WAYN, the largest travel and lifestyle dedicated social platform in the world has announced the signing of a three year, multi-million dollar advertising deal with South African Tourism.

Under the terms of the deal, WAYN will promote South Africa to its 17 million strong membership, growing awareness and driving product via a dedicated microsite on the WAYN platform. The deal also incorporates a research element, giving South African Tourism up to the minute statistics on its audience, as well as a competition that will run on the site.

The deal is an extension of a partnership that has existed between WAYN and South African Tourism since 2009, and is testament to WAYN’s key role within the travel and lifestyle vertical as the foremost conduit between brands and consumers.

The signing of the deal comes on top of impressive growth figures in WAYN traffic and registrations since the site’s re-launch in February 2011, with traffic to the site tripling in the last six months and monthly visits surpassing 12.7 million. 

The announcement coincides with a study by WAYN Insights, WAYN.com’s research arm, which ranks South Africa within the top four most social engaged National DMOs online. The study, which is based on the number of ‘likes’ and followers National DMOs have accumulated on their official Facebook fan pages and Twitter and WAYN profiles, found that Australia was by far the most socially engaged National DMO brand with over 1.6 million fans and followers, followed by Spain (419,978), New Zealand (400,851) and South Africa (272,540).

WAYN co-Founder and co-CEO Jerome Touze stated: ‘This new long term deal exemplifies South African Tourism’s faith in the ability of the WAYN platform to grow audience and market share, and the site’s recent re-launch has certainly made WAYN the place to be for companies operating in the travel and lifestyle vertical. We are primed to help South Africa become the most socially engaged destination in the world.”

“There are very few lifestyle choices in the world as social, or as naturally given to social networking, as travel,” said William Price, head of e-marketing at South African Tourism. “South African Tourism is determined to put South Africa at the very heart of online conversations about travel; about destinations; and about travel experiences. WAYN is the biggest travel and social media platform of its kind in the world, and our partnership with WAYN makes sense for many reasons. It gives us access to the broadest global demographic and direct access to the very people we want to invite to come and experience the amazing destination that South African is.

“We know that consumers make travel decisions after having researched and engaged with others online. South African Tourism is very serious indeed about growing arrivals beyond global growth trends and about maintaining the competitiveness boost that the 2010 FIFA World Cup brought.

“Our partnership with WAYN is but one component of a broader mobile and social media campaign. The relationship is set to be the lifeblood of the larger campaign. It will not only give us access to a world of consumers, but it will also give us research data and metrics to help keep our campaign relevant, our destination compelling and our arrivals growing.”