One of the most useful resources on the web is eTurboNews. It’s run out of Hawaii, is published by Juergen Thomas Steinmetz, and this week informed me that, “The Ministry of Tourism of the Republic of South Africa, with the support of UNWTO, will host a Tourism Ministers’ Meeting (T20) under the theme ‘Travel and tourism: stimuli for the global economy’ from February 22-24, 2010 in Johannesburg.”

(Which is great news. World news, in fact, although I haven’t seen anything about it in either my in box or in the local media. So please explain why it took a Hawaiian company to tell me - a South African tourism journalist - what’s happening in the tourism ministry in my own country?).

The story got me thinking, and so I did a bit of Googling, and found a Hospitality.net article (New UNWTO Roadmap for Recovery for Tourism and Travel – Call to World Leaders to include Sector in Economic, Stimulus Actions);  watched an edited extract of the speeches made by some of the ministers at the eighteenth session of the World Tourism Organisation’s General Assembly (which was held in Astana, Kazakhstan, from the 5th to the 8th of October last year); and downloaded the UNWTO’s ‘Roadmap For Recovery - Tourism & Travel: A Primary Vehicle For Job Creation And Economic Recovery’ (after the reading of which I needed a good holiday…).

Despite the coming of the World Cup later this year, many of my clients are bleeding (full disclosure for purposes of self promotion: I’m a tourism consultant as well as a tourism journalist), and South Africa, I would have thought, needs to seriously consider its position as a tourism destination.

The Roadmap points out that “The global economy is undergoing its most severe recession of the post second world war period with damaging consequences for millions of people, businesses and jobs worldwide,” and that “Tourism, though resisting better than other sectors has not been immune to the deteriorating economic situation. After a very sound start, with worldwide growth in international arrivals averaging nearly 6% in the first six months of 2008, demand fell harshly – by 1% between July and December 2008. As expected, this trend has intensified in 2009 – international tourist arrivals fell by an estimated 8/9% during the first six months of this year” (2009).

We all know that Africa has fared better than most in terms of its international tourist arrivals in these difficult times (“With the exception of Africa, all regions recorded declines in arrivals. Europe and the Middle East have been particularly affected. In many destinations, the performance of the domestic market, though better than that of the inbound markets, has not been sufficient to compensate for the falling international demand.”).

But, because our arrivals represent only a tiny percentage of international travellers, to be satisfied with our results is to be dangerously complacent.

Especially for that portion of the South African tourism industry that relies so heavily on overseas arrivals.

On January the 25th of this year, eTurboNews informed us that South Africa’s tourist arrivals were “up by 4.6%.”

“The total number of travellers who visited South Africa through all its ports of entry during October 2009 lifted 4.6% year-on-year (y/y) to 2.375 million from the 10.4% y/y increase in September, according to Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) data released today.

“A month-on-month (m/m) increase of 3.1% was seen.

“The travellers through the ports were made up of 722,616 South African residents and 1,652,673 foreign travellers.

“In October 2009, a high proportion of overseas tourists arrived in the country by air - 164,663 (86,7%) - compared with those who came in by road 24,264 (12,8%). This is in contrast to tourists from SADC countries who came into South Africa predominantly by road - 395,247 (93,1%) - compared with 29,102 (6.9%) coming by air. A relatively high proportion - 12,217 (85.3%) - of tourists from ‘other’ African countries flew into the country but 2,066 (14.4%) used road transport.”

And certainly this is good news. But it isn’t enough.

Being a South African today sometimes feels a little like I expect a climber must feel when he knows his anchors are giving way: there are things you can hang on to, and you can try to dig into the ice with your fingernails, but you are slipping. Inevitably. And unless you’re able to reverse the trend, you’re going to end up at the bottom of the mountain in a messy, painful heap.

We had the high ground some time ago (remember the Democracy Dividend?) - but we wasted our opportunities, and, thanks both to our misbehaviour and to the worldwide recession, the time has come for the tourism industry to examine its anchors and reconsider its options.

