Flow Communications was prominent at the E-Tourism Africa Summit 2010, which was held in Cape Town on Monday and Tuesday of this week.
Flow was one of six exhibitors at the summit, welcoming delegates to ask any questions about e-tourism and profiling some of the work the company has done for clients such as Cape Town Tourism, Table Mountain Aerial Cableway, Maropeng, the Two Oceans Aquarium and Jaci’s Lodges in Madikwe.
CEO Tara Turkington gave a presentation about effective storytelling, which was attended by several hundred members of the tourism industry.
“At the base of everything you do online, you need to have good content,” Tara told the audience. She explained that some of the key components of content include timeliness, proximity, prominence, impact and novelty, while anything related to money, sex and scandal would always draw widespread interest.
Tara emphasised that while a website is always the sun in the “social networking solar system”, surrounding “planets” such as e-newsletters, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Flickr play a big role in determining the brightness of the sun.
Other speakers at the E-Tourism Africa Summit 2010 were Damien Cook (CEO of E-Tourism Frontiers), Jesse Desjardins (widely regarded as “the world’s most connected traveller”), Mariëtte du Toit-Helmbold (CEO of Cape Town Tourism), as well as Helena Egan (head of destination marketing for TripAdvisor).
Most speakers mentioned the crucial role that social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube are playing in the growth of e-tourism, particularly in attracting potential visitors to specific websites.