The Review panel’s key recommendations were the following:

*   SA Tourism should work more closely with the private sector to enhance our country’s market share internationally.

*   SA Tourism’s marketing strategy must keep up with the times, and should link closely to that of Brand SA in marketing our country. Domestic Tourism should receive a greater focus!

*    The Department of Tourism needs to be strengthened in order to ‘facilitating effective intergovernmental coordination in support of the tourism growth objectives’

*   A further review of SA Tourism ‘s organisation development and design should be undertaken, with  its country office model, to improve the execution of the marketing mandate.

*   The Tourism Grading Council of South Africa needs a ‘new institutional home‘, without explaining what this implies.

*   Market research and gathering market intelligence should receive more attention.

Only with an optimal SA Tourism can the Department of Tourism achieve its goal of creating 225000 jobs by 2020, Minister Hanekom said. He added: ‘It is critical that the tourism sector maintains and grows its global competitiveness, enabling tourism to continue making its overall contribution of 9.5% of the country’s GDP and supporting 10% of total employment‘.

Surprising is that no word is mentioned about the new Immigration Regulations, and their devastating effect on international tourism numbers, which are declining in the main, especially from the BRICS countries!

POSTSCRIPT 27/7: Tourism Update reports that the SA Tourism Review committee recommended that SA Tourism needs to inform the Department of Tourism about ‘obstacles to tourism growth‘. It recommended that ‘SA Tourism must arm the national Department of Tourism with the right information and insights, the national department needs to fight for SA Tourism funding and address obstacles to its effectiveness’.