| This Tourism Week Number 35 – Sharing Tourism With Everybody – Thursday, 27 May 2004 | |
| THIS WEEK – A foreign exchange student shows me a thing or two about bringing the previously disadvantaged into the tourism fold. And a book you really ought to read. | |
| There’s more information about subscribing and unsubscribing at the end of this message. And, just so’s you know – I’m PROUDLY BAREFOOT AND FULLY SOUTH AFRICAN | |
| Sharing The Tourist Experience
I mentioned last week that I was impressed by what I saw at the Indaba, that “I really got the feeling that this industry is pulling together; that each one of us has realised that we have a part to play and that we’re playing it.” But then I witnessed something on Saturday morning – and if I think about it, we’re seeing more and more of this kind of thing – which made me wonder whether we really are pulling as hard as we should. Or as hard as we could. Leticia Chenu is a young exchange student from France who has spent the past two months working at Knysna’s Featherbed Nature Reserve (http://www.featherbed.co.za/). The biggest tourist attraction in the area, the four hour long Featherbed tour includes a cruise across the Lagoon, a 4×4 ride to view the coast and the river mouth from the top of the Western Head, a guided walk through a coastal forest and lunch at a romantic restaurant under the milkwoods. At R220.00 it’s excellent value for money, and it’s enjoyed by thousands of people every year. Featherbed is owned by William and Jenny Smith and if you think the name is familiar, you’re right, of course: William is South Africa’s most famous teacher and the founder of television’s enormously successful Learning Channel. So it’s not surprising that the Reserve has a special programme for children, who receive a massive 75% discount. And come they do. Featherbed hosted two groups of kids on Saturday morning alone: one of which came from Windhoek High in Namibia. The other was a group of 30 from White Location, an informal settlement here in Knysna Chenu told me, in her very broken English, that she and another student “went to meet some of the people in White Location and we thought it was sad that it’s usually only the better-off children who get to experience the tourist attractions. So I decided to arrange to bring some of the children to Featherbed.” She organised with a friend – who knows the people in the community – to select thirty children between the ages of 8 and 12, she begged sponsorships from companies like Pick’n'Pay, Fisherman’s Cabin (a restaurant at the Knysna Waterfront) and Featherbed itself, she went from door to door to raise money to pay for things like taxi transport to the ferry terminal, she arranged with Chubby The Clown (caringclowns@telkomsa.net) to come along to entertain the troops. And, lucky me, she invited the press along, too. I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed the Featherbed tour quite as much as I did on Saturday morning and I didn’t need to interview any of the children to know whether they were enjoying themselves. They were having a blast. I called Jenny Smith a few days later to ask about Featherbed’s position on the transformation issue. “Most tourism businesses are small businesses,” she said. “There are very few big companies involved in this industry and business owners are understandably nervous when the politicians rattle our cages. “Many of us do what we do because it’s our passion and a lot of tourism experiences are not driven solely by commercial gain. The dive master who runs a diving school, the game ranger who runs a safari company – they don’t make a lot of money out of their businesses and they go the extra mile because they love what they’re doing. “Businesspeople get uncomfortable when they’re spoken at by the politicians – because they’re not really in a financial position to make a visible contribution to transformation.” But the Smiths have found various ways of, as Jenny put it, “paying back.” Things like getting involved on a voluntary level at the local tourism office – she serves on its Board – and by offering special rates for school tours as part of their social responsibility and environmental programmes. “The tour is no different whether you’re paying the full price or not,” she said, although she did concede that they do select guides who are best suited to the educational requirements of young learners. We try and integrate the education with the experience so that you learn in a way that you don’t realise you’re learning.” Featherbed Nature Reserve has an empowerment partner in the black-owned Robben Island Ferries. It’s a partnership that works because “rather than taking a slice of our action, they came on board in order to create more action for both parties” – through, amongst other things, a joint marketing venture called CUE (Creating Unforgettable Experiences), which has strategic alliances with companies in the Cape Peninsula and the Garden Route. “An empowerment partnership is about working together, and there is no point if there is no mutual benefit,” said Jenny – although she emphasised that she had absolutely no doubts about the need for transformation. Still, she said, she worried about the politicisation of the industry. “The tourism industry is fickle and we need to tread cautiously because there are many factors outside of our control – while 9/11 and SARS benefited South Africa, we must also remember how events like the crime and bomb blasts in Cape Town adversely affect tourism.” She pointed out that tourism is not the only industry that needs to transform: all the businesses in the value chain – companies supplying goods and services to the tourism trade – must also be included. “If the haves continue to buy only from the haves, we run the risk of the value of the tourism message not reaching the grassroots level and of the trickle-down effect not trickling down as much as one would like it to. “Hopefully the envisaged tourism scorecard or charter talked about by the politicians will take into account not just the numbers, but also the small efforts of ‘transformation’ at a local level.” …. There’s a lot of work to do, and as President Mbeki has said often in the past weeks, it’s time to roll up our sleeves and get to it. But when I think about last Saturday morning I can’t help thinking how amazing it is that, even although she can’t speak much English at all, a young foreigner managed, by sheer force of will, to bring thirty disadvantaged children into the tourism fold. And in the process managed to show me how, when we take the trouble to sweat the small stuff, the big stuff begins to happen on its own. For pics of our morning with the kids, go to http://www.thistourismweek.co.za/
A Book You Ought to Read Thought you might like to know about a book I’ve recently read – and one which I know you’ll enjoy if you’ve ever wondered, like me, whether it was truly possible to run a business in a democratic way. Ricardo Semler is the CEO of Brazilian multinational Semco and the author of The Seven Day Weekend – The Wisdom Revolution: Finding the work-life balance. And whilst his company isn’t in tourism – they’re in things like manufacturing and inventory control – almost everything he has to say spoke directly to me with my experience as a tourism practitioner. He begins by asking “why are we able to answer e-mails on Sundays, but unable to go to the movies on Monday afternoons?” – a good question in this seven-day-a-week industry of ours – and it gets better and better from there. One of his recurring themes is that it’s wrong to run a business like a boarding school – and he asks “why do we tell our employees that we trust them, then audit and search them when they go home?” and “why do we demand and go to war for democracy as nations, yet accept with docility that no one has the right to choose their own boss?” These are important questions for transformation, too, and a lot of what he says speaks directly of the need for trust between people – which is the only basis on which we as a nation can achieve real transformation. The Seven Day Weekend is an important book – but better still, it’s a rattling good read. I couldn’t put it down and I’ve already been back to it a dozen times in the few days since I finished it. If you want to read it you could ask to borrow mine – but no, you want your own. Get it on line at http://www.barefootclients.co.za/ … And with the knowledge you’ll gain, I know you’ll … Have a Great Tourism Week! Martin Hatchuel |
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PROUDLY BAREFOOT & FULLY SOUTH AFRICAN
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