Virus outbreak set to hit SA tourism industry hard

The SA department of tourism acknowledges that a coronavirus outbreak in China could hit the local  industry hard.

The deadly virus comes only four months after SA signed a two-year agreement with Chinese internet giant WeChat to market the country to the Chinese.

The move, announced by tourism minister Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane in October, is intended to tap into the lucrative Asian market.

In 2018 travel and tourism contributed about R426bn, just under 9% of SA’s GDP, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council.

It is estimated that some 100,000 Chinese tourists visit SA annually, and the government is determined to push that figure to 500,000 through initiatives like the WeChat agreement and others. But the coronavirus outbreak is bound to thwart those ambitions, at least in the short term.

On Sunday department of tourism spokesperson Blessing Manale told the Daily Dispatch the government was concerned.

“It is still too early to tell what impact [the outbreak will have] because we don’t have the numbers yet, but we remain worried,” Manare said. “China is a key market for us.”

On Thursday Enver Duminy, CEO of Cape Town Tourism, told CapeTalk radio   some travel agents had already started making cancellations.

“If I look at forward booking, it’s already down 65% from February to the end of March and we hope that doesn’t kind of go on for too long ... Hopefully we’ll still be able to recoup some of that business for a later time in the year,” Duminy said.

An independent tour operator in the Eastern Cape said his business would not be as affected by the outbreak — “I’ve only got one doctor from China with me now” — but he feared for the larger travel agencies.

“The Chinese like to travel in big groups, and make bookings through the national agencies. It’s very worrying though because at the moment it’s hard to contain [the spread of the virus],” he said.

Foreign markets favoured by the Chinese are already beginning to feel the pinch.

On Saturday, Yuthasak Supasorn, governor of the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT), reported a sharp drop in the number of Chinese tourists to the kingdom.

Supasorn told the Bangkok Post he expected the number of Chinese arrivals to drop by as much as 80% to just 2.32 million in the first four months of the year, causing an estimated 98 billion baht (R47bn) in loss of revenue.

When the SARS virus broke out in 2003, only 20 million Chinese tourists ventured abroad. To put that into context, annual figures indicate that more than 160 million Chinese visit foreign countries each year.

The number of confirmed Wuhan coronavirus cases has already overtaken that of the SARS outbreak in mainland China, and that number is rising by the day.

So far, flights from China to SA, which are operated by China Air and Cathay Airlines, have not been suspended, although a number of international airlines are increasingly cancelling flights to the country.

In terms of sea travel, Transnet is implementing strict health measures for all vessels entering SA ports to prevent the potential spread of the virus. — Additional reporting by Reuters