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A Cape Town-based tour operator seems to be the latest in a string of South African-based tourism suppliers that have been duped into paying for advertising in a business-to-business tourism publication that no longer exists – or, worst-case scenario, never existed in the first place.
Tourism Update’s investigation started with a complaint by director of Gems of Africa Safari and Tours, Janine Bouwer, on a travel gossip WhatsApp group about a publication called ‘Destination South Africa’ which also publishes ‘Destination Weddings’ and ‘Destination Mauritius’ under the same ISBN number.
Bouwer highlighted that she was contacted for advertising by Destination South Africa in December 2019. She was promised that that hard copies of the magazine would be showcased at various trade shows, including WTM Africa. Furthermore, the sales person, Waldo (no surname given) promised that there would be an app displaying news and adverts on these same platforms.
Bouwer initially declined the offer, pointing out that her marketing budget for the year had been finalised but Waldo persisted, offering several discounted offers.
“It was also tempting because exhibiting at these travel shows is very expensive and going the route of having a presence in a magazine being distributed at the trade shows seemed the most effective and affordable way to reach potential global tourism buyers,” she said, noting that the app was an added advantage.
She signed up, received what she termed a “very professional looking invoice” from a company called Africa Call Centres International, which she paid and then subsequently sent her advertising material.
Now, almost four months later, despite having paid and sent across the necessary material – no advertisement was ever put into action. Bouwer has tried to contact the company through multiple avenues – with little success.
She has been in regular e-mail contact with the Chief Operating Officer, Neil Hodgers. The last correspondence to Hodgers was that she would like to withdraw her advertising and get her money back. He responded on March 12 with a short note stating she would be refunded within 30 days.
Several attempts by Tourism Update to contact Hodgers as well as the people identified as the publishers, editor and ‘media specialist’ were unsuccessful. Phone calls, WhatsApp messages and e-mails were all unanswered.
The publication has a website showing a variety of PDF versions of the magazine are available (no consistency in the masthead branding and no dates on the publication). A quick scroll through the pages shows there are a number of high-profile advertisers, including South African Tourism.
GM: Global PR, Communications and Stakeholder Relations for SA Tourism, Altaaf Kazi, told Tourism Update that the tourism organisation was neither aware of this publication nor the advert.
“The artwork used for this advert is clearly not within our Corporate Identity and this was not given to the magazine by us,” he added.
Another ‘advertiser’ told Tourism Update anonymously that the double-page spread advertisement featured in the PDFs on the website was a “very old advert” dating back three or four years ago. The number provided in the advert had been scrapped a few years back.
Since there are no dates on any of the magazines the sales and marketing manager could not definitively state that the company had never placed an ad, which was why he preferred to remain anonymous.
He did acknowledge that the name of the magazine did not ring a bell and added that the fact that there were no dates on the magazine were a ‘red flag’.
Source: tourismupdate.co.za
