ECPTA has entered into a campaign partnership with Travelstart to stimulate domestic tourism. The campaign is running from December 2021 until 31st May 2022.
This initiative encourages domestic travel to our province and increases exposure to travel deals that are aligned with the ‘Fall in Love with the Eastern Cape’ campaign. We are able to access the extensive databases linked to the Travelstart group, which includes Safarinow and Club Travel. We can introduce tactical pricing with subsidies and vouchers to motivate conversion across hotels, flights and excursions.
Travelstart obligations are:
- To achieve a minimum of 18 000 passengers to be attributed directly to this campaign (dependent on lockdown levels).
- Update https://www.travelstart.co.za/lp/partner/eastern-cape-yours-to-explore with the Fall in Love with Eastern Cape content.
- Drive strong deal driven campaigns across all platforms.
- To showcase a combination of SMME businesses and hotel chains to ensure that the sector benefits from the campaign.
- Travelstart commits to frequent branded activations, ensuring maximum ROI.
We are excited to note that from December 2021 until the end of February 2022 a total of 15,798 bookings have been recorded for the Eastern Cape through this partnership. This is a substantial increase from 12,572 recorded during the same period 2020/ 2021.
There is an increase of 3,226 flights during this period, despite the uncertainty of travel relating to the threat of restrictions in December 2021. Fortunately, the restrictions were not imposed, and December bookings came through with a lead time of less than 7 days. The short-term booking period continued into the new year with a 10-day period or shorter recorded. This bodes well for promoting last minute discount deals. March has also been tracking well except for the few days when Comair flights were grounded. 50% of all bookings originated in Gauteng.
This dynamic partnership illustrates the massive potential of EC tourism and that there is a demand to visit our province and enjoy authentic experiences.
