South Africa: South African Tourism Still On Growth Path

ENVIRONMENT and Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk said yesterday SA should double the number of visiting business tourists, and he unveiled statistics showing SA's overall tourism had continued its upward trajectory.

"Business tourists currently make up 5% of SA's total tourism market. I am certain that this figure will be improved upon in the lead-up to 2010," he said.

He said he believed the industry's vision of doubling this figure in the next three years was not overly ambitious.

Speaking at the Meetings Africa Business Tourism Conference in Sandton yesterday, Van Schalkwyk called on all players in the tourism industry to "redouble our efforts in growing business tourism as we did with leisure" tourism. He said the combined efforts of government and the private sector would allow tourism in SA to take "another quantum leap forward".

"Business tourism contributed R2,3bn to overall tourism revenue in 2005.... Yet, business tourists have a much higher average daily spend than leisure tourists. This suggests that there is room to attract more business tourists and to extract more value from them, and that the rewards for doing so will be substantial."

Van Schalkwyk said business travellers spent on average three times more than leisure travellers. Up to 40% of business travellers returned to a destination within five years. There was also significant crossover into the leisure travel market. About 18% of business travellers went on tours before their business activities, while 22% did so afterwards.

"If the business tourism sector succeeds in increasing the proportion of business tourists, and if they win the additional challenges of getting them to stay longer and spend more, we will ultimately increase the number of jobs created per tourist. This will be crucial if our sector is to meet the expectations created by its priority position within Asgi-SA," he said.

Van Schalkwyk also said the sector's achievements were reflected in the latest statistics, for the nine months to September last year, which showed a 14,5% increase in tourism arrivals over the comparable figure for 2005.

The largest source of growth was Africa (18,3%). There was a huge increase, albeit off a low base, from Russia (24,1%), Hungary (17%) as well as Finland, which showed that broader market penetration on the European continent, beyond SA's traditional source markets in western Europe, had been successful.

"The growth rate for arrivals from the continent as a whole was 4,6%, which was just ahead of the global average growth rate of 4,5% for the year."

Van Schalkwyk said that the South African Tourism Board had approved the new business tourism growth strategy - the result of consultation between the business tourism industry and government, designed to ensure that efforts to grow the industry were aligned.

"Now that we have the strategy in place, the importance of the ongoing partnership between government and industry during the implementation phase cannot be understated," he said.


By Janet Parker
Business Day (Johannesburg)