SA WELL-PLACED TO CAPITALISE ON BRICS GROWTH
SOUTH Africa stands to benefit considerably from tourism growth in emerging BRICS markets, but needs to make the visa process easier and less daunting and add more direct flights from major cities to South Africa to increase arrivals.
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OUTH Africa is enjoying a boom in trade since joining the BRICS coalition and the tourism industry should be able to capitalise on this to win more inbound tourism from Brazil, Russia, India and China. This was the message during a BRICS panel discussion at Meetings Africa yesterday, hosted by TV presenter Lionel Skink and broadcast on CNBC Africa last night. Olivia Ji Jingshu, vice president of China’s CEBEX group, said she had brought a delegation to Meetings Africa flying in on SAA’s newly-
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launched flight from Beijing to Johannesburg, and that it had been an absolute pleasure and an easy travel experience for Chinese visitors. A few years ago South Africa had been difficult for Chinese travellers to access, said Anita Soni, chairperson of Brand SA, but serious efforts had been made to improve air lift capacity for Chinese visitors. More efforts are also needed to make it easier for Russian visitors to travel to South Africa said Elena Demidova, owner of Expert Avis in Russia. She said Russians were keen to explore new markets but preferred countries that made it easy for them to come. “South Africa has always been seen as an exotic destination by the Russian market. It’s really great that ties between our two nations have strengthened here at Meetings Africa, which has been a huge step forward for us. We all need to work
together to make it as easy as possible for Russians to visit South Africa and we need to work collectively on easing visa restrictions, direct flights into South Africa and promoting South Africa actively in Russia,” said Demidova. Audience member Sean Bradley, SAA’s Global Manager of Trade and Product Support, said the airline was looking at where to increase its activities and how to work with key destinations to attract more in-bound business. Bradley said SAA was putting a lot of emphasis on the Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Events market and had established a business tourism department. Soni said since South Africa joined BRICS last year its exports to those countries had increased four-fold and imports had doubled. She hoped to see a similar rise in tourism alongside that economic growth. But that demanded a sound infrastructure and an enabling business and tourism environment. The BRICS countries house 40% of the world’s population, so the potential for intercountry trade was enormous, leading to a clamour for more information about South Africa and its attractions. S.D. Nandakumar, the head of business development for Kuoni Travel India, said India could provide huge numbers of visitors to South Africa, especially for its sporting events, but stressed Indians needed more information about the country’s attractions. Soni urged operators to put together creative packages by combining culture, food, natural beauty and the hospitality of the people, as well as leveraging on sporting events. Lesley Stones
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