The event brought together top tourism and travel practitioners from 20 countries from across Africa
The United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) recently hosted the first Communications, Media and Tourism Training Workshop in Africa, at the Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe.
According to a press statement by the UNWTO, the event brought together top tourism and travel practitioners from 20 countries from across Africa. It explored ways to deliver more effective tourism communications and showcase the sector’s role as a pillar of development.
The UNWTO says that the event recognised the heightened relevance of tourism and the current opportunity to gain greater visibility outside of the sector itself. Based on this premise, the three-day event focussed on the opportunities for placing tourism in the mainstream conversation as well as the ongoing challenges facing communities, destinations and Africa as a region.
The UNWTO says the first day began with visits to three case studies in and around Victoria Falls, centred on tourism for wildlife conservation, tourism for development and tourism for nature.
The statement adds that these field trips provided the basis for the following two days. The 50 participants, drawn from 20 countries and from communications, destination management and tourism governance, were tasked with addressing three of the key challenges facing tourism communicators today, pitching to the media, building and curating media relations and focusing the narrative on tourism for development.
The UNWTO says that the workshop was informed by presentations from experts from UNWTO as well as from across the media spectrum and from top content creators. The interactive presentations again focused on the most relevant issues, including ways to place tourism in the mainstream media, harnessing the power of social media for tourism for development, working with the media, and effective communications to showcase tourism’s importance for culture, heritage and communities.
The statement goes on to say that with the focus of the field trips as the foundations, participants presented solutions to the three main challenges outlined. It highlighted both the shared goals of diverse destinations, moving to tourism beyond just a leisure activity, while also making clear the gaps in knowledge that still need to be filled.
Alongside exploring the solutions to growing tourism as a media topic, the workshop also focused on crisis communications and ways to be more proactive and build readiness, adds the statement.
