Newsletter - August 2007

Namibia's Special Selection

In this edition:

Good Bye & Hello!
In loving memory of Pam McGillion

Dear Friends and Supporters

Let's start this newsletter with a big bang, shall we? ... It will be the last one of its kind!

As everyone of you will surely have experienced, things can sometimes take strange turns and surprise events can throw plans off track. But luckily in most of such circumstances when life closes one door on us another goes open, if one is willing to see it. This is in a nutshell what happened during the few months, since we published our previous newsletter.
However, we owe you a more detailed account of developments surrounding our marketing community Namibia's Special Selection and an explanation of why we gave this newsletter such a strange headline:

Our first Good Bye is a very sad one - to Pam McGillion, our representative in Gauteng/South Africa until early May 2007, who got killed in a car hijacking incident in front of her home in Greymont, Johannesburg. Pam had remained single all her life and was only survived by some distant relatives in her native Ireland. A widely-known tourism personality, she was loved and respected in her large circles of business contacts and private friends all over Southern Africa for her sunny personality, expertise, and integrity.
Many of us clients lost a personal friend in her too, and in our particular case, Pam and I went back for almost 20 years. Making Pam one of the pillars in the team when Namibia's Special Selection came into being, some 7 years ago, and relying on her to single-handedly achieve a firm foothold of our products in SA had come as naturally back then, as Pam's sure success over the ensuing years and her recent untimely death both had to have a significant impact on the future of our tourism brand.

Pam had been the personification of the brand's concept, intentions, and goals in every respect, and there simply is no-one to fill the void we were left with. Pam's comments over the years, on the dramatic changes she had observed on the work front and her views of the future of tourism marketing had a great influence on the development of the new projects we will introduce to our readers today - see our HELLO Chapter below.

So an era came to an end, when we also agreed with the members of our small marketing community that it was time to look for entirely different solutions to meet their promotion requirements - solutions that would serve them well into the future, as much as in the presence.
On 30 June 2007, we also said Good Bye to Namibia's Special Selection as it used to function over a number of years.

This resulted in a few changes regarding the accessibility of information - mainly affecting the trade partners of Naua Naua Game Lodge and Sam's Giardino:
 

Sam's Giardino signed a representation contract directly with Exclusive Reservations & Marketing in Windhoek, effective 1 July 2007 - please see contact details in our Newsletter February 2007.
The comprehensive Sam's Giardino On-line Guide containing almost the entire range of promotional material available on this accommodation establishment can be accessed via the following link: "Namibia-Index"  (... read great news in this respect!) 

Since Sam's Giardino will continue to handle Rates & Reservations Requests themselves, please keep their direct email address handy: samsart@iafrica.com.na

Naua Naua Game Lodge only maintained their Central Reservations Office in Windhoek, from where rates are distributed as well - direct contact via Tel: +264-61-25 22 99 / Email: info@nauanaua.com

Trade partners are welcome to arrange brochures collections via the same contact details.
Information/promotion material available on Naua Naua Lodge is published on-line under the "Namibia-Index" while images for printing purposes will be emailed on request, directly from either the CRO or the Lodge directly.
PLEASE NOTE that the email of the office at the lodge has changed to: lodge@nauanaua.com
 

The Windhoek Head Office of Namibia's Special Selection has ceased its co-ordination and all other former functions for the marketing community (...but not the promotion of the brand - read more!).

So those were the Good Byes we had to say earlier this year .... and here comes the big

HELLO!  

In fact, there are numerous new developments to welcome, which we will only present in a brief pre-view today and cover in more detail in the months to come ... in a different format:

Hello #1

This website will move to a new location, under a new domain, and become a fully-fledged Namibia Tourism Portal. But, as you know by now, we usually do things a bit different than the crowds, so let us surprise you in a while ... we plan to go live towards the end of September 2007 with Namibia-Unlimited.com!
(Don't worry about missing the change-over date ... we'll keep a referral page going at the current address of THIS website www.web-it.iway.na, for another few months!)

