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Pretoria - Match, Fifa's accommodation agent, is bullying South African businesspeople and is taking decisions behind closed doors in Switzerland. So says SA Tourism chief executive Moeketsi Mosola. Mosola has announced SA Tourism's withdrawal from Match's advisory committee.
This step follows previous threats by a committee spokesperson that government would no longer do business with lodgings that refused to make their rooms available for the 2010 Soccer World Cup.
Following this threat Mosola was swamped with reaction from businesspeople in the tourism industry, and resigned from the committee "because we have to protect the interests of the industry".
It's well known that that Match is struggling to contract enough rooms for the tournament.
Businesspeople have already pointed out that Match does not book rooms, but simply reserves them and sells them off itself. If it doesn't get them rented out, they can be put back into the market shortly before the tournament.
Match manages accommodation, transport and tickets on behalf of Fifa and uses its position to bully businesspeople to make their hotel rooms available exclusively to Match "on unfavourable conditions", said Mosola.
"I want to empower businesspeople to resist being bullied and do business under favourable conditions. What is the point of the World Cup if there is no advantage for the industry?"
Match's bullying tactics include the following:
- threats that Match will use passenger ships for accommodation;
- exhorting politicians to exert pressure on the industry to make rooms available; and
- advising Fifa president Sepp Blatter to declare in public that South Africa does not have a sufficient accommodation facilities.
According to Mosola it's nonsense that there are too few accommodation facilities.
"I sent the chief executive of the Tourism Grading Council to Match to inform them that we had 100 000 graded rooms, mostly in the host cities." He reckons if Match conducts its negotiations less unilaterally, it will find enough rooms.
On Monday evening, Fifa spokesperson Delia Fischer said that Mosola's withdrawal from the Match advisory committee came as a surprise. Match would contact him to hear exactly what his objections are.
- Sake24