Protocol,
On behalf of the people of South Africa, in general, and our province of KwaZulu‐Natal, in particular, we want to express our pleasure at being part of this important networking occasion where we get a chance to interface with yourselves, as people and organisations who have joined forces with us to ensure that our province, our country, our region and our continent grows as the tourism destination of choice.
While cocktail functions are more about networking and less about policy speeches and while we understand that this gathering is made up of partners committed to the same objective, as the government of KwaZulu‐Natal we feel it is proper, in a brief manner, to share with you our outlook and plans for the growth of the tourism industry in our province.
You would have noticed that when we talk as the provincial government, we do not only talk of our province or only of our country South Africa, but importantly of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region as well as the African continent. The reason for this is that we understand that the interconnectedness of the world is not only confined to the economic and political spheres but also to the tourism arena. With regional integration being a case of when as opposed to the case of if, as a destination we can ill afford to close ourselves in a cocoon.
Therefore, while we specifically talk of the Kingdom of the Zulu, we understand that we represent the whole continent of Africa.
Programme director, when we were here last year, we made mention of the fact that, in the wake of the 2008/09 global economic downturn, more investors were looking favourably at the continent of Africa as an investment destination. We posed a challenge to this gathering, asking whether it was ready to exploit the favourable outlook that Africa has been receiving from the world, as a place of growth, economic and tourism development. During the course of this evening, I am certain that our colleagues, who are critical players in the tourism industry within southern Africa, will be able to share with us details on how they have been able to leverage on this goodwill.
Colleagues will recall that last year we shared with you an exciting and ground breaking addition in the bouquet of tourism offerings that our region of Southern Africa offers. This addition ‐ the East3Route – which is a tourism route that spans South Africa, Swaziland and Mozambique, is indeed a game‐changer when it comes to tourism in the SADC region.
With this route, a tourist can have breakfast in KwaZulu‐Natal; lunch in Swaziland and dinner in Mozambique, all in one day. This route, we believe, is a trendsetter in multi‐country tourism promotion.
Three weeks ago, again we went on the 2012 edition of the East3Route excursion which started in Swaziland, proceeded to Mozambique and ended in KwaZulu‐Natal, South Africa. The major highlight of this year’s edition, was the inaugural East3Route Investor Conference which was hosted by Mozambique in Maputo. This addition is in line with the thinking of the three countries that tourism can also be utilised as a platform to foster trade and promote investments.
We also appreciate that for this and other SADC routes to thrive, we need world‐standard connectivity. In this regard, we already have flights from the King Shaka International Airport to other destinations within the SADC region. Among these are the daily flights to Maputo in Mozambique as well as the four times‐ a‐week flight to Lusaka in Zambia. Very soon we will be commencing with a three‐times‐a‐week flight to Harare in Zambia with other flights to Windhoek, Gaborone and Lilongwe in the pipeline.
Indeed, with these developments around connectivity, we are confident that the potential displayed by this route and the vigorous implementation of our strategy targeting mainly landlocked countries in Africa, is yet to be fully‐exploited both in terms of packaging of tours as well as investments in tourism assets within our region.
Already we have seen a positive response in terms of figures in this regard. We have noted an increase in arrivals from the rest of Africa into South Africa. For example, Nigeria has increased by 37%; Tanzania by 45%; Lesotho by 19% and Malawi by 7,5%. As things stand, African arrivals into KwaZulu‐Natal are Kenya (10%); Malawi (7%); Zambia (15%) and Swaziland (33%). Obviously as the province of KwaZulu‐Natal we would want to increase our share of these figures while, at the same time, cultivating the source market.
Ladies and gentlemen, while our concentration is on Africa, it is not to the detriment of other markets. Europe is still an important market for our province and, while we appreciate the generally difficult economic situation of many a European traveller, we are pleased to note that, in a recent survey conducted in the United Kingdom among holiday makers concentrating on the attractiveness of the five BRICS countries, South Africa came out at number three behind Brazil and China. This, for us, means that we remain a competitive destination and we believe that with your help, we should be able to build on this favourable outlook.
Programme director, as many of you are aware, this year marks the centenary of the liberation movement that brought freedom to South Africa, the party that produced President Nelson Mandela – the African National Congress. Precisely because culture and heritage are among the major drivers of tourism, our province decided to honour and celebrate both the African National Congress and President Nelson Mandela with the creation of a monument in one of the most historically‐important areas of our province – the place where President Nelson Mandela was captured in Howick. This was Mandela’s last point as a free man before he went on to spend 27 years in prison. This addition to our basket of attractions, we believe, is a must‐visit for all tourists who come to the province of KwaZulu-Natal.
Again, we look forward to the creativity that the members of SATOA will put to bear in promoting the Mandela Capture Site within the existing Midlands Meander Route. Colleagues, the province of KwaZulu‐Natal is rapidly getting entrenched as the world’s foremost sports and events tourism destination. The inaugural Top Gear Festival which was hosted in June this year within the broader Moses Mabhida Stadium Sports Precinct was a resounding success. Likewise the Africa Cup of Nations draw for the 2013 tournament which we are hosting as a country was also hosted by our province. Also, next year we will be hosting the 2013 Volvo Golf Champion of Champions tournament boasting, so far, an impressive array of top golfers including Brendan Grace; Ryder Cup winning captain Jose Maria Olazabal; Paul Lawrie; Paul Casey and our own Louis Oosthuizen.
All of these events are going to be hosted by our province as a result of a conscious lobby from our government to ensure that we maintain the standard that we set when we hosted the 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup. We want to invite yourselves as our partners in growing our province’s tourism sector to assist us in ensuring that these and other attractions, indeed, result in the rapid growth of tourism in our region.
Ladies and gentlemen, what we have shared with you this evening is not only our enthusiasm and optimism about the future of the tourism industry not only in our province but in our region, but we have sought to give examples of the pro‐active work that we are doing to enable you to sell our province and our continent. In a nutshell, at the level of policy formulation and implementation, we are unequivocal about our pursuance of an aggressive strategy to grow the tourism industry.
What we need from you is to share the same enthusiasm, to engage frankly with us in terms of growing this industry and, like ourselves, to ensure that tourism works for us all. But more importantly, given the fact that you are at the coalface of this cut throat industry, we want you to be our sounding board about what is it that, working as a collective, we can do better to ensure that we remain at the cutting edge of this industry in terms of innovation and maintaining high service standards.
As all of us know, this year is a record breaking year in terms of international arrivals globally owing to the fact that, despite the dim economic outlook, at least one billion people are expected to travel for the first time in the history of the tourism industry, according to the United Nations World Tourism Organisation. As the province of KwaZulu‐Natal we want to make sure that we up our game so that we can increase our international arrivals.
However, we understand that this depends on the kind of partnerships that we have with organisations such as Satoa. It is because of this reason that we want to see this partnership grow from strength to strength because we believe that it is key to growing tourism in our province, our country, our region and our continent.
I thank you.
