Safer, smarter trails for South Africa: Forge officially partners with Outdooractive

Our founding vision has always been to help foster a well-informed, safety-conscious, yet adventurous outdoor community in South Africa by providing high-quality, accurate digital trail maps with useful supporting information and tools.

For six years, the Forge app provided uniquely accurate, up-to-date digital maps of key South African hiking areas. As a free app with offline downloads, it helped over 60 000 people explore the outdoors safely and confidently.

To build on that vision and further champion South African outdoor tourism, we’ve partnered with Outdooractive as their official reseller representative for South Africa.

Outdooractive is a world-leading outdoor tourism platform, a comprehensive digital ecosystem and a global travel guide. It unites outdoor enthusiasts with tourism professionals through authentic, reliable content and a commitment to sustainable tourism.

3 Outdooractive app features we love - Route-making: Creating routes is straightforward and takes into closures into consideration. At a glance you get all the essential details (length, elevation gain, duration) plus a difficulty grading. - Offline downloads (Pro): You can download entire areas or routes, giving you the piece of mind to navigate without a network connection. This also saves battery life. - My Map: You can choose what content to show on your own personal map and access it with ease when you need it. This includes content created by the businesses or the community.

Its distinct B2B2C model empowers destination managers, conservation agencies, trail managers, search-and-rescue teams and more to communicate with the public via sophisticated digital maps and guides. With 8,000+ business partners and a 16-million-strong user community, Outdooractive delivers official content people can trust.

3 Outdooractive Business tools we're really excited about - Trail Closures and Notices: Business partners can create notices instantly about the current status of trails and places, keeping people updated and safe. - Digitize The Planet: A platform embedded into the Outdooractive system that incorporates the official rules of protected areas into all content. - Content Q&A: Users can comment and ask questions on all content and officials responsible for it can respond to instantly.

Beyond its strong presence in Germany, the broader DACH region and the UK, Outdooractive's reseller network also includes Finland, Greece, Portugal and more. As Outdooractive’s first African partner, we’re excited to put South Africa firmly on the map. By leveraging Outdooractive’s technological and cartographic expertise, we’ll continue to uphold our founding vision of fostering a well-informed, safety-conscious outdoor community while showcasing South Africa’s exceptional outdoor tourism offering to the world.