Tourism Minister Nkhensani Kubayi-Ngubane addressed the nation this evening, in a short fast half hour presentation, explaining the regulations pertaining to the Level 3 regulations for the Tourism industry. While the focus in Level 3 is on the Domestic market, and on Business Tourism only, the Minister said that the Tourism Industry should be opening up at all levels, including international tourism, from December 2020 onwards! Continue reading →
An IATA (International Air Travel Association) report for June shows that air travel remains depressed, with little sign of increase. Premium airline seat bookings have been stagnant too, with economy seat sales on the increase, reports the Cape Argus. The rate of growth in air travel has been on the decline since the beginning of the year.
IATA represents 240 airlines, 84% of the international air traffic, and publishes a regular Premium Traffic Monitor. Encouraging signs of growth in the premium market at the end of last year have disappeared, with little growth being evident this year, ascribed to the ‘fall of world trade in recent months and the decline in business confidence‘. International travel increased by 6 % against a year ago, and this could mean that premium class travellers are downtrading to economy seats. The biggest decline in air travel growth is within Europe, and between Europe and the USA. Travel in the Middle East, Far East, and North and South America, unconnected to Europe, has remained ‘solid‘. A longer term growth trend in international air travel shows ‘little promise’ for the future, IATA concluded.
Given this depressing scenario for international air travel, one would hope that SAA and other airlines servicing South Africa will sharpen their pens when it comes to the pricing of airline seats.
Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com Twitter: @WhaleCottage
In the past few months hotel association FEDHASA CEO Brett Dungan has been on a PR-binge, setting himself up as the national spokesperson for the accommodation industry on all matters relating to Accommodation and the World Cup.
Three months ago Dungan started punting the www.rooms4u.travel portal, in conjunction with S A Tourism. Very quickly Carl Momberg of www.capeinfo.com discovered that Dungan was the private owner of the website, whose ownership is not declared publicly. At that time, tourism bureaus were up in arms about the move by S A Tourism to set up an accommodation booking portal in competition with themselves, via Dungan’s website. Dungan now states on his website that it is not the official website of the Department of Tourism.
In the Cape Times of 10 March, an article entitled “Some SA hotels won’t be sustainable and may face closure” quotes Dungan extensively, having addressed Parliament’s portfolio committee on tourism.
He told the committee that issues that faced the tourism industry were “pricing, availability of accommodation, perceptions of South Africa as a destination, and the impact and concerns for the country after the tournament. ‘Hotels will be under enormous pressure. There will be job losses as some won’t be sustainable. These were issues that were identified some time ago” , he is quoted as saying, and pointed the finger at logistics planning on air travel and car hire that was lacking for the World Cup. So far, so good.
However, the following quote about the small accommodation industry is what makes Dungan look like an opportunist: ” Small operators like B&B’s had failed to market their ventures through websites like www.rooms4u.travel, a specially created portal which would steer visitors to available rooms in each city, which featured price comparisons. He said rooms4u was the definitive South African accommodation portal but said hotels and small establishments not registered on the site within 60 days would struggle to sell their available rooms.”
Even “better” is this quote, showing how two-faced Dungan is: “He said many hotels were at fault for failing in their marketing and relying too much on Match, Fifa’s exclusive hospitality partner. They should never have given up all their channels of sales just because Match was coming here”.
Our response to Dungan, FEDHASA and S A Tourism is as follows:
Africa is the only continent in which first and business class air travel is increasing, in contradiction to the worldwide trend of a decline in such luxury travel, caused by the credit crunch, reported Business Report in March.
This is a finding of the latest International Air Transportation Association (IATA) survey, which found that the drop in premium class passengers declined by 17 % in January, following a 13 % drop in December. In Africa premium travel rose by 19 % in January.