African governments must work together to define a standardised travel protocol if tourism is to recover swiftly and deliver the economic benefits that are so critical for the continent.

That was the overarching message of the recent African Tourism Investment Summit (ATIS), hosted by International Tourism & Investment Conference (ITIC) and World Travel Market Africa at Africa Travel Week, which featured nine ministerial and investment expert panel discussions and presentations.

Sounding the call for collaboration, ITIC Chair and former Secretary-General of the UN World Tourism Organization, Dr Taleb Rifai, said it would take five years for 70% of the world’s population to be vaccinated and that it would be impractical to pin tourism’s hopes on this before travel could resume in earnest.

“We cannot face this as individual governments. We have to work together and not just Ministers of Tourism, but also Ministers of Health, of Transport. African governments must work together and create a minimum procedure and protocol for travel. We can’t have one country insisting on quarantine, its neighbour insisting on vaccinations and a third one requiring testing. There has to be a standardised minimum level of procedures that is agreed upon for travel to be possible. There’s no other way.”

His view was widely supported by the various ministers and World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) President and CEO, Gloria Guevara, who called for an international mobility programme to deliver the certainty required for travel.

“We cannot consider entire countries as infected and thus quarantined, so there is a need to move from country assessment to individual assessment. If we can have agreement among the countries in Africa, we could resume international travel and bring back travellers and jobs,” said Guevara, whose recommendation for Africa would be to define clear rules and work together to put together a mobility protocol.

Ian Liddell-Grainger, Vice Chair of Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, advocated for widespread access to vaccines and called for a “team effort” to get “tourism up and running” swiftly, while sounding a caution about variants.

“One of the things we are trying to do is open up tourism without taking variants to countries that don’t have them and, conversely, bring back variants that are not covered by existing vaccines. Variants must be identified and South Africa is a prime example. They identified a variant, got it out to the world and we know now that the vaccinations cover that variant. That’s how it’s done.”

Investor confidence

On the topic of investor confidence Najib Balala, Cabinet Secretary, Kenya Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife, said this would only be achieved through collaboration. Minister Balala bemoaned the current narrative painted about Africa and variants, saying that red-listing countries and hoarding vaccines was not “healthy”.

“If there is a problem in Kenya or South Africa, we should pull together and find solutions. This is not a problem for one country, this is a global problem because variants will spread throughout the world. First, we need to address those issues before we can talk about investment, because investment withdraws when there’s uncertainty.”

Balala said Africa should focus its current efforts on building infrastructure that supported and enabled tourism so that “we invest in today for tomorrow”, so that “when the world reopens, we can say we are ready for it”.

Reiterating their support for Africa and willingness to enter into dialogue, Sofia Zacharaki, Greek Deputy Minister of Tourism, said the country was invested in the promotion of “mutual tourism investments based on sustainability and environmental protection”, as well as “special initiatives supporting joint ventures between Greek and African businesses, a framework providing exchange of knowledge and the development of specialised and alternative forms of tourism”.

Held under the banner of Invest, Rebuild and Restart, ATIS has the common purpose of assisting African countries and worldwide delegates in helping to propel growth in travel and tourism through innovation in products, destination marketing and investment in sustainable development and infrastructure.

Ibrahim Ayoub, Group CEO of ITIC and Organiser of the Africa Tourism Investment Summit with WTM Africa, said: “ITIC is proud to contribute to rebuilding and restarting the travel and tourism industry in Africa. We are all smiles to have laid the foundation stones on which the next two investment summits will continue the dialogue on the challenging current issues which will enable project owners and investors to realise their vision for a sustainable and inclusive future development for the benefit of all Africans.”

According to Megan Oberholzer, Reed Exhibitions ‎Portfolio Director: Travel, Tourism and Creative Industries, the need to connect is there. “We are really excited about our collaboration with ITIC and the events that we will be co-hosting in the next few months. We hope to see some of the suggestions that have been shared over the past two days about collaboration in Africa and tourism investment focus unpacked further in our upcoming events. It has been a pleasure to be involved in this important dialogue.”

Investment events

The Africa Tourism Investment Conference will be held on Thursday, June 24, with a third event taking place physically from September 1-3, when ITIC and WTM Africa will host ‘Africa Live’ in Cape Town, which will provide project owners, investors and financiers the opportunity to meet in person in individual Deal Rooms, facilitating selected participants to showcase their development projects and funding requirements to prospective funders.

The conference will help drive international awareness and investments in Africa and surrounding island destinations, and act as a catalyst for growth. It will attract private equity firms, institutional investors, fund managers and influencers, who have the power to channel capital and to raise funds by using key regional stock exchanges to raise and structure the funds to invest in live and bankable tourism projects.

The objective is to make tourism a driver to boost and develop the other industries with the eco-system in a sustainable manner, This includes SMEs operating in different sectors which still provide support to the tourism industry – such as agriculture, manufacturing, energy, technology, textile and many sectors of the economy to create employment, wealth within the country and for the benefit of the people.