Netflix launched the Made in South Africa content collection at this year’s Africa’s Travel & Tourism Summit on Tuesday.
Made in South Africa is a curated collection featuring over 80 South African films, series, documentaries and reality TV shows, which will showcase the country’s magnificent attractions.
The streaming service also revealed the results of their recent survey, the Cultural Affinity Study, at a panel session hosted by SA Tourism at the summit.
The cultural affinity survey is a partnership between South African Tourism and Netflix. Netflix conducted a cultural affinity survey with subscribers from Canada, Germany, the US, the UK, Brazil and France and found that after watching South African content, they were 3.1 times more likely to make South Africa their number one travel destination while also being 5.6 times more likely to learn a local language.
The survey also found that South African content is a powerful vehicle for creating deeper cultural affinity that could drive tourism.
Speaking at the summit, Shola Sanni, Netflix’s director of public policy for sub-Saharan Africa, said the Made in South Africa collection will be accessible to Netflix’s more than 209 million subscribers from over 190 countries.
Findings showed that viewers of My Octopus Teacher wanted to visit South Africa for its nature and wildlife, viewers of Blood & Water were attracted to its landmarks and monuments, while viewers of Seriously Single wanted to explore the country’s creative scene.
"It ties into the objective that tourism boards around the world want to achieve of how they can leverage the power of storytelling on the service and translate it into actual tourism influx. By bringing these insights to the government, we thought they could leverage this opportunity to increase actual tourism traffic,” said Sanni.
Chief marketing officer of South African Tourism, Mzilikazi Themba Khumalo, said that the partnership with Netflix would build the soft power base for South Africa and the continent and export the African way of life. “It is so the world can perceive the way we are talented, young and fresh and export the whole tapestry from a cultural standpoint,” said Khumalo.
He said that destinations serve as backdrops for films to attract viewers to those places. “As a tourism body, we need to have a backdrop for a story that Netflix wants to tell. If you watch American movies shot in Washington DC, shots of the White House, The Capitol and other key icons in the city are shown. They have built the iconography in the film to project the power of the destination.”