Durban — Durban Tourism has invited event organisers in and around eThekwini to partner with eThekwini Municipality to market Durban, and showcase what the city has to offer tourists.
eThekwini Municipality’s destination marketing department, Durban Tourism, has issued a call to event organisers to submit their destination promotion proposals and applications, for the period between July 1, 2023, and June 30, 2024.
The municipality encouraged partnerships with event organisers for event occurrences that enhance the city’s drive, in order to position Durban as an events destination of choice, and promote tourism offerings in and around Durban. EThekwini Municipality said the applications would close on June 19, at 10am.
Durban Tourism Deputy Head of Department Winile Mntungwa said the City aimed at strategically positioning Durban as a preferred premium leisure and business travel destination to host world-class leisure, business, and sporting events.
Mntungwa said this would help attract domestic and international visitors to eThekwini.
“This is in line with the objectives of eThekwini Municipality’s Integrated Development Plan (IDP), plan two.
“These are amplified in the destination promotion agenda through events partnerships and hosting, and further unpacked in Durban’s Visitor Marketing Strategy, which was approved by council in October 2022,” she said.
Mntungwa stated that the process of inviting destination promotion proposals from event organisers will enable Durban Tourism to implement the City’s destination promotion and marketing through:
- Advanced destination events calendar profiling and management.
- A systematic events occurrence alignment with Durban’s travel seasonal promotion and activations calendar.
- Advanced composition of Durban’s travel packages in collaboration with tourism trade for inclusion of events within visitor travel itinerary packages.
The entity listed the the following key objectives of destination promotion event partnerships:
- Attract domestic and international visitors to the destination.
- Destination promotion and profiling to the domestic and international travel market through pre, during, and post-marketing as well as public relations campaigns.
- Job creation within the tourism ecosystem, or value chain.
- Increase tourism accommodation occupancy in tourism accommodation establishments.
- Increase visitors’ length of stay in Durban as they attend events and explore other visitor experiences.
- Promote visitors’ dispersal across various tourism precincts, including townships and rural tourism precincts.
- Media leveraging from already secured deals at no cost to the City for destination profiling and exposure.
- Destination promotion and leveraging during the intense national and international event marketing and side activations.
- Brand leveraging profile and exposure pre, during, and post the events within Durban and outside of Durban’s borders.
- Trade exchange partnership benefits to the City beyond the event at no additional cost to the City.
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