Geographical Spread and Tourism Prosperity in South Africa

Illana Clayton is the CEO of Travel Smart Crew, a collective of 15 privately owned, self-started and owner-managed Inbound DMCs. Illana has spent over 25 years in Inbound Destination Management space, and served as a SATSA board member. She began her career at Thompsons, before moving on to Travel Smart Crew, and has worked in various areas of both inbound and outbound tourism, including customer-facing positions in international sales and supplier-focused positions in product procurement and systems.

Johan Groenewald is the Founder and Managing Director of Royal African Discoveries. The destination management company (DMC) will celebrate its 26th birthday in August. The company specialises in emerging markets and often ventures into uncharted waters to find new source markets and clients in Southeast Asia, India, the Nordics, and former Eastern European countries. Navigating these regions has ensured an understanding of the requirements of these unique markets, which generally have very limited knowledge of South and Southern Africa— not to mention developing a cast-iron stomach.

A passion for travel and learning about new and different cultures plays a significant role in how the company operates as a DMC for these source markets. Having first-hand knowledge and experience of most of our source markets is key to the DMC’s success.

Monika is the Chief Tourism Officer for Wesgro, the official tourism, trade and investment promotion agency for Cape Town and the Western Cape.

She has a passion for tourism, a deep knowledge of destination marketing and the international marketplace, and strong industry relationships at home and abroad, with over 30 years in the tourism industry, in both the private as well as the public sector.

Since 1992 she has worked for an outbound tour operator in Berlin, Germany, smaller boutique DMCs in Johannesburg and spent 13 years at Tourvest Destination Management. She then spent 4 years at SA Tourism; initially as Regional Director for the Americas and ultimately as General Manager International Marketing, supporting marketing execution in all 11 international SA Tourism offices in Europe, the Americas and Australasia.

Relocating to Cape Town in 2016, she rejoined the private sector by taking the helm as CEO of Private Safaris in Southern Africa, a Destination Management Company operating from offices in Cape Town and Windhoek. She successfully shepherded the business to its new owners, Fairfax Financial Holdings (based in Toronto) in 2017, and together with her team led the resultant reinvention of the business.

In 2021 she joined Wesgro’s Executive team, and leads the business units that deliver leisure tourism promotion and facilitation, as well as the Convention Bureau team and the Cruise Cape Town initiative.

She is married, lives in Sea Point and has a step son and 4