DUNDEE: ‘Vasbyt’, hospitality industry told after lockdown lifts
There was also a discussion on co-ordinating activities as tourism committees in Northern KZN, the Tour Guides Association and the Battlefields Route Committee, all overlap with the same activities.
While the hospitality industry has been hardest hit since the Covid-19 pandemic led to the state of disaster on March 27, delegates, that included tourism offices, guides and hospitality industry stakeholders, had their chins up with the message being: ‘Vasbyt’.
With international travel still looking uncertain, the focus is now very much on ‘internal tourism’, said chairperson, Pam McFadden, She cited the recent Tourism Dundee project of Committee members venturing out to previously neglected tourism sites in the area and the bid to market ‘Do Dundee’.
“It is amazing how many local people still do not know that there is a Gandhi Museum at the old Courthouse. If the lockdown has achieved something it is the need to look at and explore our own country and area.”
The idea of taking information to public libraries and schools was also mooted, rather than expecting people to come to information centres.
Gustav Rohrs, Committee treasurer, said the focus should be on projects to keep interest in the area ‘in the news’. He also suggested that R73 000 be written off from those municipalities who have not paid their membership fees.
There was also concern from Shane Evans of Isandlwana Lodge that the battlefields managed by heritage authority, Amafa, are currently closed on weekends which is when most visitors prefer to travel. T
our guide, Anthony Coleman, was a bit more upbeat, saying that he had already received some overseas bookings for 2021. He also suggested that ‘we market things that have been overlooked’.
There was also a discussion on co-ordinating activities as tourism committees in Northern KZN, the Tour Guides Association and the Battlefields Route Committee, all overlap with the same activities. With a positive attitude and ‘lateral thinking’ those at the meeting were positive that tourism will survive this crisis – just as it survived the aftermath of the 911 attacks in 2001, the World Cup of 2010 that negatively affected battlefields tourism and the last economic recession.
Related: Award-winning battlefields guide dies in Dundee
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