Destination marketing takes on an even more important role in times of a global financial crisis, so that a country can achieve awareness amongst its target market when the global economy recovers.
This is the message S A Tourism CEO Moeketsi Mosola brought to the tourism industry this week, after the August arrival statistics were released. and reflected a slowdown in the arrivals growth rate, to 6 %. Tourism growth has been double-digit in the past.
Mosola warned the industry of difficult times ahead, and said that the industry should not lose heart, even though he acknowledged that the arrivals information indicated that the credit crunch was affecting tourism for the first time. “The industry at large was reporting its worst results since the outbreak of SARS in 2003” says the S A Tourism media release, but is in line with global tourism market conditions.
In line with its destination market strategy to aggressively market the country in general, and especially for the run-up to the 2010 World Cup, S A Tourism will be launching advertising campaigns on CNN, BBC, Eurosport and in cinemas in 2009. It already has a regular presence on SkyNews, showing a hot air balloon over a beautiful landscape.
Mosola encourages the industry to use the downturn to invite the media and tour operators to experience their products and services, and the country’s “variety and depth of travel experiences South Africa offers leisure travellers”, to be ready for the upturn. He also encourages the industry to focus on domestic marketing.
Just a week prior, S A Tourism’s Didi Moyle had said that her organisation was “monitoring the economic turmoil ‘closely’, but that there had been no decline in tourism arrivals to South Africa”, reports the Cape Argus. She had said that the credit crunch could be positive for South Africa, due to the undervalued Rand, but that fewer tourists would visit South Africa as they would rather travel in their own countries.
Arrivals in August showed good growth from France, Sweden, the Netherlands, Ireland, Belgium, India, USA, Canada, and Australia, whilst it was flat for the UK and Germany, two of the three most important overseas source markets making up just less than half a million visitors. Arrivals from China, Japan, and Italy also were relatively flat. Only Japan showed a decline in arrivals, by 3 %.
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