Cape Town - Independent hotel groups from across the world gathered at the Global Hotel Alliance’s (GHA) annual CEO conference in South Africa to discuss the positive global travel industry outlook for this year.
The conference took place at Sun International’s The Table Bay Hotel following Sun International joining the GHA last year.
The GHA’s headquarters is in the UAE and this was the first time the conference was held in South Africa with leaders of its 40 hotel brands participating and representing 800 hotels in 100 countries.
Global Hotel Alliance CEO Chris Hartley said: “With Africa being a key growth market for GHA, and now that Sun International is part of the alliance, it is fitting that we stage our event in South Africa to bring the potential of this region into focus.”
Hartley explained these hotels shared a loyalty programme called GHA Discovery, which comprised of 24 million members who were customers at all of their hotels.
This programme allowed these members to travel between any hotel that was part of GHA and be recognised through their shared database on arrival, making it easier to travel.
Hartley said their customers wanted to travel to South Africa but until last year were unable to choose any hotel within the alliance to do this.
Thus, by bringing on Sun International, the only South African hotel group on board, they were able to offer South Africa as a destination for customers and these customers were now also able to travel to any GHA hotel in the world.
“We are now seeing South Africans travel within our network around the world. The South African travellers, out of all of our customers, stay longer when they travel than any other country in the world. They are number one in terms of length of stay, staying approximately a week wherever they travel, compared to the average of about 3.5 days,” Hartley said.
Hartley said that in just a year, South Africans were already their most frequent stayers, averaging 2.5 hotel stays a year, and were thus doing more room nights on average per customer than any other nationality group.
The GHA Discovery membership in South Africa increased significantly since Sun International joined the alliance, with numbers up 79% since the end of 2019.
Sun International COO Graham Wood said: “It is a privilege to host GHA’s hotel brand CEOs in South Africa and be part of the conversation highlighting global trends and performance in 2023,
“Since joining GHA, we have benefited from the marketing and distribution power of GHA Discovery, which has delivered an increase in business to our properties from new and existing markets, and from other GHA hotel brands, and we look forward to building on this momentum.”