South Africa’s tourism industry has challenged the country’s security cluster to get a grip on the high rate of crime and called for sensitivity in the manner in which crime statistics are published as they have a potential of putting off inbound travellers.
The tourism industry on Friday spoke with one word expressing serious concern over the impact the high levels of crime have on the sector’s recovery plan, job creation and overall economic growth.
The latest crime stats showed that at least 6 424 people were murdered during the first three months of the 2022/23 financial year, while other crimes such as attempted murder, hijacking, business and residential robberies were also on th rise.
SA Tourism acting chief executive Themba Khumalo on Friday said that crime stats should be done only as means to inform the police crime prevention strategies and intelligence agencies.
Khumalo said that countries with significantly high crime rates, such as Brazil, did not hold high-powered press conferences to publicise these statistics because they knew that it would scare visitors away.
“I'm not saying that we should not do the policing work and the research. That must be done. It is the publicising of what we are trying to deal with domestically (that is problematic),” Khumalo said.
“As a family, you don't go and tell the whole world your problems that are happening at home, but you must deal with it.
“When you publicise it to the world, and they simply play it back to you, you then cannot say why does the world chastise us for being a crime capital.”
Speakers at the inaugural Tourism Leadership Conference 2022 on Friday weighed in on a variety of challenges that stymied growth in the sector and agreed on a way forward to deal with them.
The current performance of the tourism sector is now at about 85% of 2019, a steady but slow recovery from the devastating impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
However, the Tourism Business Index compiled by the Tourism Business Council of South Africa (TBCSA) identified safety and security as the fourth negative factor in the outlook for July to December 2022 after the cost of labour, cost inputs, and natural disaster crises.
TBCSA said that 54% of respondents surveyed had cited safety and security as one of the issues in South Africa that had a significantly negative impact on their business.
TBCSA chief executive Tshifhiwa Tshifhiwa said the tourism industry needed to hit its target of 15.6 million inbound tourists by 2030 in order to add jobs to this economy and stability.
“If the programme doesn't contribute to job creation, we are going to have a situation where there will be a whole lot more instability,” Tshivhengwa said.
“We are going to be coming back here and discussing issues of safety and security for a very long time. And that's gonna be worse than the situation that we've just been in for the past two and a half years.”
Last month, Mpumalanga tourism authorities teamed up with the police as heavily-armed illegal miners have become a threat to tourists and wildlife after flocking to popular tourist towns such as Sabie and Graskop in search of gold.
The Mpumalanga Tourism and Parks Agency (MTPA) has had to shorten its Hiking trails as the illegal miners rob tourists of their belongings around the Bourke’s Luck Potholes in the Blyde River Canyon.
Minister in the Presidency Mondli Gungubele said that the government remained committed to creating an enabling environment for the sector to grow but admitted to some challenges that have impeded efforts to enable the tourism sector to grow optimally.
Gungubele said the government needed better safety and security with an emphasis on tourist safety, saying they may have to look at how other countries are dealing with this problem.
“We have to devote more resources to tackling acts of criminality, particularly crimes against tourists and consider initiatives like the Kenya Tourism Federation Safety and Communication Centre or Tourism Police such as in Uganda and many other countries,” he said.
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