EL lags behind EC rival in pulling business tourism

Conferencing and tourism in the Eastern Cape should be a fresh and inviting prospect.

For low price and high experiential value, this province is indeed, as East Cape Parks and Tourism Agency chief executive Vuyani Dayimani states, “a hidden gem”.

But the reality is that business tourism here is a tale of the two main competing Eastern Cape coastal cities, Port Elizabeth versus East London.

These are the old official provincial names, which are being surpassed by their more politically cool names of Nelson Mandela Bay Metro (NMB) and Buffalo City Metro (BCM).

The two bulls in the kraal are Nelson Mandela Bay Tourism (NMBT) versus Buffalo City Tourism (BCT).

At the centre of the business tourism strategy for both are their conference centres.

Each city has a smart and picturesque conferencing venue.

On this score, BCM has the upper hand with Premier Hotels and Resort’s East London International Convention Centre (ELICC), which has capacity for 3000 to attend.

This is almost double the 1800-person capacity of NMB’s Sun International-owned Boardwalk Casino.

East London also has the casino at the revamped Tsogo Sun-owned Hemingways casino and hotel.

Yet Port Elizabeth is creaming the conferencing tourism trade, and claims to enjoy 80% of foreign tourism to the Eastern Cape.

In theory, this ought not to be the case.

East London is the gateway to the Transkei and its well-named Wild Coast features sublime beaches and thatched resorts, compared with PE, which is one bookend to the established Garden Route, the other being Cape Town.

You would think East London would be the exciting new destination of choice. Its ELICC is top-drawer, only a few years old, and its two attached hotels have sweeping beachfront views of the old Buffalo City harbour on the one side and Eastern Beach, which rises up to the spectacular cliff-edged Nahoon Point Nature Reserve, on the other.

Not far away are more nature reserves for game viewing and hunting, legendary empty beaches, adventurous and laid-back rock, surf and deep-sea skiboat angling, and generally just a sense of close availability of natural splendour.

East London is surrounded by pulsating Xhosa culture infused with Eastern Cape frontier history.

Historically, one of the greatest global contests took place in the Eastern Cape where east met west.

East London was a key river port during the 100-year 19th-century frontier war which saw imperial Britain finally push brutally through the province past Grahamstown, over the Fish River and East London’s Buffalo River and up to the Kei River.

And there it went pear-shaped for the colonials. Britain’s military might floundered in Pondoland, Transkei. Its failure to militarily crush the AmaPondo – it had to resort to administrative oppression such as the infamous “hut tax” – has helped foster an enduring sense of ethnic independence and pride.

Today, the vibe is modern, fashionable, and has a deep musical “inx-inx” beat. But its heart remains traditional and only a few hours’ drive away visitors find themselves transported back to communal tribal lands, denoted by tribal royal houses, Nguni cattle, regal headgear, intricate beadwork and carved knobkieries.

Politically, this is the home of Nelson Mandela, who was raised and buried at Qunu in Transkei, two hours away from East London up the national road, and also of black consciousness martyr Steve Bantu Biko, who was banned to his home at Ginsberg, King William’s Town.

Both leaders have new tourism facilities built in their honour, which provide a touchstone for international visitors.

PE has little of this rich legacy. It is a slightly larger city with a more typical 19th-century industrial town feel. So why is BCM not charging ahead?

The big downer for the city has been a political blunder which six years ago saw the troubled and faction-riddled BCM council withdraw a R6-million-a-year subsidy to the nominally independent Tourism Buffalo City agency. The agency folded and its key leaders abandoned the city, one of them moving across to the NMBT outfit.

BCT is making a big effort to rebuild, but the collapse of the previous body and the loss of the skills and experience it carried continues to haunt the new tourism unit.

The unit also lacks financial resources and a large, welcoming front-of-house shopfront. It operates from an office or two somewhere in the upper floors of the metro’s run-down and corrupted fire department. But BCT has a smart and welcoming office at the East London Airport and another attached to the smart Jikeleza tourism office in the leisure tourism area on the East Coast area adjacent to East London.

It also runs an office in Dimbaza.

To be fair to the established East London and Wild Coast tourism sector, the loss of municipal or government tourism capacity has not been a death knell. Instead, they have carried on promoting their awesome natural assets, resorts and tourism projects, through various platforms.

BCT has also put together an exciting publicity plan, some of it visible in large photos showing motor racing, surfing, rock climbing, rock and surf angling, and simply lazing on beaches, and the tourism office took up prime space at the tourism ministry’s and SA Tourism’s “Meetings Africa” exhibition in Johannesburg in late February.

BCT exhibitors were seen punting business tourism, specifically conferences and congress events.

But private sector operators, among them the marketing group for the ELICC, feel there is a long way to go to unite tourism agencies in Buffalo City, and one sales executive admitted that they worked through the national SA Convention Bureau because there isn’t one for the Eastern Cape.

The beaches and mountains of this glorious part of the Eastern Cape provide the ideal breakaway holiday for those attending a local conference. There is more than sufficient tourism and resort infrastructure in place to provide a thrilling and relaxing time.

The upheaval and meddling that resulted from recent local politics has not served Buffalo City tourism well, although the installation of new mayor Alfred Mtsi offers hope that the situation can be turned around.

It appears tha NMBT authority avoided the worst effects of that metro council’s meltdown, in the process earning income from its ailing neighbour on the east coast.

Realistically, in terms of an objective comparison of the business conference and tourism assets available to either city, NMB does not really deserve to have such a commanding upper hand, even if that metro beats us on a range of other factors, including the marketing of tourism opportunities and implementation of strategies.

But it is time to play to our strengths. It is high time that viable and realistic business plans are proposed by Buffalo City Tourism which are effectively implemented and lead to changes in the prospects for business tourism, especially in the conferencing markets.