Africa Tourism Partners and its partners wish to thank you for your participation and presence at the 2019 Africa Tourism Leadership Forum and Awards.



During the 2019 Africa Tourism Leadership Forum held in Durban, South Africa, Africa’s vast tourism potential was once again reinforced. Various valuable insights were provided on the changing tourism landscape, Youth Development Innovation and the future initiatives and opportunities to enhance Africa’s future tourism competitiveness. A central message regarding the future was an appeal to public and private sector stakeholders in Africa to adopt a visionary, collaborative and implementation/action-orientated approach to the future tourism development management and marketing of the continent.

Against this background, this newsletter highlights the key “action” challenges that were posed to delegates in a spirit of “Actioning Tourism in Africa Now”!ACTIONABLE INITIATIVES POSED TO DELEGATES:

• Work towards a “United States of Africa”, both between public and private sector stakeholders
• Share positive initiatives, case studies, best practices and tourism success stories in Africa
• Lobby for the easing of visa restrictions and the improvement of value-for-money connectivity in Africa
• Pursue the establishment of an Intra Africa Convention Bureau, with the aim of enhancing the MICE sector

• Address key transformation issues, particularly pertaining to women; the youth in tourism; entrepreneurship advancement and innovation
• Sustainability work towards balancing people, planet and profits at all levels and spheres of tourism
• Embrace the philosophy that in African tourism “not one of us is as good as all of us” and every one of us can make a difference”
• Promote Brand Africa through your networks and social media platforms

​AFRICA TOURISM PARTNERS (ATP) AND BDO SOUTH AFRICA WERE URGED TO CHAMPION/FACILITATE:The creation of a one-stop AFRICA TOURISM KNOWLEDGE GATEWAY
COMMUNICATION PLATFORM that, among others, will:

• Provide access to the papers presented at the Africa Tourism Leadership Forums
• Provide a coordinated advocacy platform regarding key policy and development issues impacting on Africa’s future sustainable tourism competitiveness
• Provide a platform to reach out and explore collaborative opportunities and initiatives across political and geographic boundaries
• Enable stakeholders across the continent to share particular insights, innovative ideas, success stories, best practices, etc.

• Provide a central base for networking with other key Africa tourism stakeholders
• Provide the central base from which to collaboratively and cohesively alleviate key challenges of common interest and lobby for the removal of barriers to travel in Africa (visa restrictions, airline capacity, etc.)
• Share knowledge and research on global tourism trends, research, case studies and best practices that could be relevant to Africa
• Generate themes and topics for the 2020 Africa Tourism Leadership Forum

• ​Conveners were also encouraged to keep the momentum, consider hosting two to three webinars on key tourism issues in Africa before the 2020 Forum
• Create a LinkedIn group to share knowledge around key tourism themes and issues in Africa
• Put together an Actioning Tourism in Africa Task Team, with clear goals for the next planning period, that will report back on the progress made at the 2020 Africa Tourism Leadership Forum

A special session will be included in the 2020 Africa Tourism Leadership Forum for stakeholders to share the initiatives that they have implemented coming out of ATLF 2019 – Durban.

Prepared by Prof Ernie Heath (erniet.heath@gmail.com), Based on panel discussions and the wrap-up sessions. Feedback is welcome.

Africa Tourism Partners would like to thank all its partners for making this event a success. Thank you for your contribution and input.