BCM wants more low-cost airline services in city
Buffalo City Metro wants more low-cost airlines to service the city, hoping this will lead to a boom in the Covid-19-devastated tourism industry.
Only FlySafair services East London at the moment and mayor Xola Pakati said plans were afoot to engage with other airlines and the government about bringing more airlines to the metro.
Metro bosses hope the introduction of more low-cost airlines will bring more tourists from within SA and abroad.
The metro plans to focus on online destination marketing, improve diversity and quality of tourist attractions, reinvent sport tourism and focus more on township tourism in a bid to resuscitate the ailing sector in the city.
This is according to a virtual presentation made by the metro’s economic development and agencies head, Noludwe Ncokazi, to the National Assembly’s select committee on trade & industry, economic development, tourism, employment and labour on Tuesday.
Ncokazi told parliament the city had made R3.94bn from tourism in 2019 and 9,700 jobs had been created.
Between 2018 and the current financial year, Ncokazi told parliament, the city had spent more than R60m on tourismrelated programmes, but gains in the industry had been were thwarted by the sudden introduction of the lockdown in March.
Ncokazi said the metro had 1,100 tourism businesses, mostly small and medium enterprises.
The occupancy rate of about 8,000 beds was at 63% before lockdown.
Pakati said on Wednesday: “You just cannot promote tourism when people do not have mobility to access your place.
“If you have only one airline servicing your area, it therefore undermines the very same purpose of tourism promotion.”
“Those processes are still ongoing in terms of the engagement with the airport company as well as the national department of transport, but we are yet to approach the particular airlines.”
Pakati said tourism and hospitality were critical sectors of BCM’s economy and “if we are to sell BCM as a tourism destination, we need to improve logistics and also improve on our bed availability”.
He said the city was also looking at reviving sports tourism, making reference to having top-flight soccer club Chippa United playing some of its games in the metro.
“It is not only the 90 minutes of sport on the field, but there are other economic spin-offs that we generate as a result of sport tourism promotion.
“While we have a decline in the manufacturing base of the city, we have to look at other sectors that can help us generate the economy,” Pakati said.
Boosting township and local tourism, and the promotion of BCM as a film production hub, Pakati said, were some of their immediate plans to boost the city’s ailing tourism economy after the Covid-19 period.
The provincial government has promised to revitalise the tourism industry by offering special packages and discounts so travellers can explore the province.