THIS TOURISM WEEK Number 42 - Monday, 19 June 2006
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South Africa’s
Global Competitiveness Programme
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PROUDLY BAREFOOT AND FULLY SOUTH AFRICAN
Last week’s feature on statistics unleashed a storm of e-mails - and everyone who wrote to me agreed that the figures seem to have been falsely interpreted and paint a skewed picture of the state of tourism… so it’s interesting to see how Government plans to use the information.
I found some of my answers in an 80-page booklet that I picked up at the Indaba. The Global Competitiveness Programme for the Tourism Industry in South Africa 2005 - 2010 (published in November 2005 by the Department of Environment Affairs and Tourism, the Department of Trade and Industry and South African Tourism) sets out to address many the issues that have worried the industry for years - transformation, air access, public transport, safety and security, the provision of information, skills development and so on.
“According to the World Tourism Organisation,” says the document, “tourism is the world’s largest economic sector generating almost $500 billion per year and providing direct and indirect employment to some 340 million people. Globally, tourism accounts for roughly 35 per cent of exports of services and over 8 per cent of exports of goods.
“Tourism has also earned the accolade of being one of the fastest growing sectors in the world economy growing its volume from some 25 million arrivals in 1950 to 760 million by 2004, and predicted to grow to 1.56 billion in 2020.”
“… for 83% per cent of countries in the world, tourism is one of the top five sources of foreign exchange. Caribbean countries, for example, derive half their GDP from tourism.”
This, then, is the battle in which we’re engaged.
Given our size, it seems that we’re not an altogether unimportant competitor: “South Africa’s share of world international tourism arrivals has quadrupled from 0.023% in 1990 to 0.88% in 2004.” And, remembering that the official stats showed 7.3 million arrivals last year, “our share of total world long-haul arrivals ranged just above the 5% mark between 1999 and 2002.”
For the tourism industry as we understand it (and not as the politicians would have it), this, of course, is the significant figure - in the South African context it’s the people who arrive by air or by sea who make the biggest individual contributions to the success of tourism businesses. It’s interesting to note, therefore, that “the GCP process chose to focus much of its analysis on South Africa’s competitive performance relative to its core competitors, viz. Kenya, Australia, Thailand and Brazil.”
In discussing the country’s “Key Strategic Challenges and Actions,” the document begins with a look at the need for transformation. And this, to my mind, is where things go a little awry - because transformation is, in the context of global competitiveness, a political issue rather than a business one.
Now I know that I’ll probably be lynched for what I’ve just said, but the point of a document like the GCP is to get people travelling in and around South Africa. And, as independent business consultant Colin Bower wrote in the Cape Times of 6 June “there’s a wide consensus in South Africa about the value and purpose of black economic empowerment (BEE). The only person whose voice has not yet been heard in this discussion is the only one that matters: the consumer.”
But maybe I’m wrong. The GCP identifies three critical opportunities for transformation: (a) “the relatively strong growth, and increasing diversification of the sector” means that transformation can be achieved “through growth rather than the simple re-division of the existing cake;” (b) “the key gaps identified in the consumer experience represent not just gaps that need to be filled, but spaces into which black South Africans are ideally placed to move” - these being “particularly around arts, history and entertainment;” and, finally, “pent-up demand from an as yet emerging domestic market is seeking experiences closely aligned to many of these key gaps.”
“In short,” the document concludes, “the transformation challenge is a competitiveness challenge.”
Moving on to the airlift, the Programme has some interesting things to say about the existence of constraints on key African routes rather than on overseas (mainly European) routes - and on hard-nosed business decisions surrounding air access. “While the GCP process confirmed that during the peak there are routes on which capacity is constrained, the focus on capacity is an insufficient basis for sustainable competitiveness. In reality, the air access challenge extends into the cost of access, competition on routes and availability of adequate internal distribution.”
Most significantly, though, the document highlights the cost of airfares into - and within - South Africa: “for over one third of our target, the cost of the airfare represents a significant barrier.”
“Across 8 key markets, 24.31 million potential travellers did not consider South Africa … because they felt it was too expensive to get here.”
According to the GCP “aviation issues continue to be a major constraint on the ability of South Africa to generate tourism growth” and “the weakness in cooperation and policy alignment between the government line departments responsible for aviation policy and tourism needs to be addressed.”
SAFETY & SECURITY
This is where it gets scary. Travellers rate safety and security second only to value for money when deciding on a destination, and “in the last brand tracking survey conducted by SA Tourism in early 2005, safety and security was the attribute on which South Africa achieved the lowest score among consumers; and it was the one attribute on which South Africa was not only below average [among its competitors] but also performed the worst in every single market.”
Minister Charles Ngakula please note: “The negative perception about safety and security in South Africa remains, together with the perceived high cost of the air ticket, the core challenge we face as a destination”… South African Tourism’s research has shown that even among “the most robust consumers” (those who have actively considered coming to South Africa) “we lose potential customers because of fears around safety and security.”
What scares me, though, is that the GCP focuses on ‘the perception’ of poor safety and security - and not on the reality (let’s see by show of hands: which South African amongst us has not been affected by crime or violence? No one? So - is that a perception, or is that a reality?).
The availability of information about the country is also a concern: “the brand tracking research conducted by SAT reveals that significant numbers of consumers are ‘lost’ to South Africa because of key information challenges.” Interestingly, this applies as much to international tourists as it does to domestic travellers: “Word of mouth is the single most dominant source of information for domestic travellers.” In terms of the GCP this is to be addressed (under the leadership of South African Tourism) by making “appropriately packaged information easily available” and by “leveraging customer relationship management on line to use the high word-of-mouth recommendations we get.” Other actions in this regard include improving the flow of information to the Tourism Satellite Account and working closely with “industry associations and partnership structures.”
Skills development and Quality Assurance is dealt with at some length, and the GCP is open in acknowledging that problems of credibility have plagued THETA and that the Tourism Grading Council has a relatively low level of penetration (”with 64% of bed capacity as yet ungraded”). Encouragingly, though, the standard of our offering seems to be acceptable to our visitors: “of 1,390 respondents surveyed, SA failed to impress less than 6% of leisure tourists and 13% of business travellers.”
Overall, the GCP “represents a set of initiatives that address the core challenges that stand in the way of South Africa taking its place as one of the world’s premier tourism destinations - and to realising the economic, social and transformation objectives of our strategic vision.
“All players in the industry are invited to join in realising that goal.”
It’s an invitation I’d strongly urge you to accept.
Now here’s a web site that’s worth a look: http://www.jock.co.za/. Developed by ChakariNet (the people responsible for distributing This Tourism Week to more than 6,000 people in our industry), it’s packed with information, it’s inviting and it’s easy to use.
And it’s just the thing you need to help you …
…Have a Great Tourism Week!
MARTIN HATCHUEL - BarefootWriter
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