A Safe, Cleaner and Visitable Gauteng Set to Dazzle Fans, Runners, and Music Enthusiasts this Weekend

Once again the golden province of Gauteng is set to be a hive of activities for business and leisure visitors alike this weekend. The Spring to Summer period reaches fever pitch with the destination hosting quality lifestyle, business, and sports entertainment events back-to-back and in the process generating massive tourism revenue, increased visitation, more bed nights and spend.

Opening the bumper weekend activities for all ages and budgets, is the 7th annual AI Expo Africa currently on at the Sandton Convention Center, Africa’s largest Artificial Intelligence & Intelligent Automation Trade Show & Conference. The Expo is then followed by the much anticipated and sold out Carling Knockout Cup match between Kaizer Chiefs and Mamelodi Sundowns at the iconic FNB Stadium on Saturday 2nd November 2024 and the multi-cultural Kunye Music event at Huddle Park Linksfield in Johannesburg.

Powering Soweto local economy also over the weekend is the 29th edition of the African Bank Soweto Marathon which brings together over 30 000 runners and spectators into the heart and soul of Soweto (its people and streets) from far and wide on Sunday 3rd November 2024 from the Nasrec Expo Centre. This People’s Race as it is affectionately known will cover over eight significant heritage sites on the route include Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital, Walter Sisulu Square, Credo Mutwa Cultural Village, the Regina Mundi Catholic Church, Morris Isaacson High School, June 16 Memorial Acre, Vilakazi Street, and the Hector Peterson Museum amongst others.

Also on the cards on Sunday is the inaugural Royal Cradle Music Festival scheduled to be hosted at Maropeng Visitor Centre in the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage with a scrumptious line-up of Mzansi finest talent and interactive experiences with our common human ancestry story.

“We are thrilled by the participation of all our social partners including the hosting communities in preparing for these events not only as passive recipients of the expected proceeds but active agents helping in the cleaning of the streets, reporting water leaks, offering and welcoming visitors and runners into their homes and volunteering to control traffic, provision of empowering travel and tourism information and working with our law enforcement agencies to ensure safe eventing and hosting”, explained Gauteng MEC for Finance and Economic Development, Lebogang Maile.

We are anticipating just for this weekend over 160 000 fans, Expo participants, music enthusiasts, runners, accompanied persons, media and those using these events as an opportunity to do their festive personal and business shopping and contributing to an estimated R428 million into the provincial tourism economy in one weekend.

This bodes well for the recovery and ultimately growth of the sector in Gauteng as we continue to use tourism and the hosting of quality signature events as a catalyst to achieve our Growing Gauteng Together vision 2030 targets particularly focusing on youth employment, re-tooling of the sector skills, market access and trading opportunities for SMMEs and the building of our destination competitiveness, recapped Maile.

For more information on what to do and where to go this season in Gauteng, visit www.gauteng.net. Follow @visitgauteng on Twitter, Instagram and Tik Tok and I Love Gauteng on Facebook and download the Visit Gauteng mobile app on App store and Google play.

For more industry related information, click here.