S.A. On Tour: Pretoria

Samantha Williams is an award winning revenue specialist and currently holds the senior management position of Commercial Director at Profitroom. Before joining Profitroom she worked as a senior revenue and product manager working with a mixed portfolio of over 75 hotels and prior to this held sales and marketing manager positions for leisure resorts and hotels in the UK. Highly respected and with a strong background in hospitality, revenue management and leadership she has worked across numerous hotel marketing and management disciplines and is able to relate to the challenges that hoteliers face. 

She is passionate about helping hoteliers maximise and grow their revenue and is an advocate for personalised, automated processes and integrated systems that help to make the sales process easy for employees and more engaging for guests. At Profitroom Samantha leads on the strategic and operational activities to deliver transformative, tangible results for leisure hotels and resorts in the Africa, Europe and beyond.

For over 20 years, Michael has been developing and training leaders and entrepreneurs around the world. Having resided in the UK for 16 years and presented leadership training in over 25 countries, he has a wealth of international experience and practical know-how.

Working with government departments, businesses, corporates, NPO's as well as sports teams to build leaders, strengthen companies, envision, and inspire.

Michael is an adventurer at heart, together with a small overland team he has driven in a 4x4 from London, UK to Cape Town in South Africa, climbed Kilimanjaro, and visited 66 countries.

Tshifhiwa Tshivhengwa is the Chief Executive Officer of the Tourism Business Council of South Africa. Tshifhiwa is a strategic, versatile and innovative marketing, tourism, communications and business executive. His experience spans 20 years, with a track record of visionary leadership, strategic project development and execution, travel and tourism events management and communications.

Tshifhiwa holds an MSc in International Business, Leadership, and Management from the University of York, Bachelor of Business Administration on Marketing Communications (Institute of Marketing Management) Diploma in Marketing (Institute of Marketing Management) and a National Diploma in Tourism Management (University of Johannesburg).

In the 20 years since his first foray into the world of work, Tshifhiwa has worked for various companies in the tourism value chain including South African Tourism, Myriad Marketing, FEDHASA, Rennies Travel, SARS and others. He has also consulted for various companies.

Tshifhiwa has also served as a member of Tourism Transformation Council, Tourism Grading Council of South Africa, and currently serves on the global Board of Advisors for “The Sigmund Project” which supports innovation and collaboration in Tourism across the globe.

Tshifhiwa has positioned himself as a thought leader and advocate for the South African tourism sector. He is an ambassador for tourism development in South Africa and Africa. He regularly writes, debates and comments on tourism development and growth in South Africa.

Having graduated from UCT with a Marketing and Economics qualification, Rory then joined HTI in 2006, under the mentorship of his Father - James Montgomery - one of the pioneers of hotel and lodging software and technology in South Africa in the ‘80’s and ‘90’s. After 15 years at HTI, Rory then took the reins and has been at the helm ever since.

Montgomery says, “Technology is creating increased opportunities to disrupt and enhance various industries, such as the hospitality sector in which we operate. The industry is making a steady recovery after a global travel shutdown, but one of the major trends to arise as a result of COVID, was the acceleration of the digitisation of the hospitality industry as a whole. There is a real necessity for more automation and intelligent tools to make quicker decisions and be more proactive in the face of changing demand and global uncertainty. It is indeed an exciting time for all operators in this space.”

Nico Rowan has over 25 years of experience in the hospitality industry and feels he never worked a day in his life as he loves everything about the industry and the love to serve clients and guests. Nico is not only a hotelier by trade but a business digital transformation expert due to his many years of high-level decision-making from management operations challenges to CEO/Owner strategic decision making. 

Nico is a business development executive for Q2B, but he is also extremely excited to see how he can add value to the Q2B PMS cloud solution with some exciting new ideas that will benefit all Q2B clients and their businesses.

Nico's new company motto is: If it is not cloud, it's not good enough!

Born and raised in South Africa, Scott Flatau is a travel enthusiast who recently moved to Barcelona. As a firm believer in technology to solve existing issues, he is responsible for developing African markets to meet the specific needs encountered by hoteliers today. Working closely with hoteliers to help them optimize their website strategy and increase direct conversions, Scott has been able to highlight the power of personalization, which he believes is an indispensable asset in today’s hotel world.