Archive | March, 2009

The Dalai Lama Scandal

24 Mar

I’m sure you’ve all heard about the controversy around the Dalai Lama (Tibet’s spiritual leader) being banned from South Africa’s Peace Conference “because it would detract from the issues at hand“. As I’m sure you know, the meeting was supposed to be about how best to use South Africa’s hosting of the Fifa Soccer World Cup in 201o to promote peace and fight racism and xenophobia… But now all news is focused on quite how spineless South Africa has been on this historic occasion.

At least Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu and former president FW de Klerk (whose signatures were on the Dalai Lama’s original invitation before it was revoked) have publicly denounced and decided to boycott the conference. Now even Nelson Mandela and the Nobel Peace Prize Committee will not be in attendance.

When 2010 comes I hope that South African leadership will show more forsight than they have this week. The potential to promote this great country of ours is simply staggering, but if the organizers and South Africans at large can’t keep their heads above water the event may become a national embarressment. Truthfully I think that in the end it is South Africans that make South Africa great, and I am proud to be amongst them. Hopefully our hospitality will speak volumes about the country.

Customers say Zissu Travel is "a most intuitive, user friendly website"

14 Mar

Zissu Travel pride themselves on the ease of use of their website, and it seems to have paid off with users labelling Zissu Travel “a most intuitive, user friendly website“. While most companies leave the back-end of the website raw and under-developed Zissu Travel continues to improve their registration process on a daily basis.

In a recent survey of Zissu Travel’s clients, one Cape Townian guest house owner, when referring to creating a listing on the site, wrote “We advertise on many websites and portals, and I cannot recall any which were as easy to create and use as yours.”

Despite the positive feedback, Zissu Travel is constantly endeavoring to make the process even smoother. The use of a Virtual Tour Guide that teaches accommodation owners how to manage their accommodations online has been one of the company’s greatest triumphs.

Zissu Travel to go national

13 Mar

It was only last moth that Zissu Travel, an exciting new accommodation search company, considered themselves a Cape Town only tourism search. With over a hundred activity guides already written about tourism features across greater Cape Town and with guest houses, B&Bs and hotels signing up at a rate of knots, the team at Zissu has realised that they need to think bigger.

“It seems that accommodation owners like what we have on offer. We expected that they would, but somehow the response has still caught us by surprise,” said Marcel van de Ghinste, Sales and Marketing for Zissu Travel. The fact that Zissu Travel hasn’t yet launched to customers doesn’t seem to be holding back accommodation owners who want a greater online presence.

Zissu Travel’s launch to guests in April is rapidly approaching, but registering establishments on the site has run so smoothly, that Zissu has decided to extend their April launch goal to include the rest of South Africa. The Zissu site makes it easy for accommodation owners to register establishments on the page. Zissu Travel offers registered clients a multitude of expected features, like secure online accommodation booking, but it is their range of unique features for users which Zissu Travel expects will draw guests onto the site.

Zissu makes industry news

5 Mar

Travelwires‘ Muzi Mohale has posted an article about ZissuTravel onto the esteemed South African travel industry website.

SA still cautiously optimistic for 10 million tourists in 2010

3 Mar

In recent years South African tourism has seen significant growth in international tourism figures, with a significant proportion of this growth manifesting as visitors from Southern Africa. The most recent figures show that while growth from neighbouring regions has continued at a rate of 7%, however  arrivals from overseas are down because of the international economic crisis. Arrivals from Germany are down over 6% and from China almost 15%. Despite the general decline in travellers to South Africa, arrivals from France have increased by over 11%, just so that the Frenchies can prove that they’re different.

The United Nation World Tourism Organisation says that the situation is likely to remain stagnant or even enter decline until the world economy can find its feet again. Despite the pessimism on the international front South African Tourism remains confident that SA can achieve the previously predicted figures of over 10 million visitors in 2010. The upcoming 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup will certainly help this figure along significantly.

In such times of uncertainty its no wonder that ZissuTravel is finding that so many South African accommodation establishments are keen to register on the ZissuTravel website. Despite the fact that we have not yet launched to the public, another (better!) accommodation listing can only help local establishments to book out more beds. The fact that we don’t charge membership fees and only charge a 15% commission on every transaction means that we will remain motivated to market local tourism in a big way. This means that we make our money the only way that makes sense in this industry – by making other people money!

Here’s holding thumbs that the growth that SA internet tourism industry has been experiencing will help curb the crisis for most of us…

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