Tourism growth in South Africa is expected to slow down for the rest of the year. The environment will be difficult and South Africa will have to be competitive.

This was the warning by Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk, when he addressed the Fedhasa Cape AGM in Cape Town on June 14.

He believed in the value of South Africa’s traditional tourism source markets (UK, Europe, USA) because of their higher spent per capita, and said South Africa would continue to market there and work on air lift. However, he said the focus in future needed to be on emerging markets such as China and India. In this light, South Africa and China would sign a new Memorandum of Understanding next week and SA Tourism would launch a number of marketing campaigns there. “China has built 45 new airports with 52 more to come in the next few years. Asia by 2014 will have 360m airline passengers, 310m from China. We must be stupid not to understand the value of these emerging markets. We must get in there now before our competitors get ahead of us.”

He criticised provincial marketing organisations for “wasting money” by promoting themselves overseas, when this was already being done by SA Tourism. “The provinces should use their money to market themselves domestically. KZN is opening a full tourism office in Gauteng. Where are the other provinces?”

He said South Africa needed to be competitively priced. “We should all critically reflect on our pricing and I would welcome a national debate on the issue. We must identify the unnecessary cost drivers and we must determine sustainable margins.”

Reflecting on the state of the Western Cape hospitality industry, he said it would take time to stabilise, as there were too many rooms. 

He predicted tourism would continue to be the fastest-growing industry in South Africa for some time to come but it needed to diversify. The announced creation of National Convention Bureau was one such instrument of diversification, aimed at preventing cities from undermining each other when competing for conventions.

Responding to industry criticism that visas were taking a long time to be processed, he said a task team of the departments of Tourism and Home Affairs was dealing with the issue. “It will take a bit of time, but the Department of Home Affairs is on board.” He suggested South Africa should look at an E-visa system. “It will be a massive boost to tourism.”