Johannesburg- South Africa’s tourism and hospitality sector have lost over R1 billion in travel bookings for travel between December and March in the past 48 hours, as a result of the travel bans instituted globally against the destination since it announced that it had sequenced a new variant, now known as Omicron.
A snap survey conducted amongst just over 600 members of FEDHASA and SATSA, representing hospitality and the international inbound tourism private-sector respectively, revealed that if the travel bans remained in place, based on the cancellations to date, respondents would lose 78% of their previously expected business levels for the period December to March.
This would support an order of 205 000 jobs annually.
“The impact of these ill-advised travel bans is catastrophic for an industry that has already been battling to survive for the past 20 months. Essentially, South Africa and its tourism sector is being punished for its advanced genomic sequencing and its transparency,” says David Frost, CEO SATSA, representing over 1,300 tourism businesses.
“We can only hope that science will prevail and that countries will reverse the travel bans shortly. The World Health Organization and scientists continue to highlight that travel bans are not an effective measure to deal with the spread of COVID. What has happened in effect is that the world has shot the messenger for doing its job well.”
Rosemary Anderson, FEDHASA National Chairperson, confirmed the immediate priority for the hospitality sector is now to protect domestic tourism over the festive season.
For more political news and views from this week’s paper, click here.
Follow @SundayWorldZA on Twitter and @sundayworldza on Instagram, or like our Facebook Page, Sunday World, by clicking here for the latest breaking news in South Africa. To Subscribe to Sunday World, click here.
Sunday World
