Hosted Buyer Programmes at Africa Travel Week announced

Comprising WTM Africa, ILTM Africa and IBTM Africa, Africa Travel Week will host 500 dedicated travel industry buyers and specialists from over 30 key source markets: 300 at WTM (World Travel Market) Africa, 150 at ILTM (International Luxury Travel Market) Africa and 50 at IBTM (Incentive, Business Travel and Meetings) Africa. Following the proven global RTE Hosted Buyer formula, these pre-qualified buyers will meet their suppliers of choice throughout Africa Travel Week 2014 in over 12,000 pre-scheduled, targeted business meetings.

Hosted Buyer Programmes ensure the attendance of top-level decision makers. In return for RTE providing travel and four- or five-star accommodation, as well as a full programme of networking, hosted buyers commit to attend a number of pre-scheduled appointments with suppliers of their choice at the events. With appointments set in their diaries before they attend each event, exhibitors are guaranteed to receive maximum return on investment.

With dedicated and experienced teams around the world engaged in inviting, qualifying and benchmarking to ensure quality and relevant buyers are admitted onto the programmes, once registration goes live, Africa Travel Week will have the largest ever programme of business opportunities for the industry in Africa.

Only successful if it is driven by quality

Craig Moyes, portfolio director of Africa Travel Week commented: "Reed Travel Exhibitions has a portfolio of market-leading events where the hosted buyer format is at the core of the shows. But it's not about quantity - it is only successful if it is driven by quality and that is where we excel. We will focus our efforts through a global network of specialists in researching, identifying and inviting the highest quality buyers to each of our events, specifically targeting a greater proportion of buyers from established source markets, including the US and Europe at Africa Travel Week, as well as emerging international markets including Asia-Pacific and Latin America."

In 2013 alone, the market leading ILTM, IBTM and WTM portfolios of international events across 13 countries will have hosted over 8000 pre-qualified, global travel industry Hosted Buyers.

Moyes continued: "Reed Travel Exhibitions has run over 100 hosted buyer events in the last 35 years. We have a team of over 30 people specialising in recruitment and qualification of these buyers not only in London, but in multiple destinations around the world including the US, China, Australia, and the Middle East.

We also work with a network of over 500 intermediaries globally to help us constantly source new buyers. With a buyer database of over 100,000 live contacts and a global reach of over 20 million travel trade professionals, we run the largest hosted buyer programme in the industry (EIBTM held annually in Europe, www.eibtm.com). We have launched four new successful hosted buyer events in emerging markets in the last year, including expanding the World Travel Market brand outside of the UK for the first time with the hugely successful World Travel Market Latin America in Sao Pãulo."

The Hosted Buyer Programme at Africa Travel Week will also be supported with tailored, professional education programmes suited to individual needs and a number of social networking events. Further details will follow shortly.

For more, go to www.africatravelweek.com.