EDITOR’S COMMENT

South Africa is open for business

A new year always means a new beginning. After nearly two years of much uncertainty due to the pandemic, there seems to be a sense that the worst is over and we are all able to return to normalcy.

It is almost as if we have been living in a fog, and now it is clearing.

2022 has certainly begun with renewed positivity. The outlook is good for our sector, but everyone is cautiously optimistic. I think that 2022 will be the year where we rebuild our foundations and 2023 is the year that we should see a significant bounce-back.

If I think back, I sometimes wonder how we got through it all. To me, it feels like I was in an 80s music video filled with lots of smoke and nostalgia. Honestly, I believe it is resilience that has kept us going. Here we are, ready to begin again, and 2022 is already beginning on a high with the return of Meetings Africa.

The fact that Meetings Africa is back after a year on pause, makes me really happy. I look forward to this year’s show. In the past I’ve always described the event as a reunion of industry players, and this year’s show will certainly be that for everyone — after two years of ‘all sorts’. It is a great platform too, for industry to come together again and reintroduce ourselves and our destination to hosted buyers and visitors.

This year’s Meetings Africa has been identified as a recovery platform for the African business events sector. Meetings Africa 2022 continues its theme of ‘Shared Minds. Shared Economies.’ The key objective of this theme is to demonstrate how African business events and tourism entrepreneurs continue to make strides in reaching economies of scale by leveraging shared resources.

This theme is important, it highlights one of our greatest assets in business events, the need to collaborate. The past two years has seen a lot more collaboration between industry partners, locally and within the African continent. This has probably been one of the positives that has emerged from the pandemic.

The business events sector in South Africa is now – more than ever – more aligned, more connected and more resilient than ever before.

We are ready! South Africa is open for business.

Email: gomesi@iafrica.com