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Johannesburg - With the World Cup kicking off on Friday, tourism businesses in South Africa want to lure more locals to use their services.
Local supporters are already taking up rooms and plane seats to watch the football spectacle as the number of expected international tourists decreases.
Brett Dungan, CEO of the Federated Hospitality Association of Southern Africa, said: “Bookings from locals are higher compared to the same period in other years due to the World Cup local organising committee making -tickets cheaper for them.”
According to Dungan, this was also due to the tournament taking place during school holidays.
He said that the exact number of local and international tourists who embarked on inter-provincial, overnight trips would only be available after the tournament.
Cape Town Tourism spokesperson Skye Grove said it was hard to tell whether locals would make more bookings than foreigners. Grove said: “We cannot say at the moment what the ratio of national versus international bookings are because bookings are changing daily.”
Some low-cost airlines have slashed domestic prices during the tournament and this could mean more locals moving between provinces.“Lower ticket prices will have an ¬impact on national and international visitors to Cape Town,” Grove said.
Eskom economist Mandla Maleka was less optimistic about the prospects of local supporters making the spectacle a commercial success.
He said: “Due to our bad tourism history, an economy that is still recovering and a high unemployment rate, I think it will only be a few locals who do spend nights in other provinces during the World Cup.”
He saw cheaper airline prices as one of the few incentives that could encourage locals to travel domestically. But, he said, South African tourists were unpredictable.
Maleka said: “Locals have a tendency to leave things until the last minute and we could see them make more late travel bookings.”
Dungan encouraged the industry to focus on offering value-added benefits that would make tourists feel they were being treated well to entice them to stay longer. “It does not matter any longer how many tourists come to the country, what is more important is the number of days they are going to spend here.”
Michael Tatalias, CEO of Southern Africa Tourism Services Association, said that because locals had bought more match tickets than foreigners, the hospitality industry should adjust their tactics to serve them.
But the expected low turnout of international tourists appears not to deter small, three-star operators from charging inflated prices.
South African Leisure Tourism and Hospitality Association general -secretary Monga Phaladi said they expected their members to push prices up by 85%.
Phaladi said: “Our members who are three-star graded have projected that they will increase their prices from R450 to R750.”
She said rolling out such a fee structure was normal business practice during peak seasons like the Easter and the Christmas breaks.
Phillip Usiba, CEO of the Foundation for African Business and Consumer Services’ tourism wing Travel and Leisure, said that its members were planning to increase prices by 25%.
Usiba, however, warned guesthouses not to price themselves out of the market as tourists had a habit of shopping around and comparing prices before spending their money.
City Press
