Southern Africa simply cannot operate or survive in a collective bubble of independent districts, provinces or countries; we are part of a region of interdependent economies and we need the movement of people, goods and services to flow freely to sustain the businesses that sustain our economies.

So wrote CEO and MD of Sleepover Motels, Fred Koch, in reaction to the article in which Minister of Tourism, Mmamoloko Kubayi-Ngubane, said South Africa could, through regional co-ordination with regional partners, create a “regional travel bubble”.

“The rise in domestic tourism, together with regional travel, will help us build confidence for global travellers so that when we eventually open all our borders, we will be able to attract travellers as a safe destination,” said Kubayi-Ngubane.

Koch’s full letter follows:

“It is misleading to broadly categorise the movement of people, as in the WTO definition of ‘anyone who spends a night away from home’ as the 'tourism industry'. While collectively, the tourism definition holds true, the industry part is moot. There are different reasons for the movement of people, of which ‘tourism’ has a more specific peculiarity.

As a result, the importance of tourism-related products and services to the administrative, infrastructural and logistics economy is often overlooked in the 'tourism debate' in pursuit of the more romantic local or foreign 'holiday-maker' category that excludes those travellers who are involved in service provision to business and administration.

I have just completed an extensive round-country road trip and have seen and experienced first-hand the total destruction of our domestic tourism industry and, with it, the destructive impact that movement restriction has had on non-tourism-related businesses. Southern Africa simply cannot operate or survive in a collective bubble of independent districts, provinces or countries; we are part of a region of interdependent economies and we need the movement of people, goods and services to flow freely to sustain the businesses that sustain our economies.

In reality none of the ‘pandemic’ COVID predictions have materialised to date, yet government continues to rein in economic activity. The trends are all downwards, the predicted secondary waves are non-existent, there is not, nor was, a need for panic. All that is required is to follow hygiene protocol.

Yet, in our fear, we managed to reach a tipping point beyond which it will take years for our economy to recover. Some small towns simply can't recover. There is already a massive 'black market' in cross-border movement of people and goods so the continued restriction on regional movement makes no sense, neither does the continued closure of long-haul tourism to and from countries with lower rates of infection than SA. The trends are all downwards.”