Of all the provinces, the Western Cape has the largest availability of rooms for the 2010 World Cup, according to the Minister of Tourism, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, when he addressed the media about the new tourism portal (see blog post dated 12 December 2009), reports the Cape Argus.

Minister van Schalkwyk stated that the Cape has 62 000 rooms, of the country total of 202 000 rooms, just less than one-third.   Gauteng has 44 000 and Kwa-Zulu Natal has 31000 rooms.   Given that 450 000 foreign visitors are expected to come to South Africa in June and July 2010, and assuming that 2 persons will share a room, the country should have enough accommodation. (What the Minister has not incorporated into his calculations is that South Africans are the largest purchasers of tickets, and may travel from one city to another to view a match, and may also need accommodation).

The estimation of the number of rooms comes from the National Accommodation Database, which was established via calls made to all known accommodation establishments, and may be understated, as many accommodation owners may have withheld information from the callers involved in the database verification, as they called at non-business hours, such as on Sunday afternoons, and at 20h00 in the evening.

The Minister quoted the following statistics: there are close to 19 000 accommodation establishments in the country, of which 40 % are graded by the Tourism Grading Council.   Just more than half of the 202 000 rooms are graded.   Each host city has a minimum of  7 500 accommodation establishments, within a 50 km radius of a World Cup stadium.   There are just more than 100 000 rooms in host cities.

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