Locals to the rescue

SA’s summer destinations, including two of the biggest — Cape Town and Durban — had to pick up the pieces after travel bans were imposed by the UK, the EU and the US. But domestic tourists turned up in numbers, making a considerable difference to some par

● Durban and Cape Town, important bellwethers for the country’s tourism economy, put on a brave face after the Omicron variant arrived just before the holiday season. But with the abrupt cancellation of bookings from the EU, the UK and the US, domestic tourism appears to have taken up the slack, according to interviews and informal assessments of the peak holidays.

Marina Zietsman, a guide and manager at Free Walking Tours in Cape Town, says bookings had “really picked up until the knee-jerk scare” after Omicron emerged in November, when SA was put on travel red lists by the UK, the EU and the US, which supply the bulk of foreign visitors.

Before the pandemic, Cape Town’s tourism sector contributed about 3.5% of its economy and directly employed 45,000 people, while sustaining 150,000 jobs. In December last year the city pushed a pocket-friendly domestic tourism campaign that led to a 63% recovery against 2019 figures, according to mayoral committee member for economic growth James Vos. He says the city expected an average 19,000 domestic visitors a day to fly in during January.

Zietsman’s company provided tours to about 20 South Africans daily, as well as a few tourists from Lithuania and Russia, still a far cry from the 280 daily bookings in peak season before the pandemic.

Cape Town Day Tours owner Adrian Carter had a similar experience. “Omicron killed December for us, just as bookings were beginning to pick up,” he says. But Carter says domestic tourism has improved, judging by the number of South Africans who booked whale-sighting tours.

Matt Manning, owner of the Grub & Vine restaurant in the Cape Town city centre, says the lifting of the UK travel ban did little to improve the situation as “the damage was done”. But the restaurant had guests from other countries and “good support” from locals.

Lauren Howard Clayton, Cape regional communications manager at SA National Parks, says 40,306 South Africans visited the Cape Point nature reserve during December, and 7,569 international visitors. This was significantly down from the 65,957 international visitors at the reserve in December 2019, but up from the 4,691 international visitors in December 2020. The number of SA visitors over December was just 7,000 fewer than the number of preCovid local visitors.

KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) tourism resorts and restaurants had a booming festive season as domestic tourists spent about R150m across the province, according to eThekwini mayor Mxolisi Kaunda.

Brett Tungay, the east coast chair of hospitality association Fedhasa, says the industry panicked when flights to SA were banned. “But the domestic market took up the slack and filled up the majority of bookings that were lost. It was upbeat for the industry, a good season,” he says.

He says most popular KZN tourism destinations, among them the Drakensberg, the north coast and the south coast, reported between 80% and 90% occupancy for the festive season. A few resorts reported a season that exceeded 2019 trade, while he expects others almost matched it.

Kaunda says Durban had occupancy rates of more than 80% between December 15 and January 4. Over the Christmas weekend, preliminary indicators show that close to 200,000 visitors came to the city, spending close to R150m in eThekwini alone.