The growing trend of viewing video on the web offers significant opportunities for southern Africa to market itself as an international tourism destination on the internet.

“Tourists are increasingly looking for multimedia-rich information on travel destinations when planning their holidays online,” said Pierre van der Hoven, CEO of Southern Africa Direct, at the recent E-Tourism Africa conference held in Johannesburg.

Southern Africa Direct is a UK television channel promoting the region to the Sky TV network’s nine million subscribers, as well as online globally.

Van der Hoven pointed out that 80% of the UK population watch an average of 80 videos online a month. “If you’re not in the video game, you’re not in the game,” he said, adding, “Just because broadband availability does not always allow people in Africa to view video, does not mean that international visitors are not doing so on a daily basis. Tourism organisations have to take this new medium into account when marketing their destinations to a global audience.”

Damian Cook, MD of E-Tourism Africa, said at the conference that Africa is losing millions of potential tourists because the travel industry is not effectively making their products available to consumers on the internet.

“Travel is now the number one selling commodity online. For 70% of travellers online is the first port of call,” he said. “There is an enormous disparity between how business is done worldwide and how it is done in Africa. This is the so-called ‘digital divide’ - we are not keeping pace with what’s happening globally.”

Cook said that simply having a website is not enough - tourists want to be able to not only find the information they are looking for, but also make instant bookings online. “It’s about real-time shopping. Africa has 4% of the global tourism market - of that 4% only 2% is sold online,” said Cook, pointing out that in many African countries it is still illegal to take payment online.

However, the ability to make holiday bookings to South Africa is only part of the problem. “We have a problem way beyond just online booking. Foreigners are being bombarded with negative publicity on Africa,” said Van der Hoven. He believes that South Africa has not yet scratched the surface of the UK tourism market.

“What we know is that once they come, they love it, but first we have to address their negative perceptions. We have to get our product into their homes,” he said. “Television and video on the web offers the perfect opportunity to do this.”

The E-Tourism Southern Africa conference was the first in a series of regional conferences be held across the continent, culminating in a pan-African conference in Johannesburg next year.