Sho't Left Travel Week kicks off on Monday and runs until Sunday. It means South Africans can get up to 50 percent off on travel deals.
Mashoto Mokgethi, who is the Head of Domestic Tourism for South African Tourism, shed more light on the initiative, which started last year and provided an overview of some of the things that local travellers can expect.
She said: “We launched “It’s your country Enjoy it” about two years ago. When we launched the campaign we thought our job is to inspire South Africans to actually travel the country because it’s their country; they must own it and enjoy it the best way they want to. And that’s based on insights that we had from our research…
Listen to the podcast below:
PODCAST: Sho't Left Travel Week 2019 (part 1)“While the campaign has done fanatically (well) to inspire South Africans, we also knew one of the biggest jobs we needed to do is to make travel affordable and that’s when Sho’t Left Travel Week came through.”
So for this week, South Africans can bag the best deals from one of SA Tourism's over 500 partners.
They don’t have to travel within this week but they can make their bookings for later in the year and the time frame is dependent on the terms and conditions of each establishment.
Mokgethi added: “So last year was the first year. Even we were figuring it out and it worked fantastically for us, which is why we are doing even better on it this year.
"Last year, we had 325 partners that came on board offering deals; mainly we had more of accommodations and we had a lot of experiences in different places, we had tour operators that also came in and we did a random survey and we got 37 responses from our trade partners, who said they sold over R1.5-million in that week alone. So it did serve them a purpose, which is why they came back to actually take part in travel week.
“So you can travel depending on what that travel partner has. So we have travel partners who will say book at this time and your December holiday is sorted or book at this time and you can do between February and March. They differ from travel partner to travel partner.
“The work that we do as South African Tourism is aimed at making sure that we give affordable deals to South Africans to travel and we work very closely with our partners to actually do that and they have been fantastic with us on working on this.”
Look out for #TravelWeekSA and be sure to follow Sho’t Left on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to find the best deals this week. You can also check out www.southafrica.net or shotleft.co.za