A poor Joke, or simply seeing the lighter side?
My business depends on tourists wanting to travel to Southern Africa. I hope to assist people in finding beautiful places, getting them to experience great hospitality, awesome wildlife, quiet retreats and good food, but when mother nature forces airlines to ground their planes, visits are postponed or cancelled as in the Volcanic Ash from Iceland saga, however, the wind will blow and planes will fly again and visitors will come to South Africa…
Those of us in the Travel and Tourism Industry are constantly finding ways to improve the safety of tourists, offering accredited tour guides to the first-time travellers and working closely with car hire companies so that they offer the best road-side assistance and service to our clients, then we urge the media, not only to report about the crime, but to report the safe statistics too.
It is a daily challenge to convince people to visit South Africa and when Hate speech, crime, murder or rape keep making the front page, our work becomes more of a battle than a challenge.
Though the above picture did its rounds by e-mail as a joke, I secretly think the World Cup is what is “saving” tourism at the this stage, we’ve had extensive media coverage, and will have even more during the tournaments, my hope is that we can all see the lighter side of life, so that ultimately getting tourists into South Afrika is easier done than said!!!
Jennie Pretorius