There’s not much that we as an industry can do in the short term about things like crime, service delivery (or the lack of it), the standard of our education, or our public health care (or the lack of it) - but we can look inwards, and we can put our own house in order.

So today I’d like to propose a checklist of the things that South Africa’s tourism industry can - or should - do to help itself to recovery. And I hope you’ll comment below and add your ideas to the mix:

  1. Get back to the basics. Market South Africa to South Africans once more - because, as we’ve always been taught, for a tourism economy to succeed, it should get 70% of its arrivals from its domestic market.
  2. Package South African products for South Africans. In a country where R10,000 is considered a good monthly salary, who wants to spend R5,000 a head on a two day ‘special’ at your over priced lodge?
  3. Remember this: the top end of the market is just that. The end. Just a part of it. A teensy percent of it. Keep developing - and developing - more products for the mass of beer-drinking, soccer-watching, caravan loving, Braaivleis, Rugby, Sunny Skies and Chevrolet man and woman in the street. It won’t make you rich every time a visitor walks through your doors, but it will open thousands of opportunities in the long term.
  4. Get real when it comes to pricing. The overseas buyer may be spending pounds, euros or dollars, but he or she isn’t dumb, and knows what a rand will buy in South Africa. Outlaw statements like “That’s nothing in dollars!” And don’t even think about instituting two-tier pricing (you know, where you charge locals one rate, and foreigners another, higher one. Once people know they’ve been ripped off once, they don’t ever come back).
  5. Stop demonising kids. As embarrassing as it may be, most families own at least one or two of them. So accept them in your guest house, and their families may be tempted to come along, too. (Hey! It’s an income stream…)
  6. Simplify things and quote honestly. Include all taxes and hidden costs in your pricing.
  7. Rein in ACSA. It’s a public utility, for goodness sake, and should not be operating as a profit-hungry corporation.
  8. Go green. (“It’s the green economy, Stupid.”) And that includes doing things like reviving intercity train travel, creating green hotels and B&Bs, and developing ever more green products like walking-, mountain biking- and horse riding trails (And the green economy is going to start making money, too. Soon. If Richard Branson is investing in it - and he’s investing heavily - we should all invest in it. As Scott Prudham said in his paper Pimping climate change: Richard Branson, global warming, and the performance of green capitalism,  “On 21 September 2006 UK über-entrepreneur and Virgin Group Chairman Richard Branson pledged approximately £1.6 billion, the equivalent of all the profits from Virgin Atlantic and Virgin Trains for the next ten years, to fighting climate change. Since then, Branson has restated his commitment to action on global warming…”).
  9. Drop the idea of the human zoo (you know my feelings about most township tours) and find real and honest ways of interpreting our diverse and incredible cultures. And make the products that emerge attractive to South Africans first, and foreigners will catch on soon enough.
  10. Forget the World Cup. It’s not, as Danny Jordaan has said on more than one occasion, a destination. It’s a milestone. Come the 12th of July, the FIFA circus will be striking its tent, packing its caravans, and heading off into the African sunset, never to be seen again. And, if we’re not careful, we’ll be left to pick up the litter and clean up the elephant poo…
  11. Make our legislators and officials (and especially those municipal officials who seem to be blissfully unaware that their municipalities get heaps of rates from tourism) aware that tourism contributes something to our economy. Just a bit… a bit more than mining, in fact…
  12. Lobby for tax breaks for new tourism products. (That’s a no brainer). And..
  13. Make tourism fun again and remember that we in tourism find ourselves in the entertainment industry. First and always.

Now - go away on holiday. It’s in the economy’s best interests. (But before you do, remember to add your piece to  our list of ‘Things To Remember To Do When Rethinking South Africa’s Tourism Industry’ in the comments box below).

And in the meantime Have a Great Tourism Week!