Tourism Indaba this Weekend

by Ben | May 5th, 2006

South Africa’s tourism industry holds its annual Indaba this weekend at the Durban International Convention Centre. “Indaba”, pronounced een-DAH-bah, is an Nguni word - Nguni being a family of languages that includes Zulu and Xhosa - with a range of meanings, from “meeting” to “news” to “three nights of boozy bedlam for tourism operators”.

While local tourism is fairly healthy, it lags seriously behind that of major world destinations like Paris - a city that gets more visitors annualy than many countries, including SA. Accordingly, one of the main themes at the Indaba - to be introduced by no less a personage than our Deputy President, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, in her keynote speech - will be how to move Paris to the Free State when no one’s looking.

Not true, not true, everyone will probably mostly chat about the 2010 World Cup. Please, someone at the Indaba - send SA Blog a “wish you were here” postcard!