SA Tourism opens call centre
Zibonele Ntuli
4 October 2004
South African Tourism has opened a global call centre in Johannesburg that offers information about travel to South Africa as a preferred tourist destination.
Manned by 17 native-speaking international operators, the centre offers information to English, German, French, Italian and Dutch customers enquiring about travel to South Africa.
The centre will handle requests for a deal-driven marketing campaign, information from markets, while timeously delivering information to ensure that many people are encouraged to activate their South African travel plans.
It is expected to process a minimum of 5 000 telephonic enquiries per month and respond to e-mail and fax enquiries.
Calls will be handled via 26 lines from 16 countries including the United States, UK and Australia, and Europe.
The language offering will be boosted with the addition of Portuguese and Mandarin in November.
SA Tourism previously operated call centres
in Germany servicing the pan-European market, the US during its deal-driven campaigns, and in Cape Town.
Chief operating officer Moeketsi Mosola said the decision to integrate and centralise the information stream was taken to improve efficiency by creating one central holistic contact point.
"This new facility will allow us to service our customers' needs for information about our destination much more efficiently. It will also provide a live database of marketing information to measure and inform the communications and marketing strategy of South African Tourism," Mosola said.
"This will enable us to fulfil our mandate of being customer-driven and to better track marketing activities from our key source markets. It will help us to know and therefore service the demands of our customers even better," he said.
Mosola added that the state-of-the-art system reflected that South Africa was a world-class destination, and was being positioned as a global tourism
force.
According to SA Tourism, all operators had undergone an extensive two-week training on communication skills, an introduction to the country's core and tactical markets as defined by the Tourism Growth Strategy to empower them to provide service to international tourists in their preferred language.
The initiative forms an integral part of the organisation's mandate to increase foreign tourist arrivals, increase their length of stay and address the issues of geographic distribution, seasonality and transformation.
The call centre - 083 123 6789 - also provides service to locals.
Source: BuaNews
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