By Winnie Graham

South Africa is attracting vast numbers of international conference delegates to its shores and many are returning to South Africa to enjoy holidays, buy homes or even to investigate business opportunities.

The international conference phenomena, which has gathered increasing momentum in South Africa since the dawn of democracy in the early 1990s, is now being hailed as a springboard for upmarket tourism. Conference delegates tend to be well educated, well travelled, with higher disposable income and are ranked among tourism’s bigger spenders.  New statistics show that at least 40% of the delegates who fly to South Africa for a three or four day conference are so impressed by the experience that they return on holiday with their families and friends . Even more interesting, many come back to start businesses and a ‘good number’ to buy holiday homes.

The trend was particularly apparent last month when delegates from around the world attended the annual conference of the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) in Cape Town. Airline passengers leaving from Cape Town International were quick to notice that there were an extraordinarily large number of private planes parked there, most of which, they were told, belonged to WAN delegates.

Brian McDonald, Managing Director of Global Conferences Africa, who started organising prestige international conferences in 1993, has found that the world’s top business and professional people are invariably taken by surprise by the professionalism of the local conference industry.

“The return of delegates is just one of many indirect and little known benefits that flow from international congresses,” he said. “Our clients are South African associations, government organisations and donor organisations who demand world class events. They are determined their guests will leave with a very positive impression of South Africa. We go out of our way to make certain they have a wonderful time so it is not surprising they are impressed. Southern Africa has become an increasingly important international conference destination.”

The WAN conference in Cape Town last month, attended by 1800 delegates including some of the world’s most influential editors and publishers, attracted glowing reports from international delegates many whom described it as ‘highly organised’ and ‘most useful’.

Gavin O’Reilly, president of WAN and the host   of the 2004 conference in Dublin, described the Cape Town event as ‘the best ever’.

Estimated spend of WAN delegates was around R2500 per day including accommodation, registration fees, transport, entertainment, meals and tours, making a whopping contribution of over R22m to Cape Town in the quiet winter month of June.

In 2002 McDonald was involved in the organisation of the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, a conference that attracted over 50 000 delegates, among them Heads of State and most of the world’s leading environmentalists.

“We found beds for over 26,000 of them, the rest being locals or making their own arrangements” McDonald says, “some had to travel from as far away from the venue as Pretoria, East and West Rand.”

Last year Global Conferences Africa organised 15 prestigious inbound international conferences, the biggest of which was the World Diabetes Association conference in Cape Town attended by 12 300 delegates. Again, the challenge was to find a place for all the visitors to stay.

“The hotels cooperated fully and helped us accommodate every one, some as far afield as Stellenbosch, the Strand and Somerset West,” he says.

Yet another elite gathering was arranged on behalf of the Rhodes Trust in 2003 when 800 Rhodes scholars arrived for a hectic round of 32 different outings to community projects, social events and 15 meetings.

Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town are now listed among the world’s top conference cities. Yet, just 14 or 15 years ago when the conference industry started taking off, there were few proper venues. Hotels did what they could but were limited by the numbers they could accommodate.

There are around 8000 international associations that move their annual, bi-annual or tri-annual conferences around the world.  There is a huge market  of associations, donor organisations and corporates who are yet to hold a meeting in Southern Africa, so this industry is set to keep on growing.

Global Conferences Africa continues to work hard to bring them to South Africa. One of the strategies they are using is to work with local associations to encourage their international associations to hold meetings to South Africa. For further information, contact Brian McDonald at brian@globalconf.co.za or visit www.globalconf.co.za