Geotourist and the West Africa Tourism Organisation (WATO) are partnering in a revolutionary data initiative to generate visitor data insights that are not currently achievable in the region.
The initiative will be rolled out across 19 different countries, including the Republic of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cabo Verde, Cote d’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, St. Helena, and Togo.
The partnership will onboard destinations and organisations to Geotourist’s award-winning technology and serve multimedia visitor self-guided tours. The interactive trails can be used in-location with GPS as a guide or shared freely to enjoy virtually from anywhere in the world.
The joint initiative will integrate digital tours powered by geotourists. These tours will be accessed through WATO member mobile apps, websites, and the Geotourist global app, generating data tailored to each country’s partner.
Connectivity and remote locations are often issues in the area. Geotourist’s leading offline GPS capabilities allow visitors to download the tours in advance and enjoy the experience when they visit.
Tourism is an essential pillar for future economic growth. This data-driven approach will measure key drivers that increase visitor numbers, engagement, and ultimately revenue generated by these visitors.
A global storytelling platform that preserves human-centred stories connected to places in location, Geotourist measures inspiration and travel intent through the engagement of digital media content and becomes your trusted companion that guides you while visiting. Addressing the widely unmet travel and tourism industry needs, Geotourist answers, ‘What makes people travel?’
Working together, Geotourist and WATO aim to assess the impact of creating a digital footprint where none existed and harness the data generated to inform strategic decision-making and improve tourism economic development and campaign investment performance.
This project, which is of global significance, will collectively help West African tourism organisations unlock crucial primary data sets that have previously been impossible. The data generated by destinations’ visitors removes the need for a third-party data provider or the generic data pool, providing destination leaders with accessible, actionable insights that reveal which activities deliver real visitors and which are directly losing organisations’ money. The goal is to help destinations accelerate their economic growth by using data to focus on the activities that their visitors would travel for.
Ola Wright, CEO of the West Africa Tourism Organisation, said: “Primary data collection is among the top three objectives in our strategy to transform the tourism economic future of West Africa. We are excited about our partnership with Geotourist and have seen the level of visitor insight available, which we can leverage to help our member countries know where to invest precious capital or apply limited resources efficiently. West Africa is home to many of the world’s greatest tourism assets. Our data strategy includes making it easy to harness insights from across the region to understand visitor behaviour better. Ultimately, the story that the data tells will inform where potential opportunities may exist, increasing confidence for those that wish to invest in the region.”
Shaon Talukder, CEO of Geotourist, said, “We look forward to working with WATO and its members to accelerate tourism growth in the region. This expansion into West Africa positions Geotourist as a key ally in transforming the data landscape. With 19 countries working together and arming each member country with precise visitor data, the scale of this data initiative will be big, and any efficiencies derived from the data will, therefore, be substantial. If our analytics platform had always been going to help those who could benefit the most, this would certainly be one of the most meaningful partnerships we could have hoped for. The data will equip leaders in destination management and marketing to make informed decisions that will improve their margins immediately, enabling them to be more confident and ambitious with their actions.”
