LONDON, October 5, 2010 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Global accommodation specialist Wotif.com has strengthened its destination focus on South Africa with the opening of an office in Cape Town.
Wotif.com is the market leader in Australia, New Zealand and Asia. The company has seen rapid expansion since they floated in 2007 but this is the first time that they have pushed through the addition of a new continent due to consumer demand.
Wotif.com's Executive General Manager for EMEA Matthew Harris explains: "We had always intended to launch South Africa as a destination and always felt that the World Cup might kindle our customer's interest but we couldn't have anticipated this level of response."
Most surprising of all is the fact that the main wave of enquiries have actually come from Wotif's New Zealand customers, sparked in no small part by their country's performance in the World Cup - New Zealand's national football team defied all the odds and actually finished the competition as the only unbeaten side.
According to Deloitte, South Africa saw an unprecedented 120% increase in revPAR during the World Cup - figure that dwarfs the 33% increase that Germany experienced during the 2006 tournament.
South Africa has already seen a major overhaul to its tourism infrastructure and having well established companies such as Wotif.com investing in the region will only continue to help the country blossom as a tourist destination.
"We responded to demand, which is something all good businesses must do in order to stay successful. Wotif has always received tremendous levels of repeat business and the only way that this can continue is by listening to your customers and catering to their needs," says Matthew Harris. "We are also very fortunate to be able to second experienced product manager Kevin Rautenbach from our Asia business unit to helm our South African operations. A native South African, Kevin's strong hospitality connections will be instrumental to our growth."
Another key element in this launch will surely be the iPhone version of the Wotif.com site that the company launched last year. Figures by World Wide Worx indicate that potentially almost twice as many South Africans access the internet via mobile than domestic computer - Wotif.com is looking forward to taking advantage of this exciting new mobile technology to make the world a smaller place for our customers.
SOURCE Wotif.com
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