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THE HOLIDAY season has finally ended in South Africa and the majority of citizens are heading to their home provinces to prepare for work and the reopening of schools.
One of the characteristics that impact tourism consumption is the peaks and valleys that characterise tourism demand. The fluctuation of tourism demand is linked with the school holidays around Easter, June/July, September and the December festive season.
Destinations outside of these peak periods struggle to attract leisure tourism, and a creative destination would diversify to other tourism markets such as educational tourism, medical tourism, business tourism and shopping tourism.
The Western Cape uses event tourism as a strategy to ensure that it evens out the negative impacts of the decline in demand. The J&B Met on January 30 2016 for example is able to bring tourists, so the City of Cape Town benefits rather than suffers from a decline in tourism. The length of stay of tourists in Cape Town is elongated by the colourful Cape Minstrel Carnival that occurs after January 1.
Potchefstroom, Bloemfontein, Tshwane, Grahamstown and Stellenbosch are essentially university towns that benefit from the residential nature of university students who study there. The financial injection from students ensures that the educational tourism destination benefits from the inflow of money to the local economy and this leads to job creation and entrepreneurial activity. Private accommodation provision for university students has been one area where new entrepreneurs have been created.
Other destinations that have not diversified their tourism product offering will suffer as the tourists who leave are not replaced by others. The tourism industry is able to create more labour intensive jobs because it’s essentially a service that is simultaneously produced and consumed. The peak season demand creates opportunities for part-time job creation.
Events are firmly established as a creative means to attract tourists to a destination. In terms of soccer, Durban has firmly established itself as the destination of choice when a cup final neutral venue has to be chosen.
These events ensure that Durban tourism and its residents benefit from a greater quality of life due to the continued benefits of tourist arrivals.
One of the major challenges facing South African Tourism is to ensure that the length of stay of tourists is increased, the financial contribution of tourists is increased and that tourists become geographically dispersed in South Africa.
The North West is one of the lagging provinces in tourism and is looking forward to the arrival of thousands of tourists to attend the January 8 festival of the African National Congress (ANC). The ANC will hold its 104th Anniversary Celebrations at the Royal Bafokeng Stadium in Rustenburg on January 9 2016. I had the pleasure of being in Cape Town last year as the ANC supporters and members ensured that the accommodation, flights, and restaurants were raking in the rands through the financial injection made by the attendees of the anniversary celebrations.
Rustenburg, which has suffered due to the decline of mining’s contribution to its economy, will get much needed relief from the financial contribution that the ANC’s anniversary celebration will make. Rustenburg must be proactive in ensuring that the event happens without a glitch and that the attendees have a good time. Rustenburg must equally ask what it seeks to benefit from this event, the legacy that it seeks to create after the event has long passed.
I hope that the North West Province will use this event to showcase its investment opportunities, and also the great tourism gems that the province has. The Mangaung Metroplitan Municipality which hosted the National Congress of the ANC and the January 8 celebration in 2012 was able to use the events as a means to create the tallest statue of Nelson Mandela on Naval Hill (before the one erected at the Union Buildings) that was unveiled in December 2012 by President Jacob Zuma.
In addition, this was a catalyst for the redevelopment of the Naval Hill from a declining attraction characterised by crime and grime to become a world class attraction that was refurbished boasting 24 hours security.
Rustenburg is a stone throw away from the site of the Marikana tragedy where there is an urgent need to create a fitting world class memorial that will tell the story of Marikana as a means of using tragedy into lemonade to attract tourists.
This will ensure that the multitudes of those who visit Sun City can have a worthy heritage tourist site that they can engage in. In the year 2015 the North West Province had received the mortal remains of Moses Kotane and JB Marks who are towering figures that played a role in the struggle for liberation. May the North West Province host a successful event and may they benefit from the legacy of this event.
* This guest post is from Unathi Sonwabile Henama. He teaches tourism at the Tshwane University of Technology and writes in his personal capacity. Views expressed are his own.
