Marketing South Africa: join the conversation

Last week’s Google+ Hangout was kieff, despite the challenges of using new technology: half an hour after the broadcast ended, the YouTube video we’d made of it had already been viewed 250 times.

Now we’ll be talking on line again tomorrow evening at 5:00 p.m. South Africa time (technology willing). ‘We’ being Ron Mader of Planeta.com, me, and (hopefully) one or two others who work in or think about responsible tourism.

Here’s what we’ll be talking about: 

• Destinations are different to commercial brands (which belong to homogenous corporations). Destinations like South Africa are eclectic mixtures of people, nature, and places, so they have to be marketed differently. This is where the social web comes in. Story-telling: it’s all about story-telling.
• In this context, we’ll be looking at Geolocation, and asking “What’s so important about  Foursquare?”

•  If you know something about geolocation, you could join us as a speaker. If you want to do this, please mail martinhatchuel@gmail.com – today – so that we can make arrangements to have you on board.
• Follow @thistourismweek – I’ll tweet the relevant links from about half past four. The broadcast will begins at 5:00 p.m. SAST. If you’re not in South Africa, there’s a useful tool for converting to your own time zone here.
• Hangouts allow a maximum of 9 speakers per broadcast, so if you’re watching and you’re not on camera, please add comments in the chat panel, or tweet your comments using the hashtag #marketingsa 

Please consult the Planeta Wiki for further details.

Also: please view this Flickr Album: South Africa on the Web

•  This Tourism Week and Planeta.com – the world’s oldest responsible tourism web site – have teamed up to document travel in South Africa, and to explore the tools that local tourism providers (hotels, restaurants, museums, artisans, tour operators, tour guides, and others) can use to spark conversations on the social web in order to promote tourism in South Africa both to foreigners and to other South Africans.
• Many of these lessons are replicable around the world.
• We’re doing this through Google+ Hangouts – an incredible tool that allows colleagues from different places around the world to chat and share their knowledge in real-time online. These conversations can be viewed on YouTube by unlimited numbers of people – and, during the event, viewers can comment and ask questions using YouTube’s comments facility.
• The conversations are then automatically archived on YouTube for future viewing.
• Our conversations will continue every Wednesday during April at 5:00 p.m. South African time.
• We plan to highlight responsible travel practices – since responsible travel is the foundation for sustainable tourism – and we’re hoping that we might have some international high profile guests who’ll share their experiences with us.
• Lessons learned from our April hangouts will be delivered at a symposium that’ll be hosted by Ugu South Cost Tourism during which I will speak in person, and Ron will speak via the net from his base in Oaxaca, Mexico.