Hopes pinned on domestic tourism

With the reboot of international tourism still facing huge obstacles, domestic travellers are giving local operators some hope of a light at the end of the tunnel after a long, hard lockdown.

Lion Roars joint director Jules Bailey said on Sunday while full recovery would need complete relaxation on international travel, domestic tourism was picking up nicely.

“The relaxation of provincial borders and our reduced rates for our Eastern Cape wildlife, Plettenberg beach and Franschhoek wineland experiences have been well received and there is a nice uptick there.

“We’re certainly wary of a winter spike in Covid cases, and until our overseas markets have opened up completely there will be no full recovery.

“But we’re using the quiet time to do maintenance and get our sanitation procedures in place so we can be ready when the tide turns.”

Bailey said they had used funds from the company’s foundation to maintain key conservation systems at their game reserve operations in Amakhala and to run feeding programmes for local communities reliant on this business.

Taking the bull by the horns, Lion Roars was now actually expanding with two new hotels in Cape Town, she said.

However, Neale Howarth, chair of Indalo, representing nine game reserves in the Eastern Cape’s western region, said while September had looked very promising after five months of zero business, October bookings had plumetted.

“In September we had a lot of South African guests taking advantage of the relaxation on interprovincial travel and our significantly reduced rates. I think people were just very excited to be able to get out.

“But that business seems to have come and gone. October bookings from domestic travellers are flatlining and combined with the continued restrictions on international travel, things are very difficult.”

Howarth said key travel sources were the UK, US and Ireland and there was some debate as to whether German tourists would take up the opportunity to come to SA if they had to quarantine at home afterwards.

“But one argument is that as they are mostly retired people, that won’t necessarily be a problem for them.”

The forecast was that domestic bookings would pick up again in November-December, he said.

“But we need those big bookings from international clients to help us to properly recover the millions of rand lost due to both tourists not coming and refunds to guests who could not come because of Covid.”

Indalo reserves had been forced to resort to an average 60-80% temporary layoff of staff and the aim was to slowly rebuild these teams as income recovered, he said.

Hunting Association of SA Eastern Cape representative Eardley Rudman said the relaxation on interprovincial travel had improved the situation for the organisation’s members but it had come too late in the hunting season to help much.

“It helped us to get in some of our local meat hunters but we’re still missing the presence of our overseas trophy clients especially from the US, Denmark and the Middle East, because the forex they bring in helps to subsidise the local hunting and make the system sustainable.”

He said while the SA hunting industry was the biggest in Africa and worth about $100m (R1.65bn) a year, the Eastern Cape industry, with about 1,000 licensed professional hunters, was worth about $20m (R330m) a year, the second  biggest provincial contributor behind Limpopo.

“This year the Eastern Cape would have lost about 95% of its international business.”

Despite this situation, most operators had sought to retain their staff. But many were struggling, he said.

“We’re disappointed about the continued restrictions but we’re happy we are moving in the right direction and  hopefully next year there will be some respite.”

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