So much room to improve tourism sector

Tourism month coincided with the Department of Tourism’s appointment in September of a task force to find out how many inbound tourists visit the country each year.

You would think that this statistic, so basic to any kind of planning, would be known. It’s not. Figures like 10-million are bandied about, but the real number is probably closer to 2million. To put that in perspective, France attracts about 80-million visitors per year and it’s been around that level since 2012.

The fact is, nobody understands the numbers. We can’t tell how many foreign tourists come here and there’s no way of measuring how much they spend. The confusion is partly due to the way SA counts the incomers: it makes no distinction between real tourists, business travellers, people who are merely passing through OR Tambo International on their way to other southern African destinations and, most important, the huge number of visitors from neighbouring countries who come here to trade. A useful first step would be to introduce the Australian model of compulsory exit questionnaires, which could tell us why people came, how long they were here and how much they spent.

But there’s another, perhaps even more important, priority. Like charity, tourism begins at home. SA simply does not have a holiday culture. We have to have easily accessible, affordable and family-orientated leisure centres where first-time holiday makers can enjoy themselves in comfort and security. In our effort to attract visitors from abroad, we have neglected the development of a domestic tourism market, which is a prerequisite for building and sustaining the capacity to handle a greater inbound volume.

For the past three months, it has been difficult to find a hotel room in Cape Town. But this is a purely seasonal phenomenon and the big troughs between the peaks need to be filled by substantial local demand to justify the creation of the infrastructure that can support ambitious inbound growth targets. Much more could also be done to encourage offseason tourism.

Our efforts to attract inbound visitors also leave something to be desired. The weakness of the rand makes SA a great value proposition, and the country is perceived as a safe destination in the context of recent terrorist attacks elsewhere in the world. But this relative buoyancy masks the inherent constraints on our tourism growth potential.

Accommodation capacity is one of these. Without local demand, however, nobody is in a rush to build new hotels. There was a boom in hotel development in anticipation of the 2010 World Cup. Much of that accommodation has since had to be repurposed — for example, as townhouses. With this still fresh in funders’ minds, it’s unlikely that big new hostelries will rise in Durban for the coming Commonwealth Games.

Another constraint is the availability of airline seats. There are lots of issues swirling around South African Airways at the moment, but the one that isn’t being attended to is whether the government regards it as a commercial operation or as the national carrier. If the former, it should compete on a level playing field, and landing rights should be freed up for other airlines; if the latter, it should be subsidised and supported in offering affordable fares and flying nonprofitable routes.

The government also has to make it easier for inbound travellers. The visa situation has been canvassed at length, but it’s worth noting industry estimates that about 40 families a day are still prevented from coming into the country by the regulations. Because of this, many agents simply don’t bother to sell SA.

There’s a strong case to be made for closer co-operation with our neighbours. We would make ourselves much more attractive to foreign tourists if we marketed SA in the context of its region and worked with other countries to facilitate crossborder travel.

It’s going to be a long haul to get South African tourism on the right track.

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Edmond is CEO of Tourvest.