A Report by Casey Gamba & Teresa Isabelle
of Mango Safari
We had an incredibly fun & educational trip to South Africa for Indaba in May!
Indaba is the largest travel trade show in Africa
and for Africa vendors – the largest in the world. We had
been itching to go for years and finally got the
opportunity this year when our schedules worked and
we were able to join the APTA organized trip
surrounding the show.
APTA in conjunction with South African Airlines &
the South African Tourist Board put together a great
pre-Indaba FAM (agent familiarization) trip to Cape
Town for three days and then up to Durban for the
show. While in Cape Town, we were taken around to visit
several incredible properties – of which many of
them put on gourmet lunches or evening cocktail
events with local entertainment.
We traveled around with 30 other agents from all
areas of the US and got to make life long
friendships as well as visit fabulous locations.
My favorite was our afternoon at Grootbos – where we
enjoyed a lovely lunch, complete with South African
wines and then got to tour the horse stables & fauna
educational project at their school. Onto Durban – this lively African city was full of
energy – with 60,000 people there for the rugby
tournaments and 16,000 for Indaba.
The Durban Convention Center was located near to the
beach area and was very easy to get to as all of the
hotels had complimentary shuttles running every 15
minutes. We thought the event was very well
planned and had a ball working our way through the
different areas, learning about new properties and
seeing old friends! This is definitely an
event that is worth your time to get to – as
everyone who is anyone in Africa tourism is there.
After the show, we made some time to travel up the
Kwa-Zulu Natal coastline, stopping in to stay at
Hotel Izulu in Ballito, Rocktail Bay and Phinda. Highlights of this
part of the trip included scuba diving with an 8
foot wide manta ray and having two black rhinos come
very close to our truck! Over all, we came
home with bags full of brochures, business cards &
CD’s and made lots of valuable connections.
While we prefer to get out there and visit each
property first hand – Indaba certainly gave us the
opportunity to learn about LOTS of places in one
fell swoop!
Thanks! Casey Gamba & Teresa Isabelle – Mango
Safaris
Our group of
about 30 APTA members out of NYC and IAD with my
group leaving from IAD, traveling on SAA
non-stop to JNB. While it was a long flight,
the A-340 was very comfortable. South Africa
Tourist Office did an outstanding job of making
sure we saw as much as we could, and while it
was a little tiring, it was worth every penny.
Thank heavens I am a member of APTA and can
experience such a great Fam trip. What an
education we all had, including those who had
been to South Africa before. I will have no
problem selling South Africa with confidence.
It was an
experience I never expected. First, we
stayed three nights in Cape Town. What a
bustling city with great hotels nice homes and a
very sophisticated population. The fact that is
was so cosmopolitan was a surprise to me. Even
more than I expected, having been to Dakar,
Cairo, Abidjan, and Nairobi. And with wineries
to boot!
WE next went to Durban to attend INDABA. I was
amazed to see how huge INDABA is . There were
1800 vendors and 12-14,000 visitors all in 5
buildings and with tents between the buildings.
The largest display was Relais & Chateaux, the
organization that is a luxury hotel chain. They
took an entire block of booths which would be 8
booths on each side of the block, or a 16 booth
area. Eight of the booth area was double
storied, and 4 of the booth area was triple
storied. All so they could talk about all their
great resorts and hotels under their brand. The
Western Cape building had wine tastings, and
seminars on which they showed what wine goes
with what food - a topic near and dear to my
heart!
