Ad­ven­ture show show­cases tourism sites

Lesotho Times - - Business - Retha­bile Pitso

ECONET Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion Le­sotho (ETL) has launched its Mat­se­bet­sebe Cash Pro­mo­tion in which a va­ri­ety of cars, cash and air­time prizes are up for grabs. Ac­cord­ing to a state­ment re­leased by the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions gi­ant this week, the pro­mo­tion will run un­til 17 Septem­ber 2016 and cre­ate “lifechang­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for scores of Econet cus­tomers”. ETL pre­paid and con­tract sub­scribers stand to win Toy­ota Etios cars at the end of each month, with one M10 000 daily winner from Mon­day to Thurs­day A TELE­VI­SION series fea­tur­ing staff from eight com­pa­nies en­gag­ing in var­i­ous sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties in some of Le­sotho’s tourism des­ti­na­tions will be broad­cast on lo­cal tele­vi­sion.

This was re­vealed on Sun­day dur­ing the award-giv­ing cer­e­mony for com­pa­nies that par­tic­i­pated in the Le­sotho Tourism Cor­po­rate Chal­lenge (LTCC).

The chal­lenge was or­gan­ised by travel op­er­a­tor Le­seli Tours in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Le­sotho Tourism Devel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (LTDC) with the aim of pro­mot­ing do­mes­tic tourism. It con­sisted of a series of ex­pe­di­tions to var­i­ous at­trac­tions as part of ef­forts to make Ba­sotho tourists in their own coun­try.

Staff from Matekane Group of Com­pa­nies, Al­liance In­sur­ance, Boliba Sav­ings and Credit, Le­sotho Na­tional Broad­cast­ing Ser­vice, Vo­da­com Le­sotho, Le­sotho High­lands Devel­op­ment Author­ity (LHDA) and LTDC par­tic­i­pated in the chal­lenge.

Among the tourism des­ti­na­tions the teams com­peted in was the Kome Caves, Se­monkong, Sehla­bathebe, Lipho­fung and Thaba Bo­siu where they en­gaged in such ac­tiv­i­ties as ab­seil­ing, ski­ing, boat-rac­ing and walk­ing.

Speak­ing dur­ing the prize-giv­ing cer­e­mony, in which LHDA was the over­all winner, Le­seli Tours Di­rec­tor, Retha­bile Stephen Mo­rake, re­vealed the 13-episode chal­lenge was pro­duced in the form of the re­al­ity tele­vi­sion game show where the teams were whisked to dif­fer­ent des­ti­na­tions.

He said the tele­vis­ing of LTCC was meant to pro­mote do­mes­tic tourism.

“Le­seli Tours came up with the idea of a tele­vi­sion pro­gramme that show­cases tourist and M20 000 ev­ery Fri­day un­til the end of the cam­paign.

“Ev­ery cus­tomer that par­tic­i­pates in the promo will stand the chance of win­ning the star prize of a Toy­ota Etios or swap for M150 000 cash at the end of each month. In ad­di­tion to these ex­cit­ing prizes of free air­time of M50 to 100 lucky cus­tomers ev­ery day,” reads the press re­lease.

Ac­cord­ing to ETL Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer, Leon de Fleu­riot, the pro­mo­tion was part of a con­sumer­re­ward ini­tia­tive meant to en­rich and em­power the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions gi­ant’s cus­tomers. He said the Econet Mat­se­bet­sebe pro­mo­tion would “open doors of for­tune” to new and ex­ist­ing ETL cus­tomers.

“Mat­se­bet­sebe pro­mo­tion is big­ger and bolder with lots of good­ies for Econet cus­tomers. This is an­other op­por­tu­nity for our cus­tomers des­ti­na­tions across the coun­try af­ter not­ing the dearth of lo­cal con­tent pro­mot­ing tourism in lo­cal tele­vi­sion pro­gram­ming,” said Mr Mo­rake.

“Most of the con­tent we watch is from South Africa and over­seas. We, there­fore, saw the need to pro­duce lo­cal con­tent by film­ing the teams from the cor­po­rate sec­tor in ac­tion.”

In ad­di­tion to sup­port­ing the tourism in­dus­try, he said the chal­lenge also served the to win loads of cash and cars while oth­ers will step up their style by win­ning smart­phones and free air­time to chat with friends, fam­ily, busi­ness as­so­ciates and loved ones,” Mr de Fleu­riot said.

