e-Tourism Africa Summit (eTAS) provides the travel trade industry with a unique platform through which to experience and learn about state-of-the-art travel trends from a range of new and different speakers whose perspectives are so ahead of our time that they seem to be from the future itself.
 
Digital agency, Fogg, was tasked with the responsibility of grabbing the attention of members of the travel trade industry and encouraging them to book their seats at eTAS, where they would be further exposed to these latest and greatest travel trends.
 
As such, attendees of the 2014 Tourism Indaba, a previous tradeshow, were invited to partake in a gravity-defying experience, designed to give them a taste of the future of travel. To do this, the agency reconstructed the eagerly anticipated Space Hotel, due to launch in the year 2020, replicating the design to make it feel as though you were really there.
 
Visitors were invited to step into the Space Hotel (and into the future), and as they did so, were captured experiencing zero gravity, floating in the atmosphere. The team caught this unique footage through their innovative, space age-like construction. A 360° rig, built with 40 Canon D5s, was set up at intervals to capture each angle of the visitors’ encounter, while effective post 3D production brought their experiences to life.
 
The activation certainly did well to grab the attention of the travel industry. After just four hours, 240 people were lining up to experience zero gravity for themselves.
 
Upon completion of the activation, a dynamic online campaign kicked into gear. Each visitor was sent a postcard and emailer with a link to their video, encouraging them to brag about their ‘out of this world’ encounter, as well as encouraging them to book their seats at eTAS so as not to miss out on further insights into the future of travel.
 
The response was excellent. Starting with a zero base, eTAS grew their Facebook community to 357 and Twitter community to 743, while over 1347 visitors accessed and shared their videos from the emailed invitation and link.
 
The most satisfying result, however, was that shows in both Johannesburg and Cape Town and were booked out.
 
Fogg’s activation and campaign effectively gave the travel trade industry the boost it needed to rethink travel in a much more imaginative and universal sense, prompting many to ponder the possibility of a vacation spent outside of our time-space bubble.
 
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