Hello #2

The brand name "Namibia's Special Selection" will identify the PREMIER LISTING Section of Namibia-Unlimited.com. Premier Listing will automatically be given to our tourism-related customers publishing a comprehensive range of top-quality information and/or marketing material ON-LINE via our Namibia Tourism Portal - the most reliable, most efficient, and most cost-effective way to target markets around the world.
The promotional materials of Sam's Giardino and Naua Naua Game Lodge will move to Namibia-Unlimited.com too and feature in the Premier Listing under the "Namibia's Special Selection" brand.

Anyone interested in exploring the various publication - promotion - advertising options on Namibia-Unlimited.com  that make international marketing easy to do, any time and from any place, and truly affordable even to the smallest tourism business is welcome to contact Inge via Email: web-it@iway.na  / Tel: (061) 242431

- pre-launch specials are available too!

Hello #3

should actually read: 'Hello Again' to Sam's Giardino. They had so much success with their Giardino Website,  their advertising and other promotional publications produced and administered by us over the last 4 years that they decided to sign up for another round. And not just that - they also ordered a complete new set of marketing material to be designed taking into account the many improvements done around the guesthouse over the last two years.

So expect to be presented soon with a completely new and appropriately fancy 'Giardino Look' - on CD (distributed to trade partners - as part of the info/marketing packs - by Erika/Exclusive), on "Einstein's" web pages, and of course at Namibia-Unlimited.com!

Hello #4

refers to the developments needed to meet the future of Namibia Tourism & Marketing:
We at TTC have moved on from promoting only a few members of the Namibian tourism industry under the "Special Selection" banner via conventional channels and, amongst others, an on-line presence. We have consolidated business activities of our previously separately operating divisions, TTC and Web-doS, to become a provider of Internet Publication & Marketing Solutions to anyone involved in Namibia Tourism, while our main mission remained unchanged: to support tourism development in Namibia and to do so in the most cost-efficient and most effective way for our customers.

The latest developments surrounding modern Information Technology and the Internet, and the rapidly increasing use of both by potential visitors to Namibia and by members of our tourism industry are clear indications that the days of obtaining information via printed publications are numbered. It became obvious that information exchanges are expected to take place faster than personal contacts can usually be established and printed information can be distributed. They are also expected to be more comprehensive than the costs of printed publications and their distribution commonly permit. The demand these days is for information to be available and accessible, anywhere - any time.

By concentrating on promotion efforts and information distributions via the Internet, Namibia is not only meeting such changed expectations and demands but can provide information of far greater quality and quantity at a far lower price. This not only levels the playing field for small individually-owned businesses having to compete on international markets, as it commonly applies to Namibian providers of tourism services. The Namibian tourism industry is also presented with opportunities for making significant and lasting contributions to local and international nature conservation efforts, which will count far more in future in our success as holiday destination as they already do today.

Here follows just one simple example of such opportunities that bears relevance to our tourism promotion activities: Lesser paper usage means lesser tree cutting, which in turn means preserving water tables and climate; lesser travelling for marketing purposes means reduced fuel consumption, which in turn means limiting environmental damages; reductions in expenses for paper and fuel imports can help improving the economic climate and free up financial resources sorely needed for conserving Namibia's most precious assets ... our people and diverse cultural heritage, our desert and wilderness areas, our wildlife and natural resources, our clean air and healthy climate; and all those other assets that deserve protection and without which it will be impossible to achieve truly sustainable tourism. 

Hence our new Namibia Tourism Portal will not only be dedicated to promoting tourism and to supporting developments in this field but to creating greater awareness regarding sustainable tourism activities - which forms they can take, how they affect us locally and in a global context, the short- and long-term benefits for our own tourism industry and our international visitors, and many more related topics.

Anyone interested in publishing announcements, stories and articles on any Namibia-related topics free of charge, is invited to visit our Internet portal on "Web & Information Technology & Namibia" - www.WebITNamibia.com or WIN for short - for more information. Namibia-Unlimited.com will eventually become WIN's new dedicated tourism section.

With this much to 'digest' in changes and news, it is Good Bye from us for today, until we can say "Hello Again!" under the Namibia-Unlimited banner in a few weeks' time.

Kind regards,

Inge Ohm

for the team behind
TTC & Web-doS

- Internet Publication & Marketing Solutions for Namibia
and Sustainable Tourism Developments in Namibia - 

P. O. Box 32004

Windhoek

Namibia

Tel:     ++264-(0)61-242431

Email: web-it@iway.na

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