The Namibia Economist

Jaws dropped at Tourism Expo

Last weekend’s 14th Annual Tourism Expo provided great exposure for many tourist exhibitors and was hailed as a success by all stakeholders and participants. Since its inception in 1999, the expo has attracted many tourism companies at local, regional and international level, with the aim of providing a platform for Namibia’s hospitality industry to promote and market their products and services to the general public, collegeaus and travel operators.
The Cape West Coast Regional Tourism Organisation is one such company that felt the expo was a great way of directly interacting with potential clients.
For the last consecutive five years, Cape West Coast Tourism has become a household name for Namibian’s travelling to the wets coast regions in neighbouring South Africa. The organisation markets the west coast regional tourist attractions and provides services for those travelling to any destination on the west coast. Cape West Coast Tourism specialises in marketing business and services, lesser-known wine routes such as the Darling Wine Route, West Coast Wine Route and Swartland Wine Route and also provides information on the different guest houses along the West Coast B1 road from Namibia to Cape Town.
According to Dave Cornelius, Tourism Development Officer of West Coast Tourism, the response from the Namibian people has been very great since the organisation first exhibited at the expo. “ We get alot of feedback from people who stayed in guest houses along the West Coast region and they tell us that they have heard about the certain guest house at our stand at the Namibian Expo,’’ Cornelius says.
The Cape-Namibia Route, which runs along the N7/B1 roads, offers a plethora of activities in a combination found nowhere else on the planet. This is the one route where travellers can touch dinosaur fossils, dive in kelp forests, play in the snow, revel in the cacophony of hundreds of thousands of seals and gannets, get lost in the second-biggest canyon on earth; kayak in white and blue water, eyeball black-maned lions and sip German beer while listening to oompah music.
Of the various tourist attractions, Strandtfontein seemes to be a popular venue frequently visited by Namibians, according to Cornelius. “Although the West Coast offers a wide range of events throughout the year, one of the most popular events held in the region is the International Gliding Competition, which attracts thousands of gliders across the world,” Corneluis says with a smile.

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