From left to right: SAACI CEO Glenton De Kock, SAACI National Chairperson Kim Roberts and ICCA Regional Director (Africa) Esmare Steinhofel.
ICCA and the Southern African Association for the Conference Industry (SAACI) was announced at Meetings Africa in Johannesburg, South Africa.
ICCA has designed a programme for strategic collaboration with a small number of organisations which have a clear interest in developing long-term business relations with ICCA’s Association Community and the broad mass of ICCA membership, like SAACI. The objective is to exchange information and cross-promotion of both associations.
ICCA CEO, Senthil Gopinath states, “ICCA has been developing the international meetings industry in Africa extensively through the active participation of its members and association community. The African meetings industry is very keen on building the knowledge economy and as the global meetings industry association we make every effort to support the African meetings industry and its objective to also achieve societal development through meetings. ICCA has been stressing the importance of collaboration amongst the African meetings industry and initiating joint efforts with SAACI to achieve such objectives. I would like to thank SACCI for their support over the years and am delighted to welcome this extended collaboration amongst ICCA and SAACI. I am convinced it will help grow ICCA’s supplier and association community in the African region."
Kim Roberts, SAACI National Chairperson explains: “We are extremely pleased to conclude this partnership for both SAACI and ICCA. It is important for SAACI to work with ICCA in the drive of knowledge sharing that makes this partnership so relevant and important for the business events industry within Africa. We are looking forward to the exchange of critical information on events held across the continent which will allow for sharing of crucial information to the bidding process for future events such as contacts, budgets, and the decision-making process. This will start an aggressive process in how we want to increase business events and association meetings to Africa.”
The partnership will bring strategic collaboration and will mutually benefit both associations through the exchange of information, creating awareness through affiliation and working together to create new education and training opportunities for the benefit of the Business Events Industry in Africa.
SAACI Chief Executive Office, Glenton De Kock commented on the agreement: “The work between SAACI and our continental partners is to develop markets and drive association business events to Destination Africa. A number of our members companies are active on the continent and this initiative coincides with our view of the market and the way we wish to drive partnerships and collaboration in building a strong, sustainable business events industry for our continent with like-minded partners.”
Vicky is the co-founder of TravelDailyNews Media Network where she is the Editor-in Chief. She is also responsible for the daily operation and the financial policy. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Tourism Business Administration from the Technical University of Athens and a Master in Business Administration (MBA) from the University of Wales.
She has many years of both academic and industrial experience within the travel industry. She has written/edited numerous articles in various tourism magazines.
