Focus on attracting Far East carrier
WITH a host of international airlines now flying non-stop to Durban’s King Shaka International Airport, focus is now turning to attracting a Far East carrier.
This was revealed during last week’s Tourism Indaba in the city when Hamish Erskine, the chief executive of the Dube TradePort, said there was a need to get a service to the east.
“We are looking very carefully at that market,” he said, but adding that he “can’t reveal more”.
Erskine was taking part in a live panel discussion on CNBC TV about the tourism industry and route development.
There was now non-stop international air connectivity to 11 international destinations to and from King Shaka International Airport, linking travellers to more than 700 global destinations.
The number of destinations had grown more than 160% since 2010, Erskine said.
Another panellist, Marcel von Aulock, the chief executive of the hotel group Tsogo Sun, said that Durban had so much to offer, but he felt there was still not enough air access into the city.
His group was going to focus on the Chinese market in the next five years, he said.
It was a very big market and as there were 100 million tourists who travelled outside China every year they were among some of the biggest tourism spenders.
Cracking the Chinese market would be a “game-changer”.
He said there had been no talk of “radical economic transformation” when the country’s economy was growing at 7%, unlike now when it was sitting at 0% growth.
If the country was to get back to that 7% economic growth again, most of the problems the country was facing would fade, he said.
Von Aulock also said that it was also a “red herring” to say that the country attracted 10 million international tourists, as there were only about three million of them who stayed in hotels.
Phillip Sithole, the acting head of the city’s economic development department and the head of Durban Tourism, said that a destination marketing company had been appointed to promote Durban in America and two others were going to be appointed in Europe and Australia.
He spoke of the city’s plans to embark on an urban renewal programme, which included allocating certain informal traders to specific precincts in the city.