Indaba 2007 – Exhibitor First-Timer at Indaba

The Mole met Peter Cossey from Plumari Africa at Meetings Africa earlier this year, so when spotting him whilst snuffling along the aisles of Indaba, an immediate update was required.

Finding out that Plumari was at Indaba for the first time, I asked Peter about his Indaba experience. Peter continues in his own word…………..

Indaba is the African continents premiere tourism get-together.  A must-be for any products and buyers wanting to do business in this space.  The “do I go” questions are primarily “do I have a competitive advantage whereby I can actually sell my product?” and “can I afford it?”. 

The first question is however one that should be asked before setting up the business and not prior to Indaba.  Its just that when one walks around the vast halls seeing what seems like 1,000 other game lodges (Plumari is a game lodge only 3 years old) it really hits home just how much competition there is.

The second can be debated but now that 3 of the 4 days are over I firmly believe that one just cannot afford not to be.  Indaba has given us the chance to meet International buyers which is a market we want to move further into.  Ironically it also has allowed us the chance to develop relationships and partnerships with others much closer to home.

The icing on this cake was the Mole spotting me in a seething mass of people, consoling me on NZ getting trounced in both Super 14 semi’s (yes I am a kiwi) and then explaining a great health tourism concept that would work a treat with us.  He then proceeded to take me to their stand which was, rather embarrassingly, the stand next to ours!

So I need an Ozzie to travel 12,000kms to introduce me to my neighbour! 

Anyway great to see my good mate the Mole again on these shores and with a stack of business cards and meetings to be held in the next few weeks I do feel we have achieved great value for money.

I guess we were also a bit lucky with our timing as we could proudly proclaim that Plumari will in just 3 months be the first Big 5 game lodge within the Gauteng district.  To you down under readers Gauteng (pronounced “How teng”) is the smallest province that is Lions (previously Cats) country in Super 14 speak – bit like NSW and Auckland really.

And this really is one of our key selling points as international tourists or business-people have limited time to spend actually getting from place to place. 

Given 7 out of 10 that come here by air land in Joburg we can offer an “in the bush and wildlife experience” with just on an hours drive first.  It opens up doors for air-crew stop-overs, business people “what to do on the weekend” and first night en route to Sun City etc.

In conclusion I am still wishing for a NZ Super 14 team or the AB’s to be my guests on a SA jaunt and hope that may now be not too far away.

Signing off……….

Peter Cossey

Director Plumari Africa

Note from The Mole: Always love talking rugger when World Cup and Kiwi/Aussie matches come round… Interesting to hear the views of the locals, I certainly agree with Peter that buyers are certainly spoiled for choice at Indaba. So many exhibitors, so little time – and that’s even after four solid days!

Report by The Mole