East Africa’s tourism sector is posing stiff competition to SA, and has increased its travel numbers above pre-pandemic levels, prompting experts and hotel owners to call for better marketing of the country as a global tourist destination.
Preliminary Airports Company SA (Acsa) data shows international Cape Town arrivals and departures for December combined reached 96% of 2019 levels, suggesting a good recovery, but that SA has room for growth.
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, the tourism industry, accounted for 3% of GDP and 4.5% of jobs, according to Stats SA data.
While increased numbers of flights being added to Cape Town and an increased number of cruise ships are docking in the harbour, Western Cape promotion agency Wesgro said it is positive about that tourist numbers will soon surpass 2019 levels.
But hotel groups say SA tourism needs to grow to create jobs.
SA’s main tourist markets UK and Germany face inflation and much higher energy prices at home, with the US expected to enter a recession. This can reduce their citizens desire and ability to embark on long distance travel.
This makes marketing SA even more important.
The department of tourism launched its local “Give me summer that” travel campaign on December 7, seen as too late to attract foreigners and even locals to travel.
But SA Tourism, an agency of the department of tourism, defended the campaign saying it started in October and only the launch was in early December. The campaign included 549 travel deals with the tourism industry representing various experiences and offerings in all nine provinces, said SA Tourism COO Nomasonto Ndlovu.
David Frost, CEO of inbound tourism promotion agency SATSA launched its own campaign in 2022 called #freetobeSouthAfrica to bring the private tourism sector behind one message. He said the private tourism industry and the government had to work together to market SA in a way that captured the global imagination.
“We are starting to have a proper discussion with [government agency] SA Tourism about proper collaboration, which we’ve never done before,” Frost said.
In Australia, which has launched powerful tourism campaigns for decades, the government and the tourism industry work together, he said. “I think if we can get that done, it would be useful.”
He called for a proper global repositioning of SA into global markets.
Australia famously launched a shrimp on the barbie (barbecue) tourism campaign between 1980 and 1994 with Paul Hogan, a famous movie star from Down Under at the time.
Frost said: “There are lots of other campaigns that Australia has done subsequent to that, [which] have been really intriguing and have captured the imagination of people.”
“We’ve never done anything that gets spoken about globally.”
Frost said using someone like Trevor Noah to promote SA would work well.
“Our brand as a country used to be smelly. It is now stinky. How to redress that? You take someone cool to do positive reporting.”
Ndlovu said to target international tourists it had launched the Live Again campaign at the end of February. The campaign, conveyed the message that SA was open for business and is in fact safe and ready to receive travellers she said. It was played in digital and mainstream media in the various markets
“Domestically, SA Tourism leads with the Sho’t Left campaign that is aimed at inspiring South Africans to travel their own country by showcasing the breadth of experiences that can be enjoyed within SA.”
But more than one expert said SA’s destination marketing needed improvement, created no buzz and campaigns should be done in conjunction with the tourism sector.
Cindy Sheedy-Walker on behalf of hotel group and safari lodge Extraordinary said: “Tourism is experiencing an upward trend, but we are not yet in the 2019 space. We have found that due to the increased cost of air travel both internationally and within SA the average price of a holiday has increased significantly.”
She said “other African countries have done a lot more to position their countries”.
An example of this is Kenya, which is experiencing high volumes of tourists and is selling out of space in 2023, she said. “This may help SA as there may be an overflow of tourists.”
Kenya’s “Real Deal Campaign” tourist campaign was targeted abroad from October last year and a Google search shows a lot of international coverage of the campaign.
Rosemary Anderson, chair of hotel industry body Fedhasa, said to create jobs, SA tourism really needed to surpass the pre-Covid-19 levels as a number of our sister African countries had managed to.
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