SA gears up for holiday, virus or not

When the going gets tough, the tough get going … on holiday. It seems that Covid-19 or not, South Africans are determined to hit the beaches with gusto again this festive season.

Despite being identified as hotspots, popular seaside destinations in the Eastern and Western Cape are hopeful that surge of local visitors over December and January will help them claw back some of the horrendous losses they incurred because of the lockdowns earlier in the year.

The Nelson Mandela Bay area, which includes the city of Port Elizabeth and the towns of Uitenhage and Despatch, were put under additional lockdown restrictions on Thursday by President Cyril Ramaphosa.

Shaun van Eck, chairperson of Nelson Mandela Bay Tourism, said bookings in the metro were at about 50% of last year’s.

“We believe that, as visitors are monitoring the situation in most coastal destinations in SA, there will be a lot of last-minute bookings. We have had about 1% of bookings cancelled.”

Patty Butterworth, CEO of Plett Tourism, noted very few, if any, cancellations and an increase in inquiries over the past 48 hours “due to the media attention the Garden Route has received”.

“Plettenberg Bay Covid-19 cases are relatively low in comparison to our neighbours. Most of the larger, fully-serviced accommodation establishments, as well as the majority of self-catering homes, are fully booked.”

Nicky Krugel from Jeffrey’s Bay Tourism, said accommodation in Jeffrey’s Bay was fully booked.

Colleen Durant, general manager of Visit Knysna, said feedback indicated that reservations were good this season.

Gerrilene Fouche, head of marketing at Lekkeslaap, said: “Our booking levels are very similar to last year, but it is particularly surprising to see that the average value of our bookings is much higher than usual. Guests who would normally have travelled internationally [are] booking local holidays instead.”

Many of its establishments were fully booked for the festive season and the most popular December holiday towns were running out of availability.

“Popular destinations like Plettenberg Bay, Mossel Bay, Margate and Stilbaai are over 90% booked,” Fouche said.

On the Lekkeslaap platform, the Western Cape as a whole was 85% booked during the peak of the holiday season and the South Coast had less than 10% availability left.

Kirby Gordon, chief marketing officer of FlySafair, said the airline’s bookings were looking good.

“The trend is a short booking curve, because people seem to wait until the last minute, which is understandable given all the uncertainty, especially around the situation unfolding in the Western Cape.”

He said the market was also experiencing a pretty severe supply shock with all the other carriers coming back.

“We are seeing the number of available seats on domestic routes pretty much double from November, which is great news for customers because prices will be low.”

Western Cape premier Alan Winde said on Thursday that people could go ahead with their holiday plans to visit the Garden Route, as long as they kept in mind that infections there were increasing.

– inao@citizen.co.za

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