{"id":533,"date":"2012-07-31T04:52:52","date_gmt":"2012-07-31T04:52:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/za\/?p=533"},"modified":"2012-07-31T04:52:52","modified_gmt":"2012-07-31T04:52:52","slug":"sa-among-top-business-destinations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/za\/news\/sa-among-top-business-destinations","title":{"rendered":"SA among top business destinations"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_534\" style=\"width: 550px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/za\/files\/2012\/07\/KZN.jpg\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-534\" class=\" wp-image-534 \" title=\"South Africa Business Destination\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/za\/files\/2012\/07\/KZN.jpg\" alt=\"South Africa Business Destination\" width=\"540\" height=\"315\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/za\/files\/2012\/07\/KZN.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/za\/files\/2012\/07\/KZN-300x175.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 540px) 100vw, 540px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-534\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">South Africa Business Destination<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Pretoria &#8211; South Africa remains in the top 15 \u2018long-haul\u2019 business events destinations in the world and is the premier business events destination in Africa, says Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur ambition is to compete with the biggest and best business events destinations in the world,\u201d he told delegates at the opening of the annual Southern African Association of the Conference Industry conference on Monday.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs government continues to focus on tourism as one of the key job creating sectors, we recognise business events tourism as an area with significant growth potential,\u201d Van Schalkwyk said.<\/p>\n<p>Government had established the first South African National Convention Bureau (SANCB) to further promote growth in the conferencing industry. The SANCB is tasked with co-ordinating national bidding, undertaking research and collaborating with City and Provincial Convention Bureaus and the business events industry to present a united front for destination South Africa, he said.<\/p>\n<p>He said for the next five years, South Africa has already secured over 200 international conferences, that are estimated to attract 300 000 delegates and an additional R1.6\u00a0 billion to the economy.<\/p>\n<p>In 2011, according to a departure survey, South Africa had 392 000 business travellers, of which 140 000 attended conferences and meetings.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo, while we have identified the business events industry as a critical component in helping us reach our National Tourism Sector Strategy\u2019s target of 15 million international arrivals by 2020, we know that we still have considerable room for growth and improvement in this sector,\u201d Van Schalkwyk said. \u2013 SANews.gov.za<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pretoria &#8211; South Africa remains in the top 15 \u2018long-haul\u2019 business events destinations in the world and is the premier business events destination in Africa, says Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":534,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[298,27,1,292],"tags":[153,207,432,15],"class_list":["post-533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-events","category-featured","category-news","category-tourism","tag-153","tag-business","tag-destination","tag-south-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=533"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":535,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533\/revisions\/535"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thebizsense.com\/za\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}