Dear People of the Sky,
In July 2024, skybookings 2.0 was born after 12 months of development behind the scenes. This also marked a new beginning and re-opening of the business after covid.
In June 2025 (last month), we reached a milestone by crossing R 500 000 in sales on this new platform. While there were losses, system crashes and mistakes along the way, it validated months of intensive work and triggered the next phase of the business—growth.
I rushed into this phase without fully appreciating our new context. In the process, I rolled out several updates that introduced hiccups and avoidable challenges. For that, I must apologise once again. I have since reversed some of those changes and taken a step back to comb through our data, study our industry and plan the way forward.
Insights from Successful Events
We have touched over 11 000 patrons across 51 events. Some were through ticket sales while others were bulk messaging. Our landing pages have handled traffic from more than 500 000 visitors, resulting in a lot of data and insights. So far, we have observed successful events in three categories:
1. Annual Events: Annual events, like concerts and festivals that open ticket sales up to nine months in advance, enjoy terrific success. We have partnered with three such events over the past year, and they consistently outperform others in revenue and turnout. The long sales window lets organisers refine their marketing strategies and secure partnerships, while allowing patrons to plan, tell friends and eventually buy tickets. We also worked with an annual event with a much shorter sales window — four weeks — which did not perform as well. It seems, therefore, that opening tickets for months in advance and stage-gating the prices i.e. raising the prices in phases or monthly, yields the best results.
2. Short-Term Events: Organised within a month or two, these generate revenue quickly. We found that running a pre-event surveys to gauge interest primes the audience and creates anticipation for ticket sales without committing to the event. Another strategy is to use surveys to collect persuasive data to win over sponsors before opening ticket sales. These pre-sales techniques yielded exceptional results for short-term events because they mitigated risks, primed the audience, and openned the doors for collaboration.
3. Clubs and Communities: Clubs and communities work differently from all the other categories. Their success is not measured from one big event, but from the cumulative effect of many small ones. One of our clients, who hosts up to 4 events per months, began with gatherings of as few as ten people, which by events standards is not viable. However, her community has grown to a national footprint with a strong, loyal community accustomed to buying tickets.
It is also worth noting, above all, that a fan base is an organiser’s best friend. While social media platforms and instagram are the means for building one, they are increasingly noisy and organisers do not have direct access to their fans. For this reason, having a large following may not automatically translate ticket sales.
For this reason, it is important to de-platform your audience. Deplatforming means explicitly asking for your patrons’ phone numbers or email addresses to contact them directly. Our clients tell us that the audience management and bulk messaging tools are valuable in this regard because they accelerate ticket sales.
Cart completion also varies depending on the type of audience. Social media ads that drive traffic to skybookings can have a dismal conversation rate of 2-3%. They also have a low order-completion rate averaging around 25%. Patrons with a community, on the other hand, enjoy a high conversion and completion rate — sometimes as much as 37% and 83% respectively. In other words, among the benefits of building a community is selling faster and enjoying a 10X reduction in marketing and promotional costs.
While these are highlights, deeper insights will be shared with our clients in upcoming events and private publications.
Our Industry
Believe it or not, I did not know until recently that our sector is called MICE—Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions. While there are several industry reports, data is scanty on lifestyle events, including festivals and micro-communities.
Nevertheless, this is one of the fastest-growing industries in South Africa. According to Allied Market Research (via SouthAfrica.net), the local MICE market was valued at R 121.8 billion in 2023 and is projected to reach R 477.9 billion by 2032, implying a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of about 16.8% (SouthAfrica.net).
To put this into perspective, some of the fastest growing economies in the world, like China, peaked at 14.2% lifing 800 million people out of poverty. In other words, the MICE industry promises to create significant wealth for those who position themselves properly.
Despite high levels of reported crime, a depressed local economy and the increasingly unstable geopolitics, growth in MICE is driven by:
- Improved visa and travel regulations to South Africa, which drive business tourism through conferences, exhibitions and festivals.
- A sustained resurgence of live events post-COVID
- Rising loneliness linked to social media, which is driving people to meet in real life (IRL) under shared interests
- Excellent climate
- The warmth and hospitality of South Africans (recently ranked the friendliest country in the world).
Reports also highlight the boom in niche, interest-based gatherings—evidence that we have entered the era of micro-tribes and communities.
All of the above signals that South Africa is a ripe tourist destination and that events could be the reason people come and visit. In light of these and other findings, skybookings will lean heavily towards developing community-building technology and facilitating partnerships in offshore markets.
The True Cost of Ticketing
Most ticketing providers in South Africa remain glued to the status quo of releasing ticket sales only after the event. They argue that it mitigates refund risks and discourages fly-by-nights. While these are plausible reasons, they also enjoy rich returns on the cash on hand without disclosing nor sharing the proceeds with organisers.
Our research indicates they generate an extra 3–8% by floating the cash. So, inasmuch as they claim a ±5% service fee, they pocket up to 12% if investment income is factored in. On top of that, fees for bulk messaging and box-office support can add another 3% to the cost of ticketing, further driving the total fees to approximately 15%. Due to the deferred cash pay outs, many organisers use credit cards and overdrafts that could attract an extra 2% in interest charges on ticket-sale revenue. In other words, organisers stand to miss out on up to 17% in profits on ticket sales, due to an undisclosed loss of investment income and the addition of other fees.
We already pay out ticket sales weekly, which provides cash flow relief for curators. Considering these findings, more innovations in capital management will certainly follow. More cash to curators!
The Next Phase
skybookings will position itself as a boutique, community driven events-booking platform optimised for the independent curator—organisers with a long-term vision and are building a community. The next phase will be centred around three themes:
- Ecosystem: Beyond ticketing, skybookings already supports the entire booking lifecycle—from “Save the Date” to checking in guests and post-event analytics. Next, we will roll out affiliate tools, instalments, group payments and other innovations to make events more accessible by tapping into the ecosystem.
- Capital & Investing: Curators build “properties,” not just one-off events. In light of this, we intend to use our data and partnerships to introduce investment schemes that let curators access funding or invest in other reputable events on skybookings.
- Community: We spend hours and hours with our most successful curators and they all think alike and share aspirations. This means we already belong to the same community. Therefore, expect active community building centred around principles of knowledge-sharing, collaboration and innovation — underpinned by the spirit of Ubuntu.
In the near future, skybookings will be by invitation to build a culture and maximise community impact while reducing exposure from bad players and poor organisers. We are therefore not trying to build the largest catalogue, we are trying to build the most magical catalogue where events hosted on skybookings are known to be transformative and exceptional.
Conclusion
The events industry is vast and growing quickly. Our ramp-up from R 0 to R 500 000 in twelve months may look small in this context, but it is like a pregnancy in its first trimester in the sense that many companies do not make it to this point. But now, the next phase begins!
With Warmth,
Vusi
P.S. In the spirit of community-building, use the links below to download our latest profiles.
