South Africa looks east

Most things in South Africa bite, but the worst is the safari bite, goes a warning note in a jungle lodge deep in the country’s Lowveld, a region of low altitude marked by open, uncultivated grasslands. The truth of that statement is best experienced once you have been in the African bush and seen the many fauna in the wild.

No one realises this better than South Africa and its tourism industry. Indeed, much of INDABA 2013 – the annual event to showcase the country’s and Africa’s tourism – covered the widest variety of products, but at its core were the Bush and the Big 5, the pride of South Africa. The entire South African tourism ecosystem seems geared towards offering the experience of seeing the lion, the leopard, the rhino, the elephant, and the cape bull.

As South Africa’s Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk said at the opening of the four-day event: “Success did not just fall into the lap. It took hard work to sustain the 10.2 per cent growth we enjoyed last year… And it will take continued hard work to maintain growth…”

Strategy shift

And the hard work is showing as also the change in strategy to Look East for business. With its main markets — the US and Europe — in doldrums and tourism spends from these sources on a low, South Africa is looking for a bite from China and India. Arrivals from China have grown and the country has moved from the eighth top overseas market a couple of years ago for South Africa to third now. Increasingly, however, the focus is on India with South Africa having a connect dating back to Mahatma Gandhi’s early days in that country at the start of the 20th century.

Leading the India charge is the private sector that is quickly adapting to an entirely new consumer. Lodges that would not take children under 16 are now opening doors to kids, realising that Indian families travel with children in tow. Lodge owners and managers talk freely of dhal and curries, and how their kitchens are open to cooking by visitors. Many Indian families, it appears, often take a hand in putting together a meal. Lodges are also arranging late morning safaris for Indians loathe to going out early morning chasing the wild.

All this is paying off with most lodges reporting a jump in Indian visitors though the numbers are still low compared to arrivals from the West. South Africa reported a 33.7 per cent growth in 2012 tourist arrivals from Asia, driven mainly by China and India. The growth in arrivals from India continued in 2012 with 1,06,774 visitors coming in, up 18 per cent over 2011, and from 43.337 in 2006, making India its 8th largest overseas market. The percentage of Indian leisure travellers to the country has risen from 15 in 2006 to 25 in 2012.

With foreign tourist spend up 3.3 per cent at Rand 72 billion (1 Dollar = 9 Rand), tourism’s contribution to South Africa’s GDP went up 5 per cent in calendar 2011. For a jobs starved nation (the unemployment rate is around 25 per cent), the sector created 31,000 direct jobs in 2011.

Rightly proud, Tourism Minister Schalkwyk said, “In the 20 years since South Africa’s democracy… tourism has catapulted South Africa… to one of the fastest growing and desired holiday desti- nations…”

South Africa has got the bite and is reeling in the East, especially India, to experience its justifiably famed wildlife, beautiful landscape, and charming people.

(The author visited INDABA 2013 in Durban as a guest of South Africa Tourism)

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