‘Fear factor’ tourism’s biggest stumbling block

The biggest obstacle to getting SA tourism back on track after the Covid-19 devastation is “the fear factor”, says Marcel von Aulock, chief executive officer of Tsogo Sun Hotels.

While the announcement of the opening of borders by President Cyril Ramaphosa was a “great win” for the hospitality business, there was “still a long way to go” before business returns to normal, he said.

The “fear factor” – of Covid-19 and its consequences and the need to stay safe – applied both to South Africans travelling within their borders and to foreign tourists coming here.

“My biggest concern is that people will be too afraid to travel at all,” he said, adding: “The fear level has been declining dramatically over the past six weeks.”

The hotel group has more than 100 properties around Southern Africa, but last month there were bookings for only 1 000 bednights. This doubled to more than 2 000 now, “so you can see there is a vast improvement already, even before the opening of borders”.

But, said Von Aulock, the numbers were still “miles off” where they should be: about 12 000.

He was confident the advent of summer would help with domestic and foreign travel bookings.

He said the hospitality recovery would be most noticeable in Durban and KwaZulu-Natal, which cater mainly for domestic visitors, whereas Cape Town, and, to a lesser extent Johannesburg, rely on overseas tourists and business travellers.

Tsogo’s hotels in KZN could all be reopened by late November or early December – but, by then, just 50% of the Cape Town properties and 70% of those in Joburg.

Tsogo Sun has put all of its staff on severe salary cuts and has avoided lay offs. “People realised at the beginning that this was an extraordinary crisis and we had to do this to survive.”

The group had introduced a number of special offers for local guests to help stimulate demand and this had had an impact.

Staff had noticed that about one in three guests was still very nervous about the virus and safety – they preferred room service, for example, to mixing with others in dining rooms – but that this was easing up. He said the hotels in the group were very conscientious and strict about enforcing Covid-19 safety protocols.

Von Aulock said, as with the hospitality industry, a general recovery of the entire SA economy depended heavily on sentiment.

“The government has to move from making bad noise to good noise – and I see signs that it is happening. Once that spirit spreads, South Africans will knuckle down to rebuild our country.”