We had our best tourism season ever last year, according to figures given by the Minister of Tourism, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, in Parliament last week. In spite of the recessionary conditions in Europe, SA attracted 8 339 354 international tourists – 3.3 percent more than in 2010.
But although numbers from Germany were up, those from Britain – traditionally our main source market – were down by 7.2 percent compared with 2010 and so were those from France and the Netherlands. Fortunately this was made up for by an increase in tourism from the US, Brazil, India and China and a really big rise in arrivals from other parts of Africa, especially from Nigeria and Tanzania.
Recession
Although there are no direct flights from Italy and it is one of the countries whose economy has, officially, been the hardest hit by the recession in Europe, the number of Italian visitors also rose said Van Schalkwyk. In fact, conditions in Italy may not be quite so dire as economic reports suggest. Italy has a second, unofficial, economy which enables many business, professional or skilled people to enjoy a comfortable standard of living by exchanging “favours” of goods or services with a wide circle of friends without money changing hands, in addition to earning their taxable incomes.
Thulani Nzima, the chief executive of SA Tourism, said people had grown increasingly used to the idea of indirect flights – particularly with the growth of airline alliances whose various partners carry each others’ passengers – so that the withdrawal of Alitalia from SA several years ago was not a great disadvantage to Italian tourists attracted to this country.
Alitalia is a member of the Sky Team alliance to which KLM, which flies to Cape Town all year round, and Air France, which has seasonal flights to the city in summer and to Johannesburg all year round, belong.
In addition to this, many north Italians find it convenient to cross the nearby border with Switzerland and fly to Johannesburg with Swiss International Airlines all year round or to Cape Town in summer with Edelweiss – both owned by German airline Lufthansa.
And, of course, Emirates and Air Qatar, both of which fly to Cape Town, and Etihad, which flies to Johannesburg, have Italian destinations from where they can bring people to SA by way of their home airports.
So, with SA Tourism encouraging it, and a sizeable Italian community in the city, we may see more Italian visitors in the future even without direct flights. And we, also, have quite a wide choice of routes to get us to Italy.
However, Nzima emphasised the need for our tourism and hospitality industries to keep prices down in view of the high cost of long-haul flights, which have been bumped up by higher taxes and higher prices for aviation fuel.
He shared the view that the very high air passenger duty that visitors to Britain are charged, and which has just gone up by eight percent, may have been one of the reasons for the drop in British tourists.
Pilots
Aircraft manufacturer Boeing does not expect demand for airline travel to drop in the long term. It forecasts a need for more than a million new pilots and technicians over the next 20 years.
Its chief pilot for airline development, Mike Carriker, has called on the industry to transform training for the next generation of commercial pilots and maintenance technicians to enable them to make full use of the capabilities of the high technology planes being made today.
Boeing has partnered with 43 Air School – the largest in SA – to train prospective commercial pilots to fly its new aircraft. And both SAA and Cathay Pacific Airlines are preparing to open their own training academies. - Weekend Argus