Travel tech: Tourism must be always-on

A phrase leaped out of the launch announcement for the new Visit Gauteng Mobile App that suggested authorities could see beyond the typical hype behind such initiatives.

Gauteng MEC for Economic Development Vuyiswa Ramokgopa included, among four categories of change represented by the app, a move “from campaigns to an always-on ecosystem”.

The Gauteng Tourism Authority (GTA) recently unveiled the app at the Creative Uprising Hub at Constitution Hill, to close Tourism and Heritage Month. It also debuted a Digital Marketplace and an I Love Gauteng Online Shop. According to the GTA, the platform links discovery, planning, booking, purchasing and sharing through a single gateway.

Destination marketing has traditionally run on a calendar, with a campaign funded for a season and silence until the next one. The problem is that travellers research a weekend away at midnight and look for somewhere to eat an hour before they are hungry.

“We are moving from marketing Gauteng periodically to marketing Gauteng continuously,” said Ramokgopa. “From campaigns to an always-on ecosystem. From visibility to conversion. From movement to value capture.”

The distinction between periodic and continuous marketing has been demonstrated in other markets, most expensively in the American state of Colorado, in a case study that goes back to before the Internet went commercial. The state cut its tourism promotion budget from $12-million to zero in 1993. According to the US Travel Association, Colorado’s share of American leisure travel fell 30% within four years, and lost visitor spending cost $2.4-billion a year. Funding resumed in 2000, but the state had still not regained its share when the case study was published in 2011.

The lesson for Gauteng is that the app needs an operating budget that outlasts the launch year. A platform starved in the next budget cycle becomes just another campaign.

Copenhagen has demonstrated how a destination can target such permanence. Its CopenPay scheme rewards visitors with a free coffee or kayak tour for cycling or collecting litter. It began as a summer pilot in 2024 and became a year-round platform in June this year, after Wonderful Copenhagen, the city’s tourism body, reported 30,000 participants and a 59% rise in bike rentals among them. Gauteng could treat new features in the same way, testing it for a season and keeping it if the proven results justify it.

Vienna’s ivie app, launched in 2020, had been downloaded 900,000 times by 2023. It carries more than 1,000 entries, down to the location of public toilets. The Vienna City Card, which covers public transport and discounts, is built into the app, and sales of the card rose 52% in 2023.

Such mundane needs bring a visitor back to a destination app on every day of a trip. Gauteng’s version could answer questions about transport and the nearest ATM as readily as it promotes attractions. A built-in Gautrain or attractions pass would give visitors a reason to keep it on the phone.

The Indian state of Kerala put its tourism service on WhatsApp through a chatbot named Maya, and a month-long bidding game for discounted tour packages in 2023 drew 520,000 interactions. WhatsApp is already opened by South Africans every day, and a Gauteng service there would reach visitors who rarely download new apps.

The component of the launch with the most potential is the Visit Gauteng Marketplace, a shared digital storefront for SMMEs, township enterprises, artists, designers, tourism products and cultural experiences. Small operators seldom have the budget or the skills to run their own e-commerce sites.

“This platform has been built to turn attention into action, interest into income and visitation into economic participation,” said GTA acting CEO Crezelda Venter.” Every tourism product listed, every creator onboarded and every business promoted creates new opportunities for growth within Gauteng’s visitor economy.”

Said Ramokgopa, “We are not merely launching an app. We are activating a new economic infrastructure for tourism, culture, creativity and commerce. The real challenge facing destinations today is not attracting visitors, but converting movement into measurable economic value, transactions, jobs and opportunity.”

Infrastructure is a demanding standard. For example, a booking button that leads nowhere does more damage than having no listing at all.

* Arthur Goldstuck is CEO of World Wide Worx, editor-in-chief of Gadget.co.za, editor of GadgetWings, and author of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to AI – The African Edge”.

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