South Africa’s closed borders may not be the main reason East African countries are seeing a slow growth in tourist numbers, with international tour operators saying – following a previous article – the low growth is largely caused by travel advisories issued by the governments of the region’s source markets.
A UK-based tour operator said, in his experience, there was rarely interest from travellers in combining southern and East Africa. He said the low tourism numbers to East African countries were largely due to cautionary advice from the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
“I only know the Swiss market. We normally sell East Africa without any add-on tours into or out of southern Africa. The problem is the media and authorities. They still say that it's dangerous to travel abroad,” said Andrea Schindler, owner of Swiss travel service company, Dreamtime Travel.
“A new quarantine list is published every week. If countries have more than 60 infections per 100 000 inhabitants, travellers returning from that specific country have to spend 10 days in quarantine when they return to Switzerland.”
Schindler added that air access was also an issue. “There are only a few flight connections, and often these are cancelled at short notice. This is what happened to me recently with Brussels Airways to Rwanda. There is simply no security to book customers who want to travel.”
She said travel wouldn’t quickly restart when countries opened their borders – even for a country like South Africa – as too many people had been negatively impacted financially in the last few months.
Pieter Kerkhof, owner of Sable Tours based in The Netherlands, agreed. “No one will travel until the advice from governments gives the green light. And even then, it will be a very slow start that will take at least two years to get up to speed again, if not longer.”
He added that, without a vaccine to prevent COVID-19, it might get worse before it gets better. “But there is hope.”
EDITOR’S NOTE:
We would like to hear from tour operators across the globe who have worked in southern and East Africa on the current experience in African countries that have reopened their borders to international travellers. Please email editor@tourismupdate.co.za
