How Gauteng can go back to making billions in Tourism
Introduction
Gauteng Tourism Authority is a destination marketing organization based in Gauteng that aims to inspire domestic and international travel to South Africa´s richest province (GTA, 2020). The mission of the Gauteng Tourism Authority is to develop, promote, coordinate and facilitate responsible and sustainable tourism in the Gauteng global city region, and to create a world class destination that attracts business visitors and other tourists to the province, benefits our people and contributes to job creation and economic growth (GTA,2020). As such, it is important that the organization is always up to date with the global tourism trends in a macro and micro level to maintain and increase its competitive capacity nationally and internationally.
With the Covid 19 pandemic, that put a halt in the tourism sector for several months, and caused thousands of job losses in the industry and millions of rands in profit, it is imperative that the Gauteng Tourism Authority takes initiative and aids in the revival of the industry in the country, while still adhering to the health and safety recommendations by the South African Government and World Health Organization. For this to happen, the organization needs to have the full scope of the current macro situation of the industry, analyze the positives and negative concepts that the pandemic brought, and set up a plan that will help revive the industry in the province and ultimately the country.
Analysis of the macro environment
Economic environment
The economic environment for the past 8 months has been declining, this is because many businesses shut down during the different levels of lockdown, and consumers lost their buying power as many jobs were lost in the country. According to News 24 (2020), South Africa´s tourism sector lost 54.9 billion rands in just three months of lockdown and is expected to lose R149.8 billion and 438.000 jobs due to Covid 19 travel and leisure restrictions.
According to statssa (2020), the Gross domestic product (GDP) fell by just over 16% between the first and second quarters of 2020, giving an annualised growth rate of ‑51%, household spending slumped by 49,8% in line with the closure of hotels, restaurants, transport services, recreational facilities and many stores. Spending on restaurants and hotels ground to an almost complete halt, plunging by 99,9%. All this data is bad news for the tourism and hospitality industry as it shows that consumers have less money to spend on tourism offerings than ever before. Communication, housing and education expenditure was up in the second quarter. Cut off from family and friends, and having to suddenly work and study from home, many consumers increased their spending on communication services (Statssa, 2020). As a marketer, this gives us an idea of where to focus our marketing planning and spending on.
Another important factor to take into consideration, is the fact that the rand became very weak against the US dollar, especially in the first three months of lockdown reaching a high of R19 per $1, this affects the investment portfolio, for possible and current investors into the country.
Natural environment
With the Covid 19 pandemic, the world started living a new normal, where we had to abruptly adapt our lifestyle for the sake of our lives. The South African Government implemented the following restrictions under lockdown level 4 that affected the tourism industry:
· Every person should be confined to their home;
· Movements between provinces are prohibited;
· Any place or premises normally open to the public where religious, cultural, sporting, entertainment, recreational, exhibitional, organizational or similar activities may take place is closed;
· Any place or premises normally open to the public or where people may gather are prohibited including, flea markets, night clubs, casinos, hotels, lodges, holiday resorts, private and public gaming.
With these restrictions, the industry closed for several months and tourism businesses were all running at a loss, as the environment was not conducive to do business.
Technological environment
As the Covid 19 pandemic started and lockdown was decreed, consumers changes their habits towards technology, a lot of physical activities are now being conducted online, like education institutions that were presential adapted to online learning, most businesses adapted remote working for their employees and thus, employees had to be trained in online platform use, such as Microsoft teams, zoom, and many more. So, now more than ever people are consuming more internet data, and are engaging on online social media such as Instagram, zoom, facebook. And for entertainment platforms such as Netflix have become popular, as people have more time at home and with the closure of most entertainment places.
According to SEACOM (2020), the company has seen a marked increase in traffic since early March, as more and more companies avoid international business travel, avoid meetings and gatherings, and encourage their employees to work from home.
Political environment
The current political environment in the country is unstable, as corruption is still affecting the country majorly, political parties continue to argue and hold government officials accountable for mismanagement of funds. In the beginning of lockdown, a relief package of R500 billion was approved to provide food parcels to the needy, increased social grants to over 16 million beneficiaries including a temporary employee relief scheme for those people whose salary was affected (Transparency, 2020).
According to Transparency (2020), Abuse of the Temporary employee relief fund in part by private firms who claimed benefits on behalf of unknowing or deceased employees and then pocketed the cash. It is unlawful in South Africa for government officials to do business with the state, but in recent months many complaints have been received over the shameful manipulation of the temporary employee relief fund and the theft of food parcels to sway political favor.
With all these occurrences, plus the political decision to lockdown the tourism industry for months, the environment is currently very challenging to do business, so much that many Small and medium businesses have closed and even large hotel chains are laying off employees due to economic losses.
When a country is politically unstable, it also drives off possible investors, looking to aid to revive the industry.
Global Trends
Due to international travel restrictions the biggest trend in tourism and hospitality at the moment is domestic travel, now more than ever, people are travelling within their countries as restrictions are easing. It started in Europe with countries such as Greece, Italy and Portugal taking full advantage of their tourism offerings to market to the domestic market.
