Skål International at World Travel Market Africa 2022 (WTM Africa)

Cape Town's CTICC was buzzing with travel professionals looking to unlock the ideas set to shape the world's dreams and plans for the future of travel.

The much-anticipated WTM Africa event in South Africa’s Mother City of Cape Town took place between 11-13 April and even though this year's event was much smaller than previous years, the atmosphere was uplifting, exciting and a feeling of togetherness, teamwork, and relief, resonated throughout the halls and stands.

The Skål International stand again this year was absolutely electric and this year we had people coming to our stand after hearing from other exhibitors about the power of Skål International.

We had handed out the Skål International sticker to members who were exhibiting, and this created a conversation starter from non-members, who asked why these members had the sticker. 

Our Skål International stand was manned by members throughout South Africa and this year the majority of our club Presidents and Skål International South Africa Executive Board was on duty. The passion, dedication of these members were felt by every visitor to our stand, more importantly laughter, fun and professionalism was the order of the day. A script was prepared for each member who assisted at the stand so that we were all ‘singing from the same hymn sheet’.

WTM Africa is not only the pinnacle of the trade show calendar in Africa but also the pinnacle of Skål International South Africa's membership and networking calendar. This event has always been successful for our continent and even though it is hosted in Cape Town, we are able to refer membership requests to our other national clubs as well as our African neighbours.

A Total of 68 members visited the Skål International stand of which 85% of them will sign up as members at the different clubs in the next few days.

As part of our barter agreement with Reed Exhibitions, our Skål International Cape Town club has to host a cocktail party or event on the second night of the show. This event has been labelled 'the best meeting opportunity of WTM Africa' and this year was no different. The event was booked up within days of opening and there was a waitlist of very eager members and guests to get on the list no matter what it takes.

This event was even more auspicious as the Premier of the Western Cape, Mr Alan Winde was our guest speaker and there to collect the prestigious Karl Twiggs award bestowed to him for his valuable contribution to local and global travel.

The award was named after the first South African World President during his tenure in 2003-2004.

Premier Winde is an innovative, dynamic and success focused politician and we are thrilled and honored that by accepting our award, he has become part of our global family. It also affirms that success in tourism always depends on the collaboration of the private and public sector.

With relevant discussion panels with exceptional speakers who combined topics of how workation and luxury trends will lead the tourism recovery, to continent specific topics of how Africa should unite to promote tourism on the continent and launching the 10 new trends that will determine post pandemic travel to Africa, it is clear that revival is clearly on the horizon.

Our year-on-year successful membership gain and effective visibility for our organization means that this is an event that brings our 6 clubs nationally together as a team and an event that ticks all the boxes of membership gain, visibility of our organization, encouraging teamwork between our 6 clubs and their executive, while meeting members and travel colleagues.

The Press interviewed Niel Els and Lavonne Wittmann who shared the benefits of our organization and was given the opportunity to share relevant travel trends to our industry which immediately links to our vision of being the trusted voice in travel and tourism.

From manning a successful Skål International stand with an excellent return on investment, to hosting a world-renowned event to inaugurating our new South Africa Executive committee at one of the best tourist attractions in Cape Town, it is safe to say that this is ‘the’ travel and tourism event on the African continent and we are honoured to be part of it.


Regards and Skål!