Cape Town - Fear of Ebola has led to would-be tourists cancelling their plans to holiday in South Africa, even though there has not been a single case reported in the country and it is a long way from the disease’s epicentre in West Africa to Cape Town.
Cape Town Tourism is nevertheless “cautiously optimistic” about expected visitor numbers ahead of this year’s peak summer season, says the organisation’s chief executive officer Enver Duminy.
With Wesgro, the Western Cape provincial government has created and distributed an infographic to tour operators to show foreigners just how far South Africa is from the countries worst hit by Ebola.
Several tour operators and workers in the travel industry told Weekend Argus this week that Ebola fears had led some international tourists to cancel or delay their holidays, in some cases forfeiting tens of thousands of rand.
“We have received a number of cancellations which are directly related to fears over Ebola,” said Clive Bennett, managing director of the One&Only Cape Town.
“While we are able to track the number of guests who have cancelled their existing reservations, more concerning is the unknown number of potential travellers who were considering southern Africa but are now choosing alternative destinations.”
Bennett said bookings appeared to be down.
“We have noted a decline in the booking pace over the next three months compared to the corresponding period last year, with booking pace behind in certain months.”
Rob Kucera, the Cape chairman of the Federated Hospitality Association of South Africa, which represents the hospitality industry in the Western Cape and Northern Cape, said there was little doubt fears over Ebola would reduce the number of tourists.
“There is going to be an economic impact,” he said. “As to what extent, we don’t know”.
He added it was possible Cape Town would gain some travellers from the group corporate market that had chosen Cape Town over West Africa, but it was too early to establish trends.
Duminy said that despite fears over the Ebola epidemic and stricter visa regulations, Cape Town Tourism’s members were on the whole reporting good forward booking numbers over November and December, when hundreds of thousands of tourists visit Cape beaches, hotels, wine farms and cultural attractions.
According to Cape Town’s latest Economic Value of Tourism Study, 1.47 million international visitors and 990 000 local tourists visited the city last year, spending an estimated R14.3-billion.
Michael Tollman, chief executive officer of Cullinan Holdings Limited, one of southern Africa’s biggest in-bound tour companies, said the Ebola outbreak in West Africa would “definitely” affect tourist arrivals countrywide. “It has impacted us in a number of markets around the world,” he said.
Cullinan Holdings owns inbound tour operators including Thompsons Africa, Springbok Atlas Tours, Grosvenor Tours, iKapa Tours and Africa Diamond Tours.
He said tourists from different countries had reacted to the Ebola epidemic differently. There had been no significant cancellations from Europe, the biggest source market for international visitors.
The company’s inbound tour operators had not seen many cancellations from the US, although travel partners there had cautioned that enquiries were down and forward bookings might decrease.
More worrying for Tollman was a drop from the burgeoning Asian market.
While the Ebola epidemic had dampened demand from China and India, Tollman said “stricter and impractical South African visa regulations” had “devastated” visitor numbers from these countries.
Tourists from China and India now need to have their fingerprints scanned as part of their visa applications.
“In a secondary city such as Chongqing, which has 30 million people (Chinese nationals) they now need to travel to either Beijing or Shanghai to have their biometrics (fingerprints) taken before applying for their visas via their travel agent,” said Tollman.
“The return flight from Chongqing to Beijing costs approximately R5 000 and would be required to undertake their fingerprinting in Beijing. This cost could easily equate to 50 percent of the land fare cost for their entire South African holiday, making it prohibitive and impractical for them to travel to South Africa.”
Tourist arrivals in the Western Cape from China increased from 26 975 in 2009 to 98 549 last year, according to the Western Cape Investment and Trade and Promotion Agency (Wesgro).
Duminy agreed that there would be fewer visitors from Asia.
Tourists from the US, UK, Germany and the Netherlands can visit the country without visas, he said.
Provincial MEC for economic opportunities Alan Winde said the European market appeared to be “strong”, but visitors from Asia were showing “uncertainty with regards to travelling to Africa”.
Some tour operators said wavering tourists could be convinced to travel to South Africa once they had the facts.
“What we have found is that when you present travellers with the facts and explain where South Africa is, in relation to the Ebola areas, they feel reassured,” said Kathi Simon, the co-director of African Welcome Safaris.
Weekend Argus