Johannesburg - South Africa’s business executives prefer lodging in luxury hotels and being driven around when they travel to other African countries to network and clinch deals.
This is according to travel management company Corporate Traveller, which said its study had shown that the locals chose the comforts of being closer to home, mostly travelling to Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Mozambique.
Corporate Traveller general manager Raylene Pienaar said the executives who travelled the continent opted for top hotels that charged a minimum of R3 000 a night.
Convenient choice
Pienaar said the luxury choice was not linked to entitlement but convenience.
“Close to half of business travellers to Africa - 48 percent - stay in five-star hotels, while 42 percent reside in four-star lodgings, seven out of 10 are also chauffeur driven during the stay,” Pienaar said.
“Proximity to work site, office or meeting venue is the primary driver in what accommodation is selected. Almost all customers surveyed indicate these as determining factors; this is often due to the traffic conditions in the destination city,” she said.
Corporate Traveller is a division of Flight Centre Travel Group and services businesses across southern Africa to help them save on money and time.
The company said South African executives put security as a major motivation to choose where they would stay when travelling to Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, and Dar es Salaam, the Democratic Republic of Congo and most north and central African countries.
It said they chose chauffeur services ahead of car hire as they placed emphasis on the mode of transport to use during the visits.
“Our travel experts actually strongly recommend against car hire because of the poor road networks and security concerns,” Pienaar said, adding that 55 percent of customers based their hotel choice on the security features of the property, “with 33 percent indicating that the complimentary Wi-Fi plays a role”.
Pienaar said the hotel industry in the continent was set to receive more revenue in the next four years.
In July this year, PwC released its sixth edition of Hotels Outlook: 2016-2020 focusing on South Africa, Kenya, Mauritius, Nigeria and Tanzania on current trends, challenges and future prospects of the hotel industry in these countries.
The report said Mauritian five-star hotels’ total room revenue would increase by a projected 12.5 percent annually to R6.9 billion in 2020 up from R3.8bn last year.
The study said Kenya’s hoteliers would grow 6.1 percent a year to R8.6bn in 2020 from R6.4bn last year and Tanzania by 10 percent annually to R4.7bn in 2020 from R2.8bn.
PwC said Nigeria’s three and four star hotels revenue would reach R3.6bn in 2020 from R2.3bn in 2015.
The firm’s hospitality industry expert, Pietro Calicchio, said: “Overall room revenue in South Africa, Nigeria, Mauritius, Kenya and Tanzania rose 6.7 percent in 2015 the largest gain since 2011.”
SUNDAY INDEPENDENT