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By Karishma Dipa 
8h ago
Calls are increasing for the South African government to reopen the country’s international borders after more than 68 billion rand have been lost since the start of the shutdown.
Johannesburg: International travelers may have imported Covid-19 into the country, but from within the industry there are calls for the nation to fully open its borders.
While the sector has received a breather with domestic and inter-provincial travel currently allowed under the recently relaxed closure measures, experts warn that this is not enough to save the industry, which was one of the hardest hit by the global health crisis. .
Official statistics reveal that a whopping 600,000 tourism and hospitality employees were forced to claim from the UIF Ters fund and the country lost up to R748 million every day that tourism was unable to trade.
More than R68 billion in tourism spending is also believed to have been lost since the shutdown began, and the Bureau of Economic Research estimates that if South Africa does not reopen its borders by the end of 2020, some 1.15 million jobs will be lost. of work.
The Executive Director of the Tourism Business Council of SA (TBCSA), Tshifhiwa Tshivhengwa, told The Saturday Star this week that opening up international travel could save the industry, which contributes greatly to the South African economy.
“We call on the government to open the borders quickly,” he said. People are waiting to travel, so let’s save jobs and the economy, ”he said.
Tshivhengwa explained that while the tourism industry was “very resilient” and could recover from the effects of the coronavirus, urgent action was needed now to make that happen.
“Let’s have a battle of how we can win the trust of the national and international market instead of having a battle of when we are going to fully open our borders.”
Tshivhengwa also insisted that the risk associated with travel was manageable, as much more was known about the coronavirus than when it started spreading at a rapid pace earlier in the year. “Traveling is as safe as going to the supermarket and many other things we do every day.”
The TBCSA executive director added that Covid-19 prevention and containment protocols were similar around the world and that international travelers would be subject to the same measures that South Africans are applying to.
“Foreign travelers are not reckless; they are well organized and go to specific places. We have to consider the risk posed by international travel and the benefits, which are R336 million a day if we do it right. “
But while SA Tourism said they were satisfied with the health and safety protocols in place to protect tourists and tourism employees from contracting Covid-19, they believed the world might not yet be ready to travel on a regular basis.
“The sector is ready to welcome international travelers, but we may not be ready as a country as long as South Africa is in the top five on the global list in terms of infection rate,” said Executive Director Sisa Ntshona.
He added that even South Africans who wanted to travel out of the country might not be welcome at their desired destinations because the nation was featured on many countries’ travel advisory advisory lists.
“The goal is to get us off that list of the top five infection rates globally so that we can get out of travel warnings,” Ntshona explained.
“South Africa is also looking at every country in the world and assessing the risk that they could potentially pose to the country as well, because we must be careful not to re-import the virus into the country.”
Meanwhile, the Southern African Tourism Services Association (Satsa) believes that a middle ground must first be reached before international travel can safely resume.
“For tourism to occur, it takes two to tango. Both the country of origin and the country of destination must be open and have favorable travel requirements, such as no quarantine period, travel facilitation, visas and air connections. “
“The tourism and travel industry is having to exercise extreme flexibility and continually assess things because the situation is so fluid,” Satsa said.
All parties agreed that allowing interprovincial travel under level two of the lockdown regulations has been a saving grace for the struggling tourism industry.
Ntshona said that domestic travel accounts for 56% of the total revenue generated by the sector. “It is not enough to take care of everyone, but it is significant,” she said.
Satsa said he believed the support of South Africans would help the local tourism industry in the short term, but that the increase in demand for domestic travel would diminish as the novelty wears off, and Tshivhengwa agreed.
“We have seen great interest from South Africans who want to travel around the country, but it is not necessarily sustainable and could be the excitement experienced in the first few months.”
Tshivhengwa added that while domestic travel generated much-needed income for the country as a whole, they could not exist without international tourism, whose purchasing power reaches beyond the tourism industry.
“Around 12% of the retail sector is affected by tourism, and many people from our neighboring countries come to South Africa to shop.”
While SA Tourism, Satsa and TBCSA shared the sentiment that the local tourism sector was resilient, they agreed that it would take up to two years for the sector to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic.
But they also believed that there would always be demand for the South African tourism market. “South Africa is the complete package and we have the product you want both locally and internationally,” he believes.
“We are the center of tourism and we have beaches, mountains, safaris, high-end properties, cities, culture, food and wine that attract people from all over the world, so we must open our international borders,” he said. Tshivhengwa.
Satsa said that he also considers South Africa a popular tourist destination due to the country’s diversity of products, value for money and the fact that it is a low-density destination.
They also believe that it is a valuable sector as it employs thousands of people, especially among low-skilled and semi-skilled workers in rural and peri-urban areas and that around 70% of tourism employees are women and 60% are young.
“As the second largest exporter in South Africa, second only to mining, tourism is a ripe fruit to invest in to help restore our economy.”
Saturday’s star
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