The Indaba last month received heavy criticism, more critical than we have seen in many years. Many tourism players no longer bother to go, or went for the last time this year. Given that the Cape Town International Convention Centre is to be expanded in size, surely the time has come for the country’s tourism showcase to be held in our country’s tourism centre Cape Town!

Indaba has been held in Durban for the last 23 years of its 33 year existence. Now moves are afoot to push for the tourism expo to be permanently hosted in Durban, reports the official website of the Ethekwini Municipality, wanting the city to be synonymous with the event, such as is Berlin with ITB (International Tourismusbörse, and London with World Travel Market (WTM). Obtaining such a commitment would allow the city to ‘properly invest in it’.

SA Tourism boasted about the success of Indaba 2012, achieving an attendance of ‘more than 10000′ and 1500 exhibitors, and ‘proved to be a major success‘, being about ‘innovation, communication and quality connections’. Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk was quoted as saying at Indaba: ‘Together, we must keep our eyes on ever-changing consumer preferences, diversify our products, maintain excellent service, innovate our distribution channels, and ensure that we continue to deliver value for money. We must ensure that all our people share in the benefits of our new growth’. No, he was not referring to Indaba, he was referring to the tourism industry!

The tourism industry does not appear to have shared the feeling of success of Indaba. Hotel and Restaurant editor Andrew Moth wrote in his June editorial that ‘many of the big players in the hotel industry feel that they wasted their time and their money on Indaba this year‘. He added that it no longer is what it once was, now ‘overtaken by technology and of course greed’.

The most vocal criticism of Indaba this year came from film shoot co-ordinator Max Wallace, UK Director of Painted Earth Productions, writing in South African Tourism Update.  He wrote that he had attended Indaba for three years running, and asked: ‘Is Indaba still a South African show?’. He reflected that Indaba was very quiet this year, especially in the DEC (Durban Exhibition Centre), describing it as ‘grave-like’, whilst the ICC (International Convention Centre) was ‘moderately busy’, and the SADC tent ‘pumping’. His conclusion was that Indaba has lost its focus, in featuring ‘far too much same old, same old South African product’, and not enough ‘regional and inter-African product’. He was critical of municipal stands paid for by taxpayers ‘when they patently have no clue what tourism is‘. Provincial stands were lambasted by him for being ‘bloated, filled with people who are invariably rude, unable to answer queries and unwilling to make appointments…’. The Road Accident Fund was singled out by him as not fitting in with a tourism exhibition at all.  The costs of exhibiting are high, he wrote, and he was told by many that they were not sure whether they would bother with attending and exhibiting in 2013. His conclusion was that more African product should be featured, to make it an ‘African show’, and less ‘South African product’ . His final sting was that ‘South African Tourism needs to catch a wake-up call’, given that the organisers no longer know what the market wants. His letter generated a flood of comments on the newsletter website, most commenters supporting Wallace.

Some of the key points contained in the more than 30 (mostly anonymous) comments were the following:

*  Indaba has become so bad that an Indaba about Indaba needs to take place with the organisers Witches and Wizards, SA Tourism, and the Minister of Tourism, to discuss the exorbitant cost of the stands and the extras, the expensive and poor quality food, and the exhibitor and buyer mix.

*   Should Indaba not be fixed, the threat exists that the big players will host a similar African-orientated indaba elsewhere in Africa, leaving the Durban Indaba as the ‘Micky (sic) Mouse Country Club’ of game lodges and B&Bs.

*    South Africa needs to relook its tourism product mix and pricing, being eclipsed on product, price and service by its neighbouring countries

*   Indaba needs a ‘renovation’, a new location and a revamp

*   Municipal tourism exhibitors should be removed, as they affect the credibility of Indaba, waste taxpayers’ monies, and appear to have no tourism knowledge

*   More and better quality buyers are needed, and roving sellers coming to the stands should be discouraged

*   ‘We have awesome destinations, awesome products and now we just need a better way of displaying them’.

*   More time should be allocated to public days, given the important focus on Domestic Tourism

*   The number of stands should  be reduced, and stands should all be tourism-related

It would be a shame if, as Moth suggests, tourism players are too dependent on government business to challenge SA Tourism and the Indaba organisers with their feedback, and demand an improvement of its organisation. Another important topic to be tackled is the accuracy of the Minister’s tourism statistics, which a number of Indaba commenters referred to as not being credible, and not matching industry experience. Given the importance of tourism to the Western Cape, and the fresh marketing energy coming from Wesgro, one can only hope that the province’s new marketing body will go all out to bid for Indaba 2014, in the year that the Cape Town International Convention Centre expansion has been completed and Cape Town is the World Design Capital!

Chris von Ulmenstein, Whale Cottage Portfolio: www.whalecottage.com Twitter:@WhaleCottage