Enough is enough, is SA tourism`s message to deputy president

Source: Mail & Guardian, 02/10/2015

BUSINESS DAY TV: SA`s new visa requirements could cost the economy
about R7.5bn a year in lost tourism revenue, that`s according to
industry representatives who are asking the government for its
immediate removal. Joining us now on News Leader to discuss his views
on this is David Frost, he`s the CEO of the South African Tourism
Services Association (Satsa).


David...so we got this notification from all the bodies in the tourist
industry yesterday saying we`re holding a press conference today,
enough is enough, rescind these visa regulations immediately...tell us
why you`ve decided to hold this conference as seemingly with one
voice.


DAVID FROST: Well thanks very much...we`ve been hard at this thing,
trying to actually lobby government constructively and trying to have
an opportunity to just have a sensible discussion with Home Affairs on
the matter to try and work it out. We`ve been thwarted at every turn
and in a competitive democratic country it`s quite unconscionable. We
went to the media, basically went public because that was our only
avenue around May this year, but part of that pressure, as well as
internal stuff within government resulted in an inter-ministerial
committee being appointed under Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa. We
have refrained since then and respected the process and we`ve backed
off.


Unfortunately the minister of home affairs and his deputy have chosen
not to and they`ve been actually in the press, quite bellicose … quite
negative about the tourism industry, casting aspersions on it, and
quite frankly we`ve just felt, as the tourism industry, enough now is
enough.


Our message is directly to the deputy president and it`s a very clear
one. It`s a three-pronged clear message. First, there is irrefutable
evidence that these regulations have had a major detrimental effect on
the tourism industry and the associated job creation, and going way
beyond tourism into retail and into diamonds and all that
sort.

So there`s just unequivocal data on that.


Second, that the regulations themselves are absolutely irrational. The
two legs of them, firstly the biometric requirements, there isn`t a
single biometric machine in place yet. They`ve been in place for a
year, so we`ve scared the market away, the Chinese market is
decimated, Russia is down, India is down, but there isn`t a single
machine in place, so that when people are travelling internally, these
huge distances, those few that are still doing the travelling, there`s
no machine to capture the data. That`s just irrational.


Third, on the unabridged birth certificates, new data came to light at
the Lesotho border — they`re just turning a blind eye. They can`t
implement their own regulations, so the Lesotho children are just
crossing the border with a vague promise that their birth certificate
is at some learning institution in SA.


Now that`s precisely where the birth certificates according to the
minister need to be because that`s where child trafficking is rife.
Once again two regulations, they can`t implement them themselves,
totally irrational, so the message is a clear one: take these off the
table, as soon as you do so Mr Deputy President, we go back to doing
what we`re doing, bringing in foreign exchange, creating jobs, we`re
the best PR agency the country has and particularly at a time when the
exchange rate is so favourable.


BDTV: Of course when it comes to the aspersions made by Minister
Gigaba (Home Affairs Minister Malusi Gigaba) that you alluded to, he
said that opposition to the visa regulations were based on lies and
cooked up figures so how exactly is the cost to the economy being
tallied from your side at this point?
DF: There are a variety of very hard data sources that we`ve gone to.
Obviously the official statistics are a little bit out of date so
we`ve just got the June stats but they point to a 10% decline in
international arrivals, but beyond that we`ve got some really acute
data that speak to it.


The Airlines Association of Southern Africa has been able to track
under-18s travelling and in June, July and August, that number from
out of SA and into SA drops 44% across the board. So you can
extrapolate that out to numbers of adults with children. That equates
to 138,000 lost international tickets. But if you look at where
tourists come from and everything, there`s far greater movement across
land borders.


If you extrapolate that to land borders, you`re looking at over
half-a-million tourists lost to SA. So that`s just one source, but
then there`s another source from Forward Keys, who are a respected
international firm, they`ve been tracking the movement of families
into SA, so ironically, and it shows that because the birth
certificates only came in in June, from September last year 2014,
September 1 to the end of May there was actually a slight increase,
1.8%. After June that number drops 10%, 9.8% to be exact and out of
key markets like Germany it drops 16%, the US it drops 18%, so we can
look at these and we can actually see. Now these numbers are
corroborating what Grant Thornton who was the consulting firm we used,
their economic projections and they`re the firm who came up with a
number that if we continue along this line, we look at a loss of
R7.5bn and if you extrapolate these numbers they`re corroborating
exactly those projections.


BDTV: And just going back to some of those figures, one of the
comments made by Malusi Gigaba, the other one was "our tourism
industry has not been selling the country as well as it should. We
should not be selling the country on easy access for children" which I
think we all agree is nonsense, but their argument is that tourism
worldwide has been under pressure as a result of the global economic
picture, can you give some stats to show otherwise?
DF: I certainly can, let me get the exact stats. If it were so we
wouldn`t have a problem and bear in mind please...my skill set and
what I do is, I`m a destination growth specialist, that`s what I do, I
grow destinations, I don`t want to be here and whingeing and having
this discussion. I want to be going back and prior to, let me just put
in context ... prior to these regulations coming into force, in 2012
overseas arrivals to SA grew at 15.1%, with respect minister, that`s
incredibly good, 6% the following year and up until August, if you
disaggregate from January to August 2014, we grew at 5.2%. The last
four months of last year when these things kicked in and there was an
Ebola effect that added some weight, we went backwards 1.5% but acute
declines from the Chinese market and that was visa related.


But let me just give you some figures, just to compare. In June 2015
the same time when we went backwards 1% tourist arrivals to Australia
increased 7% and that`s off a far higher base.


BDTV: And these are all long-haul tourist destinations?
DF: Yes, in Chinese arrivals in particular, we`ve gone backwards 30%
or 40%, the Chinese arrivals and the quantum of Chinese arrivals is
950,000, we peaked at 150,000 and we`re now back to 80,000. So off
950,000 they grew Chinese arrivals 21%. Mauritius grew Chinese
arrivals 60% and their international arrivals were up 8% so Thailand,
and there`s an absolute lovely number here, their Chinese arrivals,
notwithstanding the recent terror attacks grew 187%. Why? Because they
abolished visas for Chinese visitors.


BDTV: So you`ve been very loud, you`ve been very vocal, have you
received any response just yet from Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa?
DF: No we haven`t. I mean we have written to the deputy president from
the Tourism Business Council but we`re not part of the
process.

But we just felt that in the way that Home Affairs
has chosen to sort of go about it and the way that things...we`re
actually left with no choice. We have constituents that rely upon us,
there are jobs at stake, we`ve got an economy that`s scraping 2%, we
probably won`t even get there, it`s time to stand up and be counted...
BDTV: Hopefully someone at Home Affairs is listening.