The following speech was delivered in Parliament today by DA Shadow Minister of Tourism, James Vos MP, during the Budget Vote on Tourism.
Chairperson
It fills me with pride to see so many of our tourism role-players join us in the gallery today. Thanks to you, South Africa’s tourism sector is a vibrant and growing one.
Before I continue, I need to make special mention of one of our guests here today. Her name is Alushca Ritchie and she was elected as the President of the World Federation of Tourist Guides Associations. Congratulations, Aluscha.
On that note, I would like to announce that I am also currently completing my course in Tour Guiding and will soon join your ranks as we promote our country, its unique cultural and natural heritage – whilst at the same time impressing on visitors the significance of the places they are visiting.
Tour guides influence the economy directly and indirectly by introducing a positive picture of our country. Sadly, the importance of tour guides in the bigger picture of our economy is often overlooked.
To keep this industry well regulated, reliable and professional, attempts are made worldwide to train and register guides to equip them for their important task.
However, we also need to deal with the reality of illegal tourist guiding. I look forward to working with the industry to find ways to deal with these issues.
The tourism industry, unfortunately, continues to face a major threat because of the country’s visa regulations. This has already impacted negatively on all our key source markets.
The tourism industry is still reeling from these ill-conceived visa regulations with reports informing of an R7.5 billion revenue loss and a decrease of about 600 000 tourists.
To make matters worse, roughly 13 000 people en route to South Africa in 2016 were turned away at foreign airports because they were not in possession of the relevant documentation.
Although the government announced some concessions with regards to the visa regulations, this is too little too late. The solution lies in measures that will streamline tourism facilitation to our country such as the introduction of electronic visas and the scrapping of the birth certificate requirement.
The financial cost of introducing these measures will be much lower than the economic cost of scaring off tourists, trade and investment.
It is clear that domestic tourism is coming under pressure because of a worsening economy. Linked to this is the reality that local tourism is just too expensive for many South Africans.
My oversight visits to small towns have shown that many resorts have become dysfunctional. This is regrettable. These resorts, built with taxpayers’ money, are a huge liability for these municipalities.
Why did government not implement the budget resort concept, despite commissioning a study into this model, which resulted in the government announcing in May 2013 that it would, in partnership with the Industrial Development Corporation and private sector, convert underused state properties into tourist facilities?
We heard today that the utilisation of underutilised state and municipal owned assets for tourism purposes will now be considered.
We concur with this statement since the DA originally proposed this and call on the Department of Tourism to develop strategies that will identify all resorts and parks needful of assistance with the aim of boosting domestic tourism by implementing partnerships with the private sector to convert these facilities into affordable “budget” holiday destinations.
Price attractions for high-volume, not for low-volume, and watch the surrounding economy thrive too.
Much has been said about transformation, but no concrete and viable solutions have been offered as far as the tourism industry is concerned.
Referring to input from some previous speakers, I did not hear anything about how they intend to boost the demand for tourism, in other words how they intend to increase the supply of tourists, so that entrepreneurs and business actually have a market for their goods and services.
So it seems that some of the proposals mentioned here today assume that there will be a constant supply of tourists, both domestic and international, and thus seeks to transform one side of the market without thinking about the other side. Therefore, a balanced approach is required to achieve growth in tourism numbers and growth in participants.
To this end, the DA believes that transformation should enhance workforce capabilities to ensure that our people have the right skills and training to benefit from industry growth.
This means creating and supporting more Tourism-preneurs through initiatives like the Tourism Incentive Programme, which empowers small-to-medium enterprises.
The DA acknowledges that transformation and inclusive growth requires an innovative approach that expands into new segments of the tourism landscape. In this regard, we recognise the potential of stimulating local economies through developing Township Tourism as a means to evolve cultural experiences.
We believe that homestays and township trips offer a great economic opportunity for areas that are not adequately explored.
The Maboneng Township Arts Experience is a public arts intervention that works with homeowners from different townships around South Africa to create their residences into art galleries. Together with gallery-home owners, they create festivals and permanent art homes called Township Art Galleries. There is currently one in Alexandra and another in Langa.
These are amazing projects that showcase the benefits of Township tourism by evolving unique cultural experiences. We believe that these projects will play a key role in transforming the tourism sector.
Another submission we are making today is the issue of the exorbitant aviation taxes.
Research done in this regard clearly shows the inability of many South Africans to travel by air is as a result of the excessive costs involved. Transformation in this instance means making travel more affordable and accessible to more people.
The International Air Transport Association predicts that by 2034, an estimated 7.3 billion airline passengers will be taking to the skies which is more than double the 3.5 billion of 2015.
In order to cope with this demand, airlines and countries need to have forward-thinking policies that will make provision for cost-efficient infrastructure and support business growth.
Therefore, we call on the Department of Tourism to establish a strategic aviation committee to investigate how aviation taxes can be reduced in order to stimulate tourism growth. The fuel levy and other taxes need to be evaluated in terms of direct benefit to aviation and the opportunity costs associated with it.
Thus, one way to achieve this objective is to reduce aviation taxes as a way of lowering the cost of air travel so that more South Africans can travel at an affordable rate.
While on the subject of aviation, here in the Western Cape we’re making it our mission to make it easier to travel here through more direct flights to our region, and this has yielded fantastic results for holidaymakers and business travellers.
In a very short time, we secured six new routes and eight route expansions, resulting in over half a million more two-way direct seats coming into Cape Town. Since July last year, this additional capacity has generated roughly R3 billion additional tourism spend for the Western Cape. We are also forging ahead with lobby efforts to secure a direct route between the United States and Cape Town.
As things stand now, the tourism economy in the Western Cape is worth R17 billion annually and creates roughly 200 000 job opportunities. It goes without saying that these successes should not be limited to one province only.
Considering all of the aforementioned, it would make sense for the Department of Tourism to implement similar strategies across the country.
For this Department to reach its goals, more must be done to hold crosscutting Ministries to account.
We cannot have a situation which recently occurred whereby Home Affairs issues visa regulations without considering the tourism impact; we cannot have tourist facilities closing down because the road access is not properly maintained; we cannot afford to have bad media because of a breakdown in law and order or the safety of our tourists are threatened; nor can we have unscrupulous operators charging what they like at our parks, restaurants and accommodation.
South Africa has a wonderful diversity of people, landscape and wildlife and with many World Heritage Sites to our credit, our country has the potential to become a sought after and affordable destination of choice for travel and trade.
Given the job losses in the mining and manufacturing sectors, we need the tourism industry to keep South Africans working.