In a previous column (insert link), I argued that, while the Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index had some merit in assessing tangible ‘hard’ data, it is a very generic model by which to compare the competitiveness of tourism destinations, particularly insofar as establishing ‘uniqueness’ and quality of experience.

The premise of the study done by the Division Tourism Management at the University of Pretoria was therefore based on the premise that destinations compete against relevant competitors, not generically against all 141 economies of the world. Destinations also compete for market segments (not for the entire travelling population) who evaluate destinations based on their ability to provide similar experiences, thus source markets are crucial in establishing competitiveness. Furthermore, competitors can differ for different source markets.

For these reasons, the approach taken by the research team in the recent study on South Africa’s competitiveness was to determine how we are performing against our competitors in terms of our source markets and looking at what determines choice, rather than what is regarded as important. The study covered a number of areas such as what we are doing right (both public and private sectors) and what we are doing wrong in our industry. This column represents only one part of that study relating to tourist perceptions of South Africa as a tourist destination. We investigated six source markets, three still emerging (China, India and Brazil) and three traditional (the UK, the USA and Germany) but here we only report on results from the UK market.

We began by asking South African tourism professionals what indicators they believed determined potential tourists’ choice in visiting South Africa and these were grouped under six factors:

1. Uniqueness of the product offering
2. Safety and Security
3. Mobility and Infrastructure
4. Ease of Access
5. Public Perceptions
6. Value for Money

We had two main objectives, namely to determine the:

1. Influence of each indicator on the competitiveness of South Africa as a tourist destination, and
2. Attractiveness of South Africa when compared with selected competitors on each indicator

We asked respondents about their perceptions of how an indicator influenced South Africa’s competitiveness and the attractiveness of the destination in comparison to a selected competitor country.  We also asked the source market (long-haul tour operators who had to fulfil certain criteria) who they believed South Africa’s main competitors were.

Our two main competitors for the UK market were identified as Australia and Kenya.

It is no surprise that our wildlife is one of our most precious assets and it is part of what we believe makes us unique as a tourist destination. The results for the respondents from the UK confirm that our wildlife has an extremely positive influence on our competitiveness. In rating ourselves against our main competitors in terms of our wildlife offering, respondents from the UK believe that we are clearly a much more attractive destination than Australia but that Kenya and South Africa are equally attractive. So, how do we distinguish ourselves from Kenya? We can’t, after all, change our product to make it more unique - perhaps we can change some features, the accommodation, the price, perhaps the way we package it!  But, at the end of the day, our competitors can also do that.

 A tourist always has a choice and, more importantly, fundamental to the definition of what a tourist is, is the experiential quality of the purpose of travel.  We cannot hope to understand the multiplicity of experiences often desired by travellers in their trips. Many studies have been done on what tourists want and researchers generally agree that relaxation is a primary motivation for travel, and that tourists are drawn to natural environments to seek some form of escape from routine responsibilities and stress.  So while we package our nature products so that we can produce a romantic view of nature that fulfils the need for relaxation, in John Tribe’s book on Philosophical Issues in Tourism, it is suggested that we should go deeper and try to understand what the actual motivation for relaxation is, and this is described as a person’s need for physical and psychological restoration. According to John Tribe, tourism, and particularly the natural environment, could provide this restoration in four ways:

• An opportunity for reflection in an involuntary way – we don’t need to direct our attention as we do in everyday life – our curiosity and interest automatically kick in; this, he refers to as the element of fascination.
• The opportunity to be away, both physically and psychologically, and the being away to is every bit as important as the being away from.
• Tourism and nature provide a connectedness to more than the immediate environment; there is always the feeling that there is something fascinating just around the corner…
• Compatibility with human needs and purposes – it brings us back to what Alain de Botton in his book, The Art of Travel, refers to as “an understanding of what life might be about, outside the constraints of work and the struggle for survival.”

So perhaps we should ask ourselves: Does our uniqueness lie in our wildlife and natural environment or can we distinguish ourselves through our interaction with tourists by providing physical and psychological ‘restoration’? In Tribe’s book it is once again beautifully expressed “What we can experience in tourism – the transcendental, the sacred and the beautiful – those remarkable encounters which nourish our everyday and spiritual lives in what has been lost elsewhere in our contemporary world”.

How we care for our tourists, our humanness and our interest, have the capacity to restore, while our irritability, our overcharging, our inefficiencies and sometimes our disrespect of one another, have the capacity to deplete - perhaps making tourists seek restoration elsewhere.

In the study we once again saw that overall safety and security, especially crime, have a detrimental effect on our competitiveness, and when we specifically look at tourist safety, we are perceived to be performing worse than both Kenya and Australia. This is clearly an area that causes huge loss in opportunities, because safety and security concerns have been identified as one of the primary reasons for tourists not visiting South Africa. Here we are clearly not meeting one of the most powerful needs that humans have – the need for safety – a freedom from threat and danger.

So much has already been said about this issue that I cannot add much except to say that tourism is not an island. We need a national plan under a unified, cohesive leadership, a leadership free from controversy, to guide us through this minefield! As individuals, our responsibility should be to practise ethical tourism in all its forms, where we take responsibility for our own actions towards tourists and with each small individual effort and outcry against crime and corruption, eventually build a strong and responsibly sustainable industry.

On the upside, our exchange rate may offer some opportunities where we are perceived to be a value-for-money destination, far more so than both our competitors. Our service quality has a positive influence on our competitiveness and we are perceived to perform better than Australia, but again, the same as Kenya. Our exchange rate could lead to an increase in inbound tourism but we don’t know that for sure because price is not the only driver of travel, our current visa and unabridged birth certificate problems are having an overwhelmingly negative effect, so as one group could increase, we are probably losing another (families). It seems obvious that the decreasing value of the rand will negatively affect outbound travel but at the same time our domestic travel could increase, with traditional and emerging markets spending more time and money in the country. We should also not underestimate the value of our diaspora market (emigrants returning home for a holiday while the exchange rate is so good for them).

Last year we topped both Australia and Kenya and access to South Africa was not particularly influential in our competitiveness. But of course, this picture has changed dramatically with our new visa regulations and the unabridged birth certificate requirement! Ironically, if we go back to our current vision, one of our underlying values to this vision is

‘Service excellence – The entire industry, including the non-tourism service providers such as retail and Home Affairs, shall continually strive for excellence towards all our tourists.’

The results from the UK show that, as far as environmental management is concerned we do not particularly stand out.  We are viewed as similar to both Kenya and Australia in this regard. Since we are facing one of our biggest crises in our natural environment would this not be an ideal opportunity for us, as tourism professionals, to go to even greater lengths in supporting the efforts of our conservationists in trying to protect this most valuable tourism asset.