The following was sent to the editor of Tourism Update by Sales and Marketing Director of Inspirations Travel & Tours, Craig Drysdale. He has a long-standing history in the tourism industry including having served as SATSA National President from 2009-2013.
Drysdale writes:
“Waking up this weekend, before getting out of bed, I decided to catch up on what’s happening on Facebook. In retrospect, perhaps I should have tried to go back to sleep. But as they say, things always happen for a reason.
One post in particular caught my attention and greatly concerned me. For most of the day, I pondered this post. As the day continued, it built into a sense of dire urgency and fear, inspiring me to share these feelings with you today.
As an industry, we need to identify these signs, even if they appear small when compared with the possible dangers we may face as we start to reopen and recover. More importantly, our Tourism Ministry and government need to start acting fast to avoid potential future pitfalls that are staring us in the face.
Back to the Facebook post that got me worried, which was one advertising a trip to New Zealand. And within the post was a discussion between a well-known Australian operator and who I can only assume was a friend or an old customer. This Australian operator (who for many decades has sold Southern Africa successfully as a holiday destination to thousands of Australians) was promoting travel to New Zealand, a new destination for the company.
The friend’s response was encouraging: “Great pivoting”, to which the operator responded “yep, change and adapt”. The exchange sent a chill down my spine of possible things to come. The cold reality is that South Africa has to have a solid future plan on reopening; a meaningful reopening date when inbound international tourism will restart, not the industry’s suggested date within the vacuum of non-responses from Government.
If we do not have this plan, this line in the sand, our overseas wholesale operator and travel agent partners will be forced to re-engineer their businesses, pivoting to other destinations that are open and generating an income. They will do this simply as a matter of survival. Adapt or die, as they say.
Now, more than ever, our global customers need concrete reassurances from our government on when we’re going to reopen for business, even if it is only a partial or phased reopening as being lobbied for by the private sector. We need this urgently so our global customers can start putting out messages and travel packages to their customer and guest databases that South Africa will be ready to travel to.
The tourism industry in South Africa has been working hard to prepare itself to operate responsibly. Health and safety protocols are already in place and have been rolled out across the entire tourism value chain, from aircraft to airports, car rental to accommodation, coach and vehicle hiring to restaurants and sightseeing sites. We are ready to welcome tourists back!
If we remain silent and linger over meaningful decisions, all that international intellectual tourism capital, decades of relationship-building and millions of rands spent on marketing South Africa (on both sides) will vanish.
It will take us decades to forge new relationships, retrain our partners on the destination and tourism product we have left and rebuild on our brand offering. We simply cannot afford this, not with the capital infrastructure we have in place currently, especially our people.
Allowed to continue unimpeded, this situation will result in a total collapse of international inbound tourism in South Africa. Our partners will start selling other destinations, people employed within tourism will be forced to try and find employment elsewhere, tourism’s intellectual capital will dissipate, products will close and our tourism assets will diminish.
Tourism contributes almost 10% to South Africa’s GDP and employs about 1.5 million people directly and indirectly. Are we not important enough a sector to be given some priority?
While government battles to strike the fine balance between saving lives and preserving livelihoods, tourism has been forgotten. It can be salvaged with some reassurances for the future; some acknowledgement from government in terms of real actions, not lip-service, that they take tourism seriously and understand the sector’s ability to deliver on the promise of preserving livelihoods, contributing to the economy, jobs and the country’s reputation. And we can do so safely. Now is the time to act, or we will be licking our wounds for years to come.”
