition after its successful launch focussing on Africa’s inbound luxury travel market. ILTM Africa is part of a global portfolio of luxury travel events that include ILTM (Cannes), ILTM Americas, ILTM Asia, ILTM Japan and ILTM Spa.

Both ILTM Africa and IBTM Africa will operate with a pre-qualified Hosted Buyer programme and a pre-scheduled appointment system. WTM Africa will combine a Hosted Buyer and appointment system with a trade visitor programme.



Africa Travel Week will be supported by Thebe Exhibitions Group, based out of Johannesburg. "We will be working with Thebe as our local management services contractor to provide logistics, operations and local sales and marketing services," added Mortimore.

Arthur Gillis, CEO of the Protea Hospitality Group, the largest hotel group on the African continent with some 130 hotels in 10 countries said:

“Africa Travel Week is the sort of event that exposes the best of the continent to a global audience that covers the entire travel spectrum from leisure to luxury, business to conferencing. Cape Town, arguably one of the most beautiful cities in the world, will be the perfect backdrop to a travel showcase of this magnitude.

The Protea Hospitality Group firmly supports collaborative efforts of this nature in which tourism players work together for the greater good of growing travel and investment in Africa by creating infrastructure and permanent jobs in a market sector that I believe will continue to show steady growth in the long term.”

Dates for the events are:

ILTM Africa: April 28th – 30th

IBTM Africa: April 28th – 30th

WTM Africa: May 2nd – 3rd

www.africatravelweek.com

IBTM Africa will be the second major African meetings industry trade show. Meetings Africa, which attracted 350 buyers this year, will be held between 24-26 February next year in Gauteng.

About Reed Travel Exhibitions

The world’s leading provider of exhibitions in the travel and tourism industry. Its wide-ranging portfolio of events around the globe covers leisure travel, luxury travel, meetings, incentives and business travel, as well as golf, ski and spa travel. 

In 2012 Reed brought together seven million active event participants from around the world, generating billions of dollars in business with over 500 events in 39 countries.Today events are held throughout the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Asia Pacific and Africa and organized by 33 fully staffed offices. Serving 44 industry sectors with trade and consumer events and is part of the Reed Elsevier Group plc, a world-leading publisher and information provider and a FTSE 100 company. www.reedexpo.com