“Econet Mat­se­bet­sebe promo is an­other unique way of show­ing ap­pre­ci­a­tion to all Econet cus­tomers in Le­sotho. In ad­di­tion to the in­no­va­tive prod­ucts and ser­vices which the net­work of­fers cus­tomers, the Mat­se­bet­sebe promo pre­sents cus­tomers with op­por­tu­ni­ties to en­rich their lives and achieve their dreams.”

To par­tic­i­pate and qual­ify for the pro­mo­tion, ETL cus­tomers need to send the word Econet to 65100 and play a trivia ques­tion and an­swer game. For ev­ery cor­rect an­swer, a cus­tomer col­lects two points and one point for a wrong an­swer. Each pur­pose of cre­at­ing jobs in the pro­duc­tion of the TV series.

“We are proud to have come up with a prod­uct that was wholly pro­duced by Ba­sotho and also cre­ated jobs,” Mr Mo­rake said.

“We en­gaged an all-lo­cal cast and pro­duc­tion team. The di­rec­tor and cam­era op­er­a­tors were part of a team from Limkok­wing Univer­sity of Cre­ative Tech­nol­ogy who grad­u­ated in Film Stud­ies.” SMS costs M1, with the points en­sur­ing an ETL cus­tomer’s en­try into the draw. The fre­quency of play­ing the game in­creases chances of win­ning.

The Mat­se­bet­sebe Cash Pro­mo­tion draws will be held live on Ra­dio Le­sotho on Mon­days at 7:45 am, Har­vest FM at 7.30 am on Tues­day, Moafrika FM on Wed­nes­day at 7 am, PC FM on Thurs­day at 7 am, while on Fri­days it will be held on Ul­ti­mate Ra­dio at 5:15 pm.

“Since this is a coun­try­wide pro­mo­tion, there will be monthly draws, one in Maseru, two in the North and the South. Through­out the three months, there will be ac­tiv­ity coun­try­wide at our re­tail stores and fran­chises and our cus­tomers can brace them­selves for a heated win­ter,” adds the state­ment. — Staff Writer

He said the par­tic­i­pants in­ter­acted with mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ties in which they com­peted.

“We found lodg­ing in the lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties, bought and pre­pared lo­cal food. In the fi­nal chal­lenge be­tween LHDA and LTDC, the teams were sent out into the com­mu­ni­ties to buy a sheep each and pre­pare it.

“The teams were also tasked to en­gage mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ties to lend a hand in some chal­lenges. Com­pa­nies like Ba­su­toland Ink spon­sored the ap­parel that was worn by the par­tic­i­pat­ing teams, CATS Pro­duc­tions con­trib­uted their film­ing equip­ment while mu­sic was per­formed by Malealea band.”

Mr Mo­rake added: “This com­ing to­gether of in­di­vid­u­als and cor­po­rates is proof that we can all im­prove our lives through tourism.”

In his re­marks, LTDC Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Mpaiphele Maqutu lauded the chal­lenge for fos­ter­ing a com­pet­i­tive spirit among the par­tic­i­pants.

“When I was chat­ting with one of the par­tic­i­pants from Boliba Sav­ings and Credit, I was happy to learn the ex­tra ef­fort some of the par­tic­i­pants put them­selves through in the name of the com­pe­ti­tion,” he said.

“The par­tic­i­pant re­vealed that even though he could not swim, he still ven­tured to par­tic­i­pate in a boat race in the mid­dle of Mo­hale Dam as shown in one of the episodes.

“I there­fore hope ev­ery Mosotho will also ven­ture to tour their own coun­try be­fore vis­it­ing places out­side Le­sotho.”

For her part, Tourism and En­vi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Likeleli Tam­pane com­mended Le­seli Tours for pro­mot­ing the tourism sec­tor.

“Le­seli Tours has done a great job in pro­mot­ing tourism, and I wish to ap­peal to the pri­vate sec­tor to also make such a con­tri­bu­tion. We are proud of the tele­vi­sion con­tent they have pro­duced which serves to in­form more view­ers about the places worth vis­it­ing,” she said.

Team LHDA cel­e­brates af­ter win­ning the Le­sotho Tourism Cor­po­rate Chal­lenge.

ETL CEO Leon de Fleu­riot

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