Tag Archives: domestic tourism

Western Cape Tourism industry must operate at 110%, says Tourism Minister Winde!

Minister Alan Winde has encouraged the Western Cape Tourism industry to offer its clients excellent service.  ‘We cannot have any of our attractions and destinations not operating at 110%’, he told a media conference on Monday, given that Tourism generates R18 billion per year in revenue from 1,4 million tourists for the Western Cape.

Minister Winde would like to grow the Tourism numbers and revenue, saying that this is only possible if ‘we all work Better Together’. Addressing the axing of SAA’s London-Cape Town Route, Minister Winde said he would welcome the reinstatement of the route (intimated by the new SAA CEO last week), and that the focus is on bringing tourists from other parts of the country and Africa directly to Cape Town.  He mentioned that Lufthansa’s new Cape Town – Munich direct flights need to be well-filled for the service to be continued. Flights from Northern Italy are also being considered.

The Tourism Act 2004 is in the process of being repealed, and the Wesgro Act is being amended. A new Western Cape Tourism Trade and Investment Bill is in draft form, and input is being sought from roleplayers in the province.

Latest Tourism arrival statistics presented by national Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk continue to astound Western Cape operators, who are not seeing the reported 10,5% growth for the first half of this year relative to the same period in 2011, with 4,4 million arrivals, of which 1,2 million were international tourists, according to Fin24. Growth was strong from Brazil and China in particular, as well as from India.  ‘We are very encouraged to see that our carefully formulated tourism growth strategy to increase tourist arrivals to South Africa is yielding the desired results, with excellent growth achieved in the markets where we are actively marketing destination South Africa, and good returns being realised in markets that we have identified as sources of strong tourism potential for our country’, said Minister van Schalkwyk.  In a rare reference to the Tourism industry, President Jacob Zuma congratulated his Department of Tourism and the industry on the good growth performance!

A report entitled ‘South Africa Travel and Tourism Market 2016 Forecast’, prepared by ReportsnReports.com, provides the following feedback about our country’s Tourism trends:

*   South Africa is the second most visited country in Africa, after Morocco

*   Domestic Tourism has declined from 36 million trips to 24 million in the past five years.

*   The FIFA World Cup 2010 led to an oversupply of accommodation, causing occupancy to plummet, a problem prevalent in Cape Town.

The industry has been critical of the national Tourism Minister’s information, not reflecting the experience of tourism operators, but the Minister stands by his statistics.  One must then ask the provincial Minister why so few of these international tourists are making it down to the Cape, and what he and Wesgro are doing about the lack of seats on SAA to Cape Town from Johannesburg on Fridays, given his goal to grow tourism to our province.

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

SAA in financial turbulence, under pressure to take off from R1,3 billion loss!

SAA will not be privatised, said Malusi Gigaba, Minister of Public Enterprises, at the SAA AGM yesterday, reports Southern African Tourism Update.  In a hard-hitting speech, the Minister threw a number of challenges to the new Board of the airline, to address its R1,3 billion loss in the past financial year, and to address financial irregularities. Privatisation of the airline was rejected outright, the Minister stating that attempts by SWISS, Air New Zealand, and Japan Airlines to privatise had proven to be unsuccessful.

Interesting is that the Minister identified that the Johannesburg – Beijing route is unprofitable, one of the airline’s focus routes, and ironic, given that the Department of Tourism announced yesterday that 60000 Chinese tourists had travelled to our country in the first half of this year, a 68% increase compared to the first half of 2011. China now is our 4th largest source market, and has overtaken France.  Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk referred to the good Chinese tourism performance: ‘The launch of SAA’s direct flight between Beijing and Johannesburg in January this year has contributed to growth from this market, helping to meet some of the obvious demand for Destination South Africa in China’. The Beijing route would require more investment and capital, said the Minister.

Other reasons for the financial failure was unprofitable long-haul routes, competition from Middle East airlines, high fuel costs, and challenging ‘global aviation trading conditions’, SAA performing worse than its airline peers! The airline’s CFO Wolf Meyer said that the fuel cost increases (up by 36%) alone had made SAA unprofitable.  Maintenance costs had increased by 32%.  ‘Irregular expenditure’ of R128 million, and R 4 million ‘wasteful expenditure‘ were also recorded in the financial statements, the latter figure containing R3 million for baggage claims.  Good news is that Board members will not receive increases in the current financial year!

The new Board was instructed by Minister Gigaba to appoint a new CEO in the next three months, and to present a turnaround strategy by 15 December. Systems are to be streamlined, and red tape removed, ‘to make important decisions and take action without delay’.

SAA appears to be having a capacity problem on its Johannesburg – Cape Town route, Whale Cottage Portfolio guests regularly feeding back that they cannot book flights to Cape Town on Fridays due to seat unavailability, or excessive supply and demand pricing of R6000 for a SAA economy class ticket. Desperate travellers have to buy a Business Class ticket just to get to Cape Town, making Cape Town inaccessible to the Gauteng market, contrary to SA Tourism’s strategy to increase Domestic Tourism to make up for the shortfall in international visitors!

POSTSCRIPT 20/10:  Ironic is that SAA has just announced that it has strengthened its sales team for the UK and Ireland!

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

Take a break, Tourism Minister tells South Africans!

In launching National Tourism Month at the beginning of September, Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk encouraged South Africans to go on a local

holiday, so that they can experience what international visitors love about our country, being its beauty, its culture and heritage, and its warmth and friendliness. Domestic tourism is the ‘lifeblood’ of our economy, and generated more than R20 billion for the economy last year, the Minister said, reports the The Times. Domestic Tourism represents 76% of the number of tourists in South Africa.

In the first quarter of this year, 5,5 million trips were undertaken by locals, the economic value being 13% higher than in the same quarter in 2011.  Minister van Schalkwyk encouraged the tourism industry to value the business of locals ‘as much as they value those of foreign visitors’, and advised tourism players to adapt their tourism products to suit locals.

Encouraging locals to be ‘tourists in their own country’, the Minister said: “When domestic tourism grows, we create a nation of tourism ambassadors who are knowledgeable and speak positively about our destination, who warmly welcome foreign tourists, and are helpful when they meet visitors. Well-travelled locals can easily and confidently recommend to both foreign tourists and fellow South Africans the best places to visit in South Africa for the best local experiences. So, I would like to encourage all South Africans to go and explore this wonderful destination. Go and meet your fellow South Africans, spend quality time with the people you love, and reward yourself with a much-needed break from everyday life. Whatever holiday experience we crave is available right here on our doorstep, and is easy, accessible and affordable”.

World Tourism Day is celebrated internationally on 27 September, and its theme is ‘Tourism and Sustainable Energy: Powering Sustainable Development’.

We would like to request the Tourism Minister to  ensure that the local airlines have enough capacity to bring locals to Cape Town on weekends such as this one, to make them domestic tourists.  We have received feedback from potential guests who wanted to spend the long weekend in the Cape that they could not get any airline seats for yesterday and today!

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

Tourism Indaba: Indaba about Indaba needed. Time to move it to Cape Town?

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