In response to the ongoing argument by industry for the safe opening of domestic leisure travel, Travel Consultant: Destinations, Alan Roxton Wiggill, writes that it seems to be counter intuitive to call for opening inter-provincial travel when “it is quite clear that the biggest current fear of government is that the disease will spread from the highly infected Gauteng and Western Cape travel markets to the other less infected provinces”.

Here is his letter in full:

“They won't do it. So let’s try to do what we can do at the right time to get phased-in travel reinstated at the soonest possible stage. ‘Hou Kop’ (keep your head) and let’s do what is possible. We are justifiably panicking. Everyone in tourism and travel has no income.

We need to rather focus on a hard push for intra-province travel right now. This will not spread the infections from the high infection provinces to other less infected provinces. Government is unwilling to have this happen as the disease peaks. Our local intra-provincial travel must be opened and used as an example of how effective our industry’s self-imposed health safety protocols can be.

This gives tourism some income and salaries to destitute workers. It will also encourage Government and travellers to trust our industry with their health safety and travel needs in lockdown and beyond.

It is hard to argue with government that, as one of the top infected countries worldwide, where infections are concentrated in the two big travel source markets of SA, that inter-provincial travel should be opened now.

It does not make sense to push for this right away. Let infection rate of these two provinces peak and start flattening before we, as the industry, start really applying pressure to open up inter-province travel and then international travel.

Be strategic and look at what government can logically do before applying pressure on them. Push for intra-provincial travel first, prove our worth and then push to open up national and international travel thereafter.”