CAPE CITY, South Africa – Raino Bolz temporarily diversified when his tourist activity in South African vineyards collapsed in March due to the coronavirus pandemic, sold a touristless minibus to bring and bought a herd of pregnant cows.
You will have to wait until the cows have calves and the calves are old enough to sell before they can make money from them. It probably won’t be until early next year, but it’s your insurance policy.
Bolz hopes to see the return of some tourists in November, the beginning of the South African tourist season. If foreign visitors, 80% of their source of income, don’t arrive for the New Year’s Eve vacation, you’ll want the benefits of your farm animals to stay afloat.
Africa will lose between $53 billion and $120 billion in contributions to gdp by 2020 due to the tourism crisis, the World Travel and Tourism Council estimates. Kenya expects tourism revenues to fall by at least 60% this year and South Africa by 75%. In South Africa, 1. 2 million tourism-related jobs have already been affected, according to its Tourism Business Council, which does not account for 10% of total employment in Africa’s most evolved economy and the overall damage is not yet clear.
“Devastation,” said the board’s executive director, Tshifhiwa Tshivhengwa.
South Africa’s borders, adding all foreign flights, have been closed for almost six months and there is no indication of their reopening.
COVID-19 restrictions have closed what was once the lucrative centerpiece of African tourism, safari.
For nearly 40 years, Desert and Delta has been promoting luxury safaris in the wildlife-rich Okavango Delta in northern Botswana and its visitors have been a specific type of tourist. From North America and Western Europe, rich, retired and nearly 60 years old said James Wilson, chief marketing officer of Desert and Delta. Their concern, which is felt in safari countries in southern and eastern Africa, is that these retirees will be the last to return because of their age and vulnerability to COVID-19.
Jillian Blackbeard sees a ray of hope. She is the executive director of regional tourism representing safari operators in Botswana, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Safari tourism in southern Africa will take 3 years to recover, Blackbeard said, but the virus could also cause a long-awaited change. European. He insists that the whole region seize the moment to diversify, attract its own African tourists, who were ignored, look at Asia and its multigenerational travelers, and attract black Americans.
“For a long time, the African-American diaspora has never traveled to southern Africa,” he said. “It’s not that they didn’t need to come. That was because when you see a pamphlet, it was those white old men. “. COVID has allowed us to achieve that and say, “Well, how can we make our industry more resilient by diversifying our market?”
No one is saved. Sun International, a leading player with a portfolio of high-end casinos, resorts and hotels in South Africa and several other African countries, has so far retained its 8,500 employees, albeit with reduced wages. It can’t last. Sun International “must now carry out a fairly serious restructuring,” said Graham Wood, the hotel company’s leading chief operating officer.
One of Sun International’s iconic properties, the 5-star Table Bay Hotel on Cape Town’s waterfront closed part of the year in the absence of foreign visitors and many hotels in the surrounding area are also closed.
Wood expects domestic tourism to recover at the end of the year from South Africans who do not move abroad, and domestic tourism took off last month when South Africa eased restrictions to allow inter-state recreational activities for the first time since last March. The foreign tourism season “is not going to materialize,” Wood said.
It will be ruinous for Bolz in the vicinity of the city of Stellenbosch, whose attempts to attract citizens have produced only a “drop in a bucket,” he said. “We probably won’t do it. “
Its adventure tourism business combines hiking and cycling with wine tasting tours in the mountain vineyards of Stellenbosch, near Cape Town, and embodies so many African tourism corporations that are desperately lacking in foreign visitors. He clings to the theory that his foreign clients are naturally adventurous and will return to the season. You may not know until early next year.
And you’ll only know then whether you’ll reuse all your tour guides, wine experts and ecosystems from the Stellenbosch Mountains: you work in a laundry room, two go to a charity that runs popular canteens to feed other people permanently fired because of the pandemic.
As for the prospects for tourism, Bolz said, “We can do smart business once foreign borders have reopened. “
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