The African Travel & Tourism Associations (ATTA) key Experience Africa event will return to London in 2022 after an absence of two years due to the Covid crisis.
The venue for the event on June 20-22 will be the central Kia Oval in London.
ATTA’s new subsidiary Experience Africa Events will organise the event in association with Jacob’s Media Group, publisher of Travel Weekly.
More than 100 sellers from across the sub-Sahara, east coast and southern African region are expected to be represented at the event covering accommodation/lodges, transport providers, DMCs, touring providers, tourism offices, attractions and more.
Buyers will be mainly from the UK, but some are expected from Europe and further afield.
Experience Africa is open to ATTA members and non-ATTA member buyers and will include pre-scheduled workshops, seminars, and networking events.
ATTA president Nigel Vere Nicoll said: “The African travel trade is excited to once again meet in-person to exchange new ideas, product and services.
“The recent global ATTA Africa Travel Trends report revealed that 50% of consumer respondents said they wanted to travel to Africa for their first main vacation as soon as restrictions were lifted so there certainly is an appetite to get business going.”
The ATTA Travel Trends report confirmed that Africa was a magnet for travellers with 33% of respondents saying they had visited the continent more than three times before with 7% having visited three times, 12% twice and 18% at least once.”
Vere Nicoll added: “There are strong prospects for the market as over 14% of our survey respondents said they had not travelled to Africa before but are interested.
“Some 35% used the down time during the pandemic to research and make plans for their next vacation. That’s a great indicator of the pent-up demand to travel and will certainly ‘get the drums beating’ across Africa.”