Travel bookings not so festive

AS DOMESTIC demand in the tourism industry softens, with cautious consumers holding on to their cash, travel over the festive period may prove to be less inspiring than usual – and holiday homeowners may bear the brunt of the slowdown.

Holiday home rental agents in hotspots such as Umhlanga, Knysna and Plettenberg Bay have found it harder to move stock this year, with homes still available for the festive break as late as November.

Vivienne Nel, holiday home manager at rental agency Holiday Plett, said: “We would have been booked by now but we still have quite a few homes available. I’ve spoken to other agents all along the Garden Route to Hermanus and they still have stock available.”

Usually Nel sees Johannesburg residents descend on Plettenberg Bay over December, with foreigners beginning to arrive in January through to March. This year business is slightly down from both, she says.

Ling Dobson, area principal for Pam Golding Properties in Knysna and Plettenberg Bay, said she had seen a similar trend, though international tourists were flooding the region earlier than usual and were likely to continue to grow in their numbers.

“We are definitely seeing impact from Airbnb. We only take bookings for two weeks over Christmas, while they take twoday bookings. But landlords will learn how hard it is to deal with back-to-back two-day bookings,” she said.

Dobson also had stock available this week, while nothing had been left in November last year.

While Nicolas Dekker, manager of holiday rental apartments in Umhlanga at Chas Everitt, had also seen a slowdown, he believed this was in line with a growing trend in lastminute bookings, with people holding out for better deals.

James Woolley, holiday rentals manager in Umhlanga, said Airbnb had brought more supply onto the market across the board, which could be the reason for what appeared to be a slowdown. In South Africa Airbnb has 43 400 active listings on its platform, which have been frequented by 651 000 guests in the year to September – growth of 143% year on year.

Tshifhiwa Tshivhengwa, CEO of the Federated Hospitality Association of Southern Africa, said the growth of Airbnb and other electronic booking platforms, coupled with constrained spending by consumers, had seen its members suffer losses.

“The market is no longer absorbing the year-on-year increase in accommodation prices [it had previously] … the days of charging whatever you want and hoping that tourists will pay have certainly come to an end,” he said. — DDC