Meetings Africa took place on February 25-27, 2009 and experienced 15% more exhibitors this year, a total of 218 businesses offering their wares to the global travel trade. Of these exhibitors, 50 were at Meetings Africa for the first time. The exhibition was attended by 1,921 visitors, including local and international buyers and media representatives.
Says Nomasonto Ndlovu, the global manager for business tourism at South African Tourism: "Although we have experienced a slight decrease in visitor numbers to Meetings Africa compared to last year, feedback indicates that the event attracted more quality local and international buyers and overall exhibitors conducted good business with these buyers."
The event was attended by 104 hosted buyers from South Africa's main business tourism source markets this year, (a 20% increase over the 2008 figures) including Holland, the UK, Australia, France, Germany, India, China and Switzerland. These buyers and media were taken on post-show tours to Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape where they experienced and visited some of the country's top business tourism products. The hosted buyers agreed that South Africa demonstrated both capability and capacity, and were impressed with the number of diverse experiences and facilities available to them.
Meetings Africa enjoyed support from key industry players, such as the Southern African Association for the Conference Industry, the Exhibition and Event Association of Southern Africa and the Department of Trade and Industry.
Meetings Africa 2010 will be held at the Sandton Convention Centre from February 24-26, 2010. For more information go to http://www.meetingsafrica.co.za.
