European SMEs meet the South African hospitality sector in a virtual reverse mission

Pauline Bruge | Publicado el septiembre 29, 2021 |

The last 7^th of July, in the framework of the European project wellianceHOSPITALITY, the Catalan Water Partnership together with the Southern Africa Tourism Services Association (SATSA), a non-profit association representing the region’s tourism private sector, organized a virtual matchmaking “Sustainability and innovation for the Hospitality sector”. In the event +20 SME members of the different wellianceHOSPITALITY clusters (CAP Construction, Umweltcluter Bayern, Cluster Lumière, CENFIM and the CWP), had the opportunity to virtually get in touch with different hotel companies based in South Africa, who were interested in learning about the sustainable and innovative technologies and services of European SMEs. The hotel companies presented their current needs and challenges in a networking space.

The webinar started with the presentation of the Director of SATSA and was followed by presentation of the wellianceHOSPITALITY project as well as the clusters forming its consortia. After those presentations, some companies had the opportunity to introduce themselves and explain their products and/or services. Among this companies we counted with Patrick Genard from Architect at Patrick Genard & Asociados (member of CAP Construction), Josef Schuetz, Co-Founder & CFO of Grino Water Solutions GmbH, (member of Umweltcluster Bayern), with Prof. Dr. Marc R. Fontoynont from VisualSense (member of Lumière Cluster), Gaëlle Rosé from HobbyFlower (member of CENFIM) and Fernando Portillo Director of Keiken Engineering (member of the CWP). After these presentations a networking and matchmaking session was carried out among EU SMEs and hotel companies, where more than 60 B2B meetings took place.