The second trend is virtual tourism offerings, more and more companies are trying to offer virtual tours of their destinations, with the objective of creating awareness, so that once the pandemic is controlled more tourists will be able to visit
According to Boatinternational (2020), for superyacht owners and charterers, one of the best activities available at sea is scuba diving. National Geographic has created 360 degree videos of nature spots and dive sites which, when paired with an Oculus Quest VR headset, can offer users the chance to swim with Humpback Whales in Antarctica or explore Indonesia’s coral reefs. Some tourist boards have gone one step further and created interactive tours of the entire country and specific cities, highlighting their nation’s most popular cultural sites and beauty spots.
A number of capital cities across the globe have been offering comprehensive virtual tours of their famous neighbourhoods, landmarks and gardens. For example, many of Paris’ iconic cultural spots can now be viewed online, from virtual tours of Montmarte’s Sacré-Cœur Basilica to a peek inside the Opéra de Paris. To enjoy a private tour of the famous Louvre museum (Boatinternational,2020).
Some small businesses have also been very creative in their way of doing business, in France, a floating movie theater was hosted with people socially distanced, since traditional cinemas were closed, this was a creative way to get people together while being socially distanced and still enjoy the entertainment of a good movie with good weather (Insider, 2020).
Direction for Gauteng Tourism Authority Marketing Activities
As a destination marketing organization for Gauteng that aims to inspire domestic and international travel to South Africa´s richest province, the Gauteng Tourism Authority has done well, it has an online presence in the most important social media platforms, it engages with its followers, they do relatively well in press releases and providing the relevant most information in their website. But now, that the country has eased restrictions and tourism is back open, it is almost necessary to start from zero in order to regain tourists, specially domestic ones because of the current situation, adapt global trends to its tourism offerings and be innovative in its way of marketing. These are my recommendations for the direction the Gauteng Tourism Authority marketing activities:
Ø GTA should open a linkedin account, because in this world of saturated content and algorithms, linkedin is one of the platforms that still allows for you to build your account organically, get real traction and also it is a platform mostly used for business networks, and this is aligned to the vision of getting business tourists visiting Gauteng, as you will be able to directly reach them in that platform.
Ø Regular briefings, in times of uncertainty, communication is vital to maintain relationships with stakeholders, investors and tourists, so twice a week we may hold a media briefing via facebook, updating them on what destinations are open, the progress being made in the province in the tourism industry and give them all the relevant information that will aid tourism in the province.
Ø GTA should also adapt to the global trend and create these experiences for their most known attractions, such as gold reef city, Nelson Mandela museum, Maboneng experience, etc. This will allow potential tourists to engage with these attractions beforehand and create interest for both domestic and international tourists to visit them. The other added benefit, is the extensive information and exposure it gives to our tourism destinations to the world, this will surely give more traction and notoriety to the destinations.
Ø The final thing, I would recommend that GTA do, is steal a page from Nandos advertisements playbook, and make more video adverts, that are funny, engaging, that use the official languages in South Africa and speak to locals. The current adverts that are done, are very formal and western in their making, adding the local lingo to adverts, the South African energy will go a long way in motivating domestic tourists to travel and also win a greater domestic market share. And given the current state of the world and the industry, this will be vital in the reawakening of the industry and ensuring that tourism jobs are saved and created.
Reference List
Boatinternational, (2020), virtual travel tours trips experiences, available from: https://www.boatinternational.com/destinations/virtual-travel-tours-trips-vr-experiences--43207,accessed on: 1 November 2020
Gauteng Tourism Authority, (2020), about us, available from: https://www.gauteng.net/index.php/pages/about-us, accessed on: 1 November 2020
Insider, (2020), paris floating movie theater boat cinema on water, available from: https://www.insider.com/paris-floating-movie-theater-boat-cinema-on-water-photos-2020-7, accessed on: 1 November 2020
News 24, (2020), Tourism sector hit by R54bn losses since covid 19 lockdown kubayi ngubane, available from: https://www.news24.com/news24/southafrica/news/tourism-sector-hit-by-r54bn-losses-since-covid-19-lockdown-kubayi-ngubane-20200722, accessed on: 1 November 2020.
Seacom, (2020), How much internet traffic south africa has increased due to coronavirus, available from: https://seacom.co.za/media-centre/how-much-internet-traffic-south-africa-has-increased-due-coronavirus/, accessed on: 1 November 2020.
Statssa, (2020), Steep slump in GDP as Covid 19 takes its tolls on the economy, available from: http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=13601,accessed on: 1 November 2020.
Transparency, (2020), available from: In south Africa covid 19 has exposed greed and spurred long needed action against corruption, https://www.transparency.org/en/blog/in-south-africa-covid-19-has-exposed-greed-and-spurred-long-needed-action-against-corruption#, accessed on: 1 November 2020.
