Growing up in Venda, Happiness Ndlovu dreamt of becoming an air hostess and travelling the world.
Her dream of taking to the skies didn’t quite materialise, but her unusual career path has exposed her to the world in a way she would never have imagined.
After moving to Joburg in 1994, Happiness started work at a Chinese furniture supplier in 1996. When she battled to communicate with Chinese suppliers, who spoke little or no English, she taught herself to speak Mandarin.
It is a skill that landed her a job as a specialist tour guide, escorting Chinese tourists – while speaking to them fluently in their own language – around Gauteng, North West and Mpumalanga. For tour operator Tourvest, Happiness is heaven-sent.
She is just one of many thousands of people who work in the tourism industry – ordinary people with extraordinary abilities, who are behind the success of SA’s 2011 international tourism statistics, released this month by Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk in Parliament.
After a record-breaking year in 2010, when the World Cup helped to achieve growth of 15.1 percent and tourist arrivals reached 8.1 million, the industry managed to achieve further growth last year, as tourist arrivals grew by 3.3 percent to 8.3 million.
And if the nearly 310 000 tourists who travelled here specifically for the World Cup are excluded from last year’s figures, growth in 2011 was 7.4 percent, substantially above the global average of 4.4 percent.
After the highs of 2010, the challenge for the tourism industry was to ensure that SA remained top of mind in a tough economic climate and an increasingly competitive marketplace. The tourist arrival figures prove that our industry made the enhanced global awareness of SA count last year.
For SA Tourism, it is important now to analyse what is happening globally in our key markets, to build on successful campaigns and to sustain the growth we’ve had in important new markets such as China, India, Brazil and regional Africa.
While North America and Europe remain SA’s major source of long-haul tourists, what really drove growth last year were increases out of Asia (14.6 percent) and Africa (6.9 percent).
Personal
The economic powerhouses of India and China drove Asian growth, with growth of 26 percent and 24 percent respectively, proof that our decision to increase our focus on emerging markets is paying off.
What we need now are the skills and the ability to cater for these markets, their languages, their dietary requirements and their tourist preferences. We need more people like Happiness.
Being more aware of the dietary and tourist preferences of our visitors does not apply only to the Chinese; it is important for several of our growing markets, including India, which is why we are working with the restaurant industry to better cater for vegetarian travellers.
It is these soft, personal touches that will result in SA becoming an increasingly welcoming and popular destination.
The economic crisis in Europe led to a decline in the tourist numbers in many of our core European markets, although Germany bucked this trend and grew by close to 10 percent for the second year in a row.
Taking heed of global travel trends, which show that travellers are seeking to engage destinations on a more personal and emotional level, our German office launched campaigns highlighting SA’s lifestyle attractions.
They worked with interesting local personalities, such as celebrity chef Reuben Riffel and fashion designer Bongiwe Walaza, to tell their SA stories and interact directly with the target audience. Along with strong media and trade partnerships, this translated into the growth we enjoyed last year.
Our second-biggest long-haul market, the US, also recorded growth last year, of 1.9 percent, remarkable given that the US economy is still underperforming, and on top of the 22.6 percent increase in tourist arrivals in 2010, owing to huge interest from the US in the World Cup.
Series
Last year, SA hosted several popular US television shows, including Jeopardy!, The Bachelor and Real Housewives of Atlanta, further fuelling interest in the country.
The broadcast of the first of a six-part series of Jeopardy! episodes featuring SA attracted 9 million viewers.
The next day saw the most traffic ever to the US SA Tourism website as we used innovative ways to market our destination.
Regional Africa continues to power tourism growth to SA, and we are extremely happy to have received R218 million from the national government over the next three years to expand our work in regional Africa.
We will open five new offices on the continent in the next five years, the first of which is already open in Angola, and Nigeria (which had growth of 37.5 percent last year) will follow in this financial year.
There is no doubt the world and the travel experience is changing.
As a tourism industry, we need to stay ahead of these changes. Happiness has, and the rest of our tourism industry undoubtedly will, too. - Sunday Tribune