Fedhasa Cape outgoing chairman, Dirk Elzinga, has criticised South African Airways for not once consulting with the Western Cape hotel industry to find a solution to the airline’s problems on the Cape Town-London Heathrow route.

“How about talking to the industry? The Fedhasa Cape Board not once in the past few years had an invitation to talk to them,” he told the annual general meeting of the association in Cape Town. Elzinga was reacting to SAA’s announcement last week that it would axe the route from mid-August in favour of more profitable ones. Elzinga said he could not find one plausible excuse in SAA’s explanation for pulling the route, except that the carrier wasn’t competitive enough. He suggested SAA be more creative when selling Cape Town, e.g. by selling air passes with three legs for the price of two.

“We have in the past survived when SAA pulled its direct Cape Town flights from Atlanta and Frankfurt and we will survive this decision. But one would expect  the national carrier to consider that Cape Town is the main draw card for international tourists to South Africa and that tourism is the number one economic sector in South Africa!”

He said SAA’s decision was “very unfortunate, especially since the Western Cape hospitality industry was not yet out of the downturn. He said while it suited Government and tourism authorities to report optimistically on a 14% increase in international arrivals this past summer, these arrivals were not necessarily staying in hotels. Many hotels, he said, were still suffering from the 20% post-World Cup overcapacity that had not yet been absorbed.

While 85% of Western Cape hotels reported improved summer occupancies, average occupancies still stood at 65% during the summer when occupancies of 90% plus were needed for hotels to survive the annual winter down-turn.

Consequently, said Elzinga, the industry was not particularly optimistic about the current winter season. A Fedhasa Cape survey found that only a third of Cape Town hotels expected this winter season to be better than last year’s, which was particularly dismal, when several hotels and 15 restaurants closed down.

Elzinga said 95% of Western Cape hotels deemed business events crucial to their survival. Many were resorting to creating packages and were getting used to short lead times. He said many hotels were being forced to reduce their staff and payroll.

However, he said, it was not all doom and gloom. Arrivals from new markets such as China, India and the Middle East were growing. Some 62% of domestic guest came from the Western Cape, pointing to the potential of the weekend market.