The Voice (Francistown)
Zeph Kajevu
22 April 2008
Francistown — Nothando Mathe is the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) Country Manager for South African Tourism (SATOUR). She is spearheading tourism promotion in the sub region with the focus on Botswana as the hub.
Q. Hi boss! What is your core business and responsibilities?
As the SADC country manager for promoting tourism out of that Community to South Africa and the sub-region as a whole, I am responsible for tourism issues affecting part of the SADC countries such as Angola, Botswana, and Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Lesotho, Mozambique and Swaziland. The SADC bloc countries have proved to be the driving force in regional tourism business because of their sound economic background, employment opportunities, political stability and peace. Despite their relatively smaller populations, these three aspects have been identified as being the most crucial for a cordial business environment, especially for tourism, which is traveler-driven. People will only visit a country if they are assured that they pay for only the best at the most affordable price in a most cordial environment, where the rule of law is the order of the day.
It is not the population size that counts as shown below. For instance, ±700 000 visitors arrive in South Africa from Zimbabwe annually, which is higher than most countries. For business purposes these figures would make economic sense to include Zimbabwe as a tourism marketing hub for South Africa, however, the political instability, deteriorating economic conditions, precarious investment climate, the world's highest hyper-inflation estimated at the unprecedented record of over 100 000 percentage points, near worthless currency and absence of peace do not augur well for tourism promotion.
Q. How are you going to encourage the once-war-torn countries of Angola and DRC to become active and sustainable contributors to tourism in South Africa?
Despite the years of protracted civil conflicts, the tourism potential of Angola and DRC in southern Africa is promising. This is largely due to the fact that both countries are endowed with diamonds and oil, which are some of the lucrative export revenue earners on the continent. Angola is becoming one of the fastest growing economies in the sub region and has an emerging high salaried class that can afford the luxuries of tourism. Likewise, the populations of the DRC are beginning to enjoy diamond revenues to enable them to travel abroad as far afield as Europe. South African Tourism is taking these countries windfall gains in phases, to give them more time to settle down and promote tourism and introduce the South African brands. Because of the long distance spanning over several countries, the promotion is to encourage Angola and the DRC as air travel markets. By air a flight from either of the two countries takes four to five hours utilizing existing airlines that have remained operational despite the civil conflicts.
Q. What does South Africa offer tourists?
The starting point is that in South Africa as a whole the tourism industry has been targeted as one of the key drivers for economic development and transformation. However, the country still faces many challenges within the tourism sector. For examples, SATOUR has to address imbalances that promoted tourism as a domain for the white population during the apartheid era. Apart from the legacy of apartheid, another devastating feature of the South African tourism economy is that the overwhelming majority of tourism enterprises are under the ownership of the white minority. To redress the imbalance, the national government recognised that the ownership should be transformed and consolidated for the development of black-owned tourism enterprises, beginning with the small-scale sector. For the way forward, the thrust at the moment is to view tourism promotion in South Africa in its global context as a new brand, showcasing the country's wide and diverse range of historic, cultural and scenic tourism attractions such as the Drankensburg Mountains, Robben Island, North West Frontier Province Park, seaside resort and beaches, to name a few. There is also unique cultural diversity of the Zulu, Xhosa, Khoisan, Setswana and other ethnic groups. Through our tourism promotion offices, tourists can figure out where to spend their time. Part of the promotion is to encourage, tourists to include Botswana's unique Okavango Delta and other attractions on their itinerary to avoid making second trips. At the moment SATOUR has destined Botswana as a regional tourism hub because of the common cultural and traditional linkages on both sides of the border.
Q. What about the affordability of the South African tourism experience in terms of price?
South Africa as part of the developing world offers the lowest prices despite the high international standards that service providers maintain. South Africa in terms of the 2007 Travel and Tourism Sector International Index is ranked third in Africa after Tunisia and Mauritius. The ranking includes the quality of service, affordability, availability of supportive facilities, accessibility, to name some. Based on the Rand/US$/Euro exchange rates it is cheaper to spend a holiday in South Africa than in any part of the developed world. Moreover, the weather is warm throughout the year as compared to its northern-based counterparts.
Q. What is the share of the tourism market for the countries that you manage?
Apart from Angola and the DRC, which still has visa where the real statistics are to be established, the other countries have a regular batch of tourists that access to South African resorts through the existing road and rail networks. Out of an annual global total average of ±2 million tourists, Lesotho and Swaziland have ±1.2 million arrivals annually because of the longstanding historical ties they have had with South Africa dating back to the days when they provided labour in the mining sector. Botswana also enjoys a larger per capita share because out of about population of 1.6 million has ±800 000 visitors; Mozambique with a population of 12 to 19 million, ±900 000. Mozambique's numbers increased in 2004 after it scratched the visa entry requirements with South Africa and it is beginning to be an active.
Q. What are the marketing strategies at your disposal?
We want to open our tourism destinations to all who would want to South Africa whether they are surface or air travelers and have fun in because prices are affordable in comparison with other parts of the world. We want to market ourselves for what we really are as a most sought after leisure offering the sea, inland, historical, cultural attractions and have an open skies policy by 2010. The pre and post 2010 World Cup events offer abundant business opportunities that we would like to exploit. We understand football as an international sport that will require widespread news coverage and appeal to the audience that we should not have crime and other atrocities that would deter visitors to our beautiful and unique destination during the hosting period.
In addition we have urged all relevant departments to be on full alert for large visitor turnovers starting from immigrant control to security. One of the areas where we would want to see perfection is reduction in the waiting period at all gazetted points of entry.
Q. As an academic and well-travelled professional, what experiences are bringing on board?
After completing the formal learning processes, from 1995 to 1999 I worked as a marketing executive in Mnet promoting television broadcasting in South Africa, East Africa, West Africa and Egypt. I was also proud to be associated with the Vodacom given their wide subscriber base that included pay-as-you-go and Internet. I also worked for World-on-Line and later ABN selling programmes to Angola, Swaziland, Namibia, Kenya and Nigeria. But the most interesting experience was with SCS Global when single-handedly, I started operating in and successfully broke into the Nigerian market for two solid years. The African experience especially the breaking of the Nigerian market is the most memorable and fulfilling experience so far in my career.
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