Chinese put their stamp on tourism
NEW IMAGE: Asian tourists at Hout Bay harbour DAY after day, busloads of Chinese tourists disembark at Tao Yuan in Sea Point, Cape Town, eager for a taste of home.
Restaurant owner Mary Young says as much as 90% of her business comes from Chinese tourists. Joe Yang, who has been a tour guide in Cape Town for about 10 years, said: “They prefer Chinese food because they’re not used to Western food. Normally, in the itinerary, it’s all Asian food.”
Touring a foreign country but sticking to cuisine you’re familiar with might sound counter-intuitive, but tourists need a dose of comfort, said Bradley Brouwer, SA Tourism’s Asia-Pacific president.
Language barrier or not, Chinese tourism to South Africa is on the rise. About 65.2% more Chinese tourists visited South Africa in the first quarter of 2016 than the same period last year, the Department of Tourism said.
Arrivals from China have been recovering slowly after they dropped by 23% from 2013 to 2014 after years of strong upward growth, department statistics show.
Tourism Minister Derek Hanekom ascribed the growth to the relaxation of a visa application process that was prohibitively inconvenient for Chinese travellers.
Disease scares in 2014 and 2015, such as the Ebola in West Africa, also slowed arrivals.
The demand for Mandarinspeaking guides is “massive”, said Gauteng Guides Association treasurer Johan van Viljoen. There are more than 11 000 registered tourist guides in this country, but only about 240, or 2%, speak Mandarin. Only 15 Asian guides were registered in the Western Cape last year, down from 40 in 2014.
Businesses could attract more Chinese tourists with translations of websites, especially now that more Chinese travellers were going online, said Brouwer. “The reality is that the benefits outweigh the costs for a growth market as big as this.”