Travel Commerce Solutions are delighted that our first public event as a company was at Aviadev 2016 in the beautiful city of Kigali in Remarkable Rwanda.

The conference, organised by Jon Howell of Bench Events, was the ideal opportunity to connect with the movers and shakers in African Travel.

One of our co-founders and Commercial Executive, Manish Shrivastava, spoke to Jon before the conference to discuss what Travel Commerce Solutions offer and why we are specifically interested in the African market. You can listen to the full discussion via our podcast link below:

The 3-day conference was held in the magnificent new Kigali Radisson Blu Hotel & Convention Centre – Kigali really is fulfilling its aspiration to become a central business hub in Africa.

Swiss chocolates and hospitality were on offer at our Travel Commerce Solutions stand where Peter Schmid and Manish were happy to present our products and services.

On the 3rd and final day of the conference, Peter and Manish ran an educational workshop with the delegates to introduce travel merchandising and IATA’s New Distribution Capability (NDC) initiative. He explained how these concepts can be used to deliver great benefits to the African travel industry. It was an excellent session, triggering many thought provoking questions from the attendees. In particular, airport operators and tour package providers collaborated on how they could apply travel merchandising in their businesses.

The conference concluded with a once-in-a-lifetime visit to the Mountain Gorillas in the Volcanoes National Park. It was a humbling experience to come into contact with such powerful and dignified creatures, and demonstrated how tourism can do great good for both humanity and nature on the African continent.

The wider conference was a great success – all credit to our friends at Bench Events for organising such a dynamic and inspirational event.

Attendance at the conference has inspired us to form a KIVA team in order to commit to being a socially responsible company and help small businesses in Africa – more on this soon.

Here’s to Aviadev 2017 – we’ll definitely be there!