Education and Tourism Correspondent
THE hotel sector continued to lose business in October, indicating that SA will need to look beyond its value-for-money marketing strategy to pick up a dragging tourism sector and end the year on a high note.
South African hotels experienced a worrying 5% drop in occupancy levels for October this year compared with the same month last year, according the Deloitte & Touche Hotel Benchmark survey. The survey tracks more than 6000 hotels outside of North America.
Pretoria saw the highest declines in occupancy levels at 8%, followed by Johannesburg at 7,2%, Cape Town at 7% and Durban slightly lower at 4,5%.
The rand's increasing rally against the major currencies and a global slowdown in travel are among the main culprits that seem to have put an end to SA's much vaunted tourism boom of the first half of this year.
The figures come two weeks after the country 's key tourism players Imperial Group, Tourvest, Springbok Atlas, Europcar, Avis Car Rental, South African Airways, Sun International, and Southern Sun Hotels sounded the alarm bells after a surprising number of cancellations on forward bookings.
The panic in the industry is warranted considering that the Deloitte survey also showed a 2% drop in occupancies for September, when the first real signs of the slowdown emerged.
In the wider context, these statistics reflect the global slump in travel and tourism.
According to the Travel Industry Association of America's quarterly Traveller Sentiment Index, the travel and tourism industry continued its steady decline in fourth quarter 2003, reaching its lowest point for the year.
The index, conducted at the end of October, pointed out that consumers were more negative about their ability to travel because of dwindling finances and the affordability of travel.
This correlates with the South African experience of a slow down in inbound tourism.
The latest figures from Statistics SA show that foreign tourist arrivals to SA fell 3,6%, or 552603, in August this year compared with the same period last year.
Tourist numbers from mainland Africa reflected a similar picture, with a 3,4% decline for the same period.
However, industry players were a bit more optimistic about the November hotel figures.
Robert O'Hanlon, a partner Deloitte & Touche, said industry players were starting to "breathe a sigh of relief" as November occupancies appeared to be better.
"Events such as the 46664 Nelson Mandela AIDS concert on Saturday were ideally timed to rehighlight Cape Town's offering to domestic and overseas tourists," said O'Hanlon.
"Judging by the large quantity of high profile performers and guests, a number of five-star hotels should have had a busy week," he said.
The Arabella Sheraton reportedly catered for the bulk of the performers, driving up the occupancies at this premier hotel.
O'Hanlon noted that a review of the rates in US dollar terms showed that the price increases of the last two years had only recently managed to recoup the losses of prior years.
Dec 02 2003 07:24:35:000AM Sharda Naidoo Business Day 1st Edition
Publisher: Business Day
Source: Business Day
