Cape Town a leader in Online Tourism

In 2009 Cape Town Tourism effectively moved into the .travel online space and began expanding onto social media and networking platforms. Nearly two years later, Cape Town Tourism’s strong online presence and leadership in the e-marketing discipline has been confirmed with a listing as the world’s thirteenth Most Influential Tourist Board and DMO (destination marketing organization) online by Influencers in Travel.

Cape Town Tourism is the only Tourism Board in Africa featured on the ranking, which was developed using Klout’s API, the standard for online and internet influence. Klout Score represents how successful a user is at engaging their audience and the impact their online communication has on people.  Cape Town Tourism’s Klout’s score is just under 62, topping DMO’s and campaigns such as ‘Only in San Francisco’ and ‘My Vancouver’.

In this burgeoning digital sphere, Cape Town Tourism makes use of the following tools when communicating and interacting with travellers:

• Dedicated and tailor-made visitor, business, industry and media websites and newsletters all accessible through www.capetown.travel, which also redirects to a mobi site should you log on from a mobile phone
  ·         Regular and interesting blog posts
  ·         The ‘I ♥ Cape Town’ Facebook fan page with over 228 000 fans
  ·         @CapeTownTourism on Twitter with 5 885 followers
  ·         A Cape Town Tourism YouTube channel
  ·         Beenthere.tv; and
  ·         Cape Town, Live it! Love it! on Flickr.

Cape Town Tourism is committed to being a leading voice in e-marketing and social media for our tourism industry, and we will continue to play a proactive role in this regard. It is vital that the tourism industry keep up to date with new internet trends and understand how consumer behaviour is changing in the online space.

For the second year running, Cape Town Tourism is set to co-host the fourth annual eTourism Africa Summit at the Cape Town International Convention Centre on the 15th and 16th of September 2011. The summit will be a great opportunity for tourism businesses, especially small to medium enterprises looking for ways to compete with larger and internationally based businesses, to hear from global online experts such as Trip Advisor and Expedia. Furthermore, it is a great platform to share and learn from social media success stories in tourism – both locally and globally.