The Southern African Tourism Services Association (SATSA) is a member-driven association that offers tourism services companies the highest level of quality in the tourism industry. Our members range from inbound tourism operators, whose primary focus is international tourists, as well as a kaleidoscope of operators whose focus is the domestic market. These include varied services as car rental companies, game farms, airlines as well as those in the adventure tourism space to mention a few. We also represent the large hotel groups, who draw a large portion of their clientele from the domestic market.
It is well documented that our history of international tourism overall is one of growth, albeit interrupted by short to medium term crises. It’s also widely accepted that countries with a weak domestic tourism sector are less able to withstand the impact of major crisis in international markets, e.g. economic depression, Ebola, natural disasters. Conversely, countries with a strong domestic tourism sector are generally better equipped to withstand fluctuations in international demand, thus the importance of initiatives such as Tourism Month and why we, as SATSA, are completely supportive of the initiative. Domestic tourism makes a substantial contribution to the industry’s overall financial resilience, sustainability and functionality – in fact many tourism businesses would not survive if it were not for the year round patronage of domestic visitors.
We are also encouraged by the new Domestic Tourism strategy that has been adopted by South African Tourism and the Ministry of Tourism; as we believe that a significant portion of our population has been historically neglected by our marketing efforts.
It is no secret that not only do we have an endemic culture of engaging in driving trips, but also that for a majority of South Africans, travel is about visiting family and not necessarily about engaging in tourism activities. Therein lies an opportunity, I believe. An opportunity to encourage more of our people to see more of their beautiful country.
Not only has the weakening of the rand given cause for many international tourists to visit our shores, it has also given cause for many of our traveling population to look inwards for their leisure travel options. Now is the time to market Domestic Tourism to them. Now is the time to aggressively bring to the fore the myriad of activities that can be experienced here in South Africa at good value for money. Now is the time for all of us to collectively pool our efforts to make domestic tourism more attractive to South Africans.
I also believe that Provincial Tourism bodies can play a larger role in making this happen.
Provincial Tourism bodies focus on delivering increased domestic visitors, length of stay and spend to generate greater economic returns for their provinces. As lead organisations representing their provinces, they work in partnership with tourism businesses to achieve a single, collaborative voice and scale in the marketplace. For many of the smaller operators, domestic marketing activities undertaken by the provincial tourism authority may be the only vehicle through which they can take their product to the marketplace.
I believe that the Provincial Tourism bodies, who spend a significant amount of their efforts focussing on attracting international tourist, can also play a bigger role in marketing their tourism assets domestically and should do so.
With a population of approximately 54 million and a land area of 1.27 million sq. km (nearly five times the size of the UK), South Africa's resource base for domestic tourism is phenomenal and our attractiveness lies in South Africa’s diversity.
To take advantage of all that South Africa has to offer this #TourismMonth, follow @shotleft on Twitter; go and like shotleft on FaceBook; visit the www.shotleft.co.za website; or log onto the mobisite: http://m.shoftleft.co.za.
