Welcome to the 2019 CRC Series. Recorded live in Orlando, this series is bringing interviews straight to you from exhibitors and speakers at this year’s event. In this interview, host Jamin Brazil interviews Kaizer Mbongeni Dhliwayo, Researcher at South African Tourism.
Website: www.southafrica.net/us/en
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Hi, this is Jamin. You're listening to the Happy Market Research Podcast. The next set of episodes are conversations I had at this year's Corporate Researchers Conference or CRC. This is put on by the Insights Association in Orlando, Florida. I had quite a few interesting conversations highlighting specific companies that exhibited this year as well as a couple of speakers, Wells Fargo, IBM, etc. I hope you have a really good rest of your day and enjoy these short episodes.
Hi, everybody, you are listening to the Happy Market Research Podcast. I have the honor of Kaizer (and I apologize ahead of time) Dhliwayo; South Africa Tourism is the name of the company. We are at CRC. Sir, how are you?
I am well. And, how are you?
You know what? I am doing pretty good. I can't complain, actually. We're in Orlando. Where do you live?
No, this is my first time in Orlando. Second time in the US, and I'm here for this conference and I'm learning so much, meeting so many new people. And it's just so interesting.
Got it. So, you've gotten a slightly acclimated.
A bit, but I'm still not sleeping properly.
No, of course. Nor will you.
But then on Monday, I really tired myself out ‘cause I went to Universal Studios. Oh, my goodness. Like you guys do things properly because we have theme parks, but they're not as big and not the variety of options. It blew my mind.
Yeah. It's crazy. Right? Yeah, it's like next level. Well, anyway, since there's a separate podcast talking about Orlando's theme parks, which is a really great, great topic. Tell me a little bit about South African Tourism.
Okay. So South African Tourism is a state-owned entity that was created purely to market the destination, the destination brand that sits with us. And we have offices all over the world. Our office in the US is in New York, run by Jerry and the team. And we have offices in Europe, Asia, Australia. The Middle East is one of our newer markets that we're working to develop. Southeast Asia as well is a new area that we're trying to get tourists from.
You know who did a good job of this was Ireland back in the day. So, their tourism division rebranded and they like doubled the number of tourists in a very short time.
And that's the challenge for South Africa going forward. So our president made an announcement that we're going to be in the next 10 years doubling tourism. So currently we get about 10 million visitors and we're trying to get to 21 million by 2030. So that's the effort going forward.
Where are your visitors coming from?
We have people coming from all over the world, but three quarters of our visitors are from the African continent, and we have offices in East and West Africa, Central Africa as well. And then, obviously, we have domestic tourists in and around South Africa.
If go to South Africa, what do I have to see? I have a one week. Let's say it's one week.
Okay. If you have one week, the plan depends on what you're interested in because we hav...
