Johannesburg - It was my aunt, Bridget, who first made us aware of the significance of the date – July 12 – when we had planned to travel through Northern Ireland to see the Giant’s Causeway and do a foot tour of the city of Derry on the way back to Fermanagh, where we were staying.
Everybody in the North knows that on that day, the “ Orange Men” march. These are Protestants commemorating the Battle of the Boyne, back in 1690, when Protestant King William of Orange defeated the Catholic forces of King James. Every year, the Orange Men march deliberately into Catholic areas, often provoking rioting which lasts for days.
So what, said I. As South Africans, we know better than most that the situation on the ground is most times not nearly as bad as you’d think from the media. I suggested we could still do Giant’s Causeway but perhaps should skip Derry, which is a Catholic and Nationalist stronghold.
My son, now working in Amsterdam and who had popped across with his Italian girlfriend to join us in Fermanagh, was horrified. There was no way we were travelling anywhere in the North on that day, he said. In the end, after a bit of debate, we cancelled the trip and went instead to nearby Donegal in the Republic of Ireland and took in its amazing cliff scenery.
But, I was interested to see the change in my son after two years in Europe… the things which worried him wouldn’t scare us back in South Africa. And it is these sorts of perceptions which can make or break a tourism industry.
I was reminded of this by a fascinating call from a reader this week. An intrepid explorer in her, shall we say, mature years, she had planned a three-week trip along the Silk Road, starting in China and heading through a number of “istan” republics (can’t for the life of me remember them, save one was Uzbekistan.
Two of the three visas she required were no problem. But the Uzbekistan embassy in London turned down her application for fear that she would bring Ebola to their country.
Now, it’s no good trying to give a geography lesson to someone 10 000km away and so our reader cancelled her entire trip.
But she did say she had heard that the spectre of Ebola had seen a lot of cancellations at South African tourists destinations – and particularly by Asian tourists.
I had heard earlier that bookings at Victoria Falls (which by all account is booming these days) had taken a hammering in the last few weeks as Asian tourists cancelled trips in droves.
Much as we may laugh at the ignorance of foreigners – and there are still plenty who believe we have lions in our streets – the reality is that their prejudices will affect our business. As soon as tourists are in the slightest bit uncomfortable or scared about a destination, they will simply go somewhere else.
Now think about the erroneous beliefs about Ebola layered on top of the fact that we now, as a country, expect visitors from potential goldmine markets like China to present themselves in person for biometric measurements for a visa (in only two cities in the biggest country on the planet); and you can almost hear the tourism sector shedding jobs. (And that’s not even mentioning the frankly ridiculous stipulation that all arriving travellers accompanied by children must have the kids’ unabridged birth certificates with them.)
If all operators involved in inbound tourism are not putting out information packs about the reality of the Ebola “crisis”, and if SA Tourism is not doing something similar, then they should be.
It also doesn’t help much when those foreign visitors who actually arrive in South Africa now have to fill in a fairly detailed health form – presumably as a way for screening for Ebola and they see what happens when those forms are handed in on arrival.
Coming back home from Switzerland last week, I saw a harassed young woman at immigration control simply collecting the forms from passengers in the queue.
The chances of anyone actually looking at those forms, based on current government and health department delivery? Very slim, I would say.
But the rather amateurish way it is done does send a message: if indeed Ebola does come to South Africa, it doesn’t look like anyone could stop it.
l Has your travel business noticed a drop in bookings because of Ebola? Let us know: [email protected]
Saturday Star