You can also listen to this podcast on iono.fm here.
Download the free LiSTN audio app on Google Play, Apple or here.
SIMON BROWN: I’m chatting with independent analyst Chris Gilmour. Chris, I appreciate the time today, looking at tourism for South Africa 2023. After truthfully a couple of years of hard pandemic and soft pandemic lockdowns, 2023 was a good bounce-back by the numbers so far.
CHRIS GILMOUR: Yes indeed, Simon. And look, long may it continue for South Africa. I kind of part company with the tourism authorities because for years I’ve been saying that South Africa punches well below its weight, given its many natural advantages. It has fantastic weather, great scenery, wonderful people, food, accommodation; it’s incredibly cheap in world terms.
Just getting there is a bit pricey these days because airfares have gone up. And yet, if you look at what happened, as you rightly say the bounce-back has been terrific. Not quite back up to 2019 levels, to pre-pandemic levels, but getting there. And that’s very much in line with the trend that’s taking place in global tourism.
Again, according to the World Tourism Organisation, not quite back to pre-pandemic levels, but getting there.
SIMON BROWN: I want to get back to that but, before I do, you mentioned the quality of South Africa, and the value that foreign tourists get. As locals we say, ah, but load shedding, ah, but potholes. I’ve a family from France who come to Cape Town often, and of course they stay in a hotel that doesn’t have load shedding, they get an Uber. Those things that worry us don’t worry the foreign tourists.
CHRIS GILMOUR: Yes, that’s right. The crime as well. You know, I think we have to understand that people who do a lot of travelling come across issues in many countries, and South Africa has perhaps more than its fair share. Yes, we know that. But relative to what the country offers I think people soon forget that. They come to places like Cape Town and it really is the most magnificent place you could possibly imagine. You go and see big game and you see all the old SA tourism things. The adage was ‘a world in one country’, and that really does encapsulate it beautifully.
SIMON BROWN: It absolutely does. You mentioned that we are kind of almost back to pre-pandemic levels. That is the global trend. My sense is that the operators – and, if we look at the likes of the Sun Internationals, the City Lodges – are much better positioned, have got rid of costs in their businesses. They’ve got rid of assets that weren’t perhaps totally in line. They’re significantly better positioned, even if we’re not quite back at the record levels.
CHRIS GILMOUR: Quite right. Well, if you take City Lodge as a good example, back in 2019 they were predominantly a corporate traveller-based organisation. What they did, they realised during the pandemic they had to adapt to survive. So their food and beverage offering, which hitherto had been pretty basic – they’d basically offered breakfast and that was about it – that’s proliferated and now you can get the most incredible variety of things in the City Lodges.
The founder, Hans Enderle, kind of eschewed that kind of approach. However, Hans is no longer with us. He died a few years ago but I think he would look down now and see what kind of job they’ve done with City Lodge. They’ve done it so cleverly. They haven’t gone full tilt with food and beverage and offering big crazy stuff. It’s been very cleverly done.
So you can go into a whole variety of City Lodges and Town Lodges and Courtyards and places like that, and Road Lodges and, depending on where you are, you’ll get a really nice type of approach in terms of what they’re offering, the food and beverage offering. I think a lot of people these days – it doesn’t matter whether leisure or corporate travellers – want to be able to eat in, rather than going out. We’ve been through the crime and stuff like that.
So if you can actually have something that is nice and tasty and not too expensive, wow, you’re on to an absolute winner. It’s not cordon bleu by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s good basic stuff and it seems to work. It’s bringing in the people who actually want that kind of approach.
SIMON BROWN: We’ve been talking international arrivals and certainly Cape Town put up numbers. The mayor was saying December was their best ever for international arrivals, [more than] local travellers, because South African consumers have been under the squeeze. But I’ve got to say I was out and about in Cape Town over Christmas. It was all foreign. The north coast and south coast of KZN were all locals on holiday.
CHRIS GILMOUR: Yes. And I think that kind of trend will continue, because foreigners want to come to Cape Town. You can say what you like, you can do whatever you want, but at the end of the day they are going to come to Cape Town; they’re going to come for the big game when they come up to the other parts of the country. So it’s going to be big game and it’s going to be Cape Town. And within that, yes, you can tweak it if you want.
I think I mentioned in my article that the Rugby World Cup win by the Springboks of course will play a part. It lifts the profile dramatically. Four rugby wins, so many people will come. People who don’t even necessarily like rugby that much are going to come and [wonder] what is so special about this place. They come and they see the people and they think, wow, this place is really kind of different. So I think that will play a big part.
And then hopefully in four years’ time we’ll win again.
SIMON BROWN: We’ll get a fifth. I take your point; so tourism especially is going to be that word of mouth.
Chris Gilmour, I always appreciate the